Jim Schlossnagle pushes back on Texas having a bad season because they didn't reach Omaha

For many fans, the Texas Longhorns going down in the Austin Regional and not pushing their way to Omaha and the College World Series was a letdown. However, head coach Jim Schlossnagle pushed back on the idea that falling short of that made this a bad season.

Texas would officially be eliminated with their loss to UTSA on Sunday. It was after the game when Schlossnagle met with the media that he explained both how the Roadrunners took down the Longhorns and that it doesn’t diminish what they accomplished in the regular season.

“Congratulations, UTSA,” Jim Schlossnagle said. “As I told Coach [Pat] Hallmark, at home plate, that’s not a fly-by-night team. That is a real team. That is an Omaha-caliber club in every way. They can play a lot of different brands of baseball. They can pitch. Like I said the other night, they have a persona about them and it’s a winning persona. We gave them too many free bases there in one inning. [Ty] Hodge got the big two-out hit. We just didn’t bunch our hits and [Mason] Lytle made an awesome play in centerfield.”

Texas would be the No. 2 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, hosting the Austin Regional. Had they won it, they’d be going on to host the Super Regional. However, they ended up going just 2-2 in the Regional, losing to UTSA twice. That second loss was enough to eliminate the Longhorns. With that, Texas became the fifth hosting team eliminated this year.

“I was proud of the way our guys competed. Pretty banged up, which every team is,” Schlossnagle said. “But really proud of our team, and as I just told them, no disrespect to the teams in the past but this is the first team that Texas has ever had to play through the SEC. To be an SEC Champion and to host a Regional, we all understand Omaha is where we all want to end up, but when you go 44-14 in our league, it doesn’t make it a bad season. Just not the right ending.”

At one point, Texas was the most feared team in college baseball this season. The Longhorns were 19-1 in SEC play overall at one point, which was good enough to put them on the path to winning the SEC regular season championship. However, between the final three series and the SEC Tournament, Texas went just 3-7 to drop to 22-8 overall in SEC play.

From that same time, including non-conference games and the NCAA Tournament, Texas went from 38-5 to 44-14. It’s that difficult stretch at the end of the season that has left a bad taste in the team’s mouth despite a good season overall.