Following a tremendous regular season but a tough weekend at the SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Texas A&M now waits to see if they will earn a high enough seed to host both regional rounds.
Of course, once head coach Jim Schlossnagle took the podium after his team’s exit from the conference tourney, the big question was whether he believed the Aggies had done enough to not just earn a top-16 regional hosting seed, but one of those coveted top-eight spots that guarantee super regional hosting as well, should the team get that far.
“Man, I wish I had an answer for that,” answered Schlossnagle.
“You’d like to think that your team is super motivated to win, whether you’re playing freaking ping-pong or Rock, Paper, Scissors or a baseball game in the SEC tournament. It’s so fun to be here, like, nobody wants to go home. But at the same time, you know we’ve played all season long to earn the right to get to play at home at least the first round. I’m assuming we’re going to get to do that.”
He’s certainly hoping the A&M is afforded that privilege, since he hasn’t been too inspired by their performance away from home lately.
“We definitely need to get home. We obviously play better at home. The 12th Man is real. We’ve earned the right to do that, at least the first round. So maybe that’ll be what gets us over the hump. But three of the last four weekends we’ve been on the road and haven’t played very well. So we’ve earned the right to play at home. Maybe that’ll get us going.”
Schlossnagle understands the importance of hosting the regional rounds, but wants to be clear that hosting doesn’t matter much if Texas A&M can’t return to their prior form.
“If we play like that, there’s not going to be a second round. Doesn’t matter where the game is scheduled. My last year at TCU we were a national seed and lost our own regional.”
The Aggie coach has been in this situation before, though, where one of his TCU teams made a quick exit in the conference tournament before an inspiring run to Omaha.
“2015, I’ve talked about this before, at TCU I think we won the league and we went two and out in the conference tournament, and the first text message I had after the game was from Augie Garrido, and he said: ‘This is the best thing to ever happen to you.’ Didn’t feel that way, but we ended up in Omaha for the second time. That was number two of four in a row.”
Baseball’s a fickle game and the successes and failures are far from predictable. Heck, Jim Schlossnagle admits he doesn’t always have the best read on his own team.
“It’s such a weird thing, especially with young players. They know what’s going on. So it just comes down to, I don’t know, who executes pitches. You never can get in the mind of a player. As soon as you know, let me know so I can do a better job at it.
“It’s the weirdest thing,” he continued. “I know how I feel. Like I’m ultra competitive, but I don’t get to play. It feels — losing these games feels as bad as any game to me. Winning never feels as good as losing feels bad to me. I don’t know how it feels to them. We’ll find out. But yeah, I mean, there’s much better coaches than me.”
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