AUSTIN (KXAN) — It didn’t take long for Texas to name a new head baseball coach.
After the Longhorns let David Pierce go on Monday, athletic director Chris Del Conte announced Jim Schlossnagle as head coach fresh off a runner-up finish with Texas A&M at the Men’s College World Series. He’s the 14th head coach in the history of the Longhorns program.
MORE THAN THE SCORE: Stay up to date on sports stories like these, and sign up for our More than the Score sports newsletter at kxan.com/newsletters
The hire was first reported by Horns247. KXAN is working on independently confirming it, but other outlets have reported the hire as well.
Following the Aggies’ 6-5 loss to the Tennessee Volunteers in Game 3 of the MCWS finals Monday, Schlossnagle told reporters that he took the job at Texas A&M to “never take another job ever again.” Clearly, that changed when the Longhorns called.
After three seasons in College Station, Schlossnagle was 135-62 with two trips to the MCWS in 2022 and this past season. The Aggies played in their first-ever championship series this year and won the first game before dropping the final two. In his 23-year head coaching career spanning stops at UNLV, TCU and Texas A&M, he’s 946-455 and has never had a losing season. The 2002 team at UNLV went 30-30 in his first year as a head coach and every year since then his teams finished above .500.
Schlossnagle has taken teams to the MCWS seven times, and that includes a stretch of four consecutive trips with TCU from 2014-2017. He led the Aggies to a 53-15 record this season, 19-11 in the Southeastern Conference, and the school’s best-ever finish in the MCWS.
Del Conte was TCU’s athletic director from 2009-17 while Schlossnagle was in the middle of his impressive tenure with the Horned Frogs. Schlossnagle rang up a .680 winning percentage (734-346) in 18 seasons in Forth Worth.
The Longhorns lost to the Aggies and Louisiana in the College Station regional of the NCAA tournament this season and finished the season 36-24. Texas joins the SEC on July 1 and will once again be in the same conference as the Aggies.