How Dallas Baptist became college baseball's most unlikely perennial contender

Only five schools have reached the NCAA baseball tournament in each of the last 10 seasons. Four of those are expected names: Vanderbilt, Florida, LSU and Oklahoma State. They’re power conference schools with giant athletic departments and 11 baseball national championships between them.

But the fifth school on that streak is Dallas Baptist, a 4,200-student school that plays all of its other sports at the Division II level, the only D-I baseball school to do so.

With state-of-the-art facilities and a long list of MLB Draft picks — 73 in the last 16 years — Dallas Baptist has carried itself like a top-level college baseball program since it moved up to D-I in 2004. The Patriots haven’t had a losing season since 1978. Nobody involved with the program knows anything but winning. Their 44 wins this season are third-most in the country, including wins against Oklahoma and Arizona, the latter of which will host No. 2 seed DBU at a Regional in Tucson this weekend.

But how did this happen here, of all places? And as college sports continue to shift, with even more money funneled to the power conferences and sports like baseball discussing the potential to change their scholarship limits, can DBU continue to win?

“Everybody wishes they had a crystal ball,” said athletic director Matt Duce, who played baseball at DBU from 2015 to ’18. “The great thing about sports is that the field is level. When you get out there, I’d take the Patriots all day.”

Decatur Baptist College was Texas’ first junior college, founded in 1898. It moved to the outskirts of Dallas in 1965, renamed itself and soon became a four-year college. Five years later, it created a baseball program. The Patriots played at the NAIA level until moving up to Division I as an independent in 2004. When head coach Eric Newman left for the Nebraska pitching coach job in 2007, DBU promoted 29-year-old assistant Dan Heefner to the job, and he hasn’t left, 17 seasons later.

In a state full of high-level college baseball programs, DBU has found a winning formula of player development. It’s not going to sign the best players away from Texas, Oklahoma or Texas A&M. But Texas is a big state with a lot of players. DBU’s recruiting classes often rank in the 30s nationally, but in some years it’s the 80s or 90s. It’s a cliché, but Heefner and his staff know how to spot talented players and coach ’em up. Last year’s team lost 11 players to pro baseball, including a school-record nine draft picks. The program didn’t miss a step. Every year, role players become stars.

“A lot of people are successful just on recruiting — get the best players you can and let them go,” Heefner said. “For us to compete, we’ve got to develop them. They come in at this (level) and we pour into them every day. By the time the season rolls around, they’re a different player.”

Heefner pointed out that baseball recruiting is a different challenge than football or basketball.

“It’s not like a guy’s in ninth or 10th grade and you know he’s a five-star,” he said. “We’ve had a number of guys who were not good enough to go anywhere, they go junior college, then we get them and they become All-Americans and make it to the big leagues.”

Nine players on the current DBU roster came from junior college. For as much damage as the transfer portal has done to mid-majors in football and basketball, it’s been a net positive for DBU thus far; this year’s roster features five other transfers from Division I schools.

Reliever Nick Wilson transferred in from Southern University for his final season and has become a key part of the bullpen. The Carrollton, Texas, native grew up going to DBU games but had two offers out of high school and started at a junior college.

“If you’re in the Dallas area and you’re highly recruited, you’ve got OU, A&M, the big football schools coming at you,” he said. “How does a little school like DBU put out seasons like this continually? It’s about the development.”

Investment has helped sustain the on-field success. Horner Ballpark opened in 2013. It added a turf field and a pitching lab in 2016. The school just built a pro locker room for alumni to come back and use, which they frequently do. The program’s most famous alumni include former All-Star Freddy Sanchez and World Series MVP Ben Zobrist.

“If I’m a high school kid that isn’t getting the the big major school offer I wanted to get but I want to play high college and professional baseball, I’m looking serious at DBU,” Zobrist said. “If I want to win and be developed, I’m going there.”

“They’ve invested in a way a lot of mid-major programs don’t,” said Baseball America writer Teddy Cahill.

The program does have an NIL collective, but DBU knows it can’t operate on the level of the SEC schools in the state. DBU rarely loses players to bigger schools, banking on its culture and development to keep the best players from going elsewhere.

“Ryan Johnson, our No. 1 starter last year, has a chance to be a first-round draft pick this year, he could’ve gone anywhere,” Heefner said. “He was an All-American and was on Team USA. But for him, (transferring) wasn’t even a question.”

Heefner has drawn interest from bigger programs, especially in Texas. But he has stayed each time because of the personal fit, both for baseball and his faith, the latter an outward and important part of the program. He always felt DBU could mold its program after Rice, another Texas private school that won the 2003 national championship and made five men’s College World Series appearances in the 2000s.

DBU hasn’t made it there yet. The program hasn’t reached Omaha, coming as close as seven outs away in 2021.

“There’s only one thing we haven’t done, and that’s gone to Omaha, and we really feel like we can,” Heefner said. “It’s a fun thing when you’re a part of building something from the beginning. You want to keep going and see how far you can take it.”

Everyone around DBU hopes that continues, but they’re still adjusting to college sports’ recent landscape changes. The Patriots joined Conference USA from the Missouri Valley Conference last year for a step up in competition and a simpler travel schedule. They earned CUSA’s automatic bid as conference champion, but they would’ve made the field as an at-large anyway.

The recent settlement in House v. NCAA could lead to the elimination of scholarship limits or the creation of roster caps, which would have a dramatic impact on a sport like baseball. DBU has thrived in a college baseball environment in which every program is allotted 11.7 scholarships. What happens if that limit increases to 20 or 25?

“We constantly have our eye on the horizon,” Heefner said. “What’s happening? How are we going to fit into that? What do we need to do to make it work for us?”

For now, DBU heads into the Tucson Regional looking to emerge from a field that includes Arizona, West Virginia and Grand Canyon. Reaching this level of the NCAA Tournament has become the baseline standard of success. Whatever the future holds, DBU plans to be there.

“It’s incredibly fun,” Zobrist said. “Every year, you’re wondering if this is going to be the year. They don’t have off years. It’s been so long that they’ve had a chance. Everybody’s super proud of what Dan’s created there. Look at the track record of guys going pro. They really develop players.”

“We’re at the point where it’s not like they’re a mid-major program,” Cahill said. “It’s more like, of course they’re good.”

(Photo: Nathan J. Fish / The Oklahoman / USA Today)