Mark Campbell’s tenure at TCU continues to resemble a movie straight from Disney.

The rise of TCU women’s basketball from last place in the Big 12 to its second straight NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 is quite the rags-to-riches story.

The Horned Frogs matchup with Virginia at 6:30 p.m. Saturday on ESPN has some added weight to it as Campbell returns to place where he got his first head-coaching job. Campbell took the post at Sacramento State in 2021 and quickly turned around the Hornets as he led the program its first NCAA Tournament appearance.

After completing another rebuilding job at TCU, Campbell now has a chance to lead the Horned Frogs to the Final Four in the place where everything started.

It’s a compelling version of the prodigal son returns home, and it’s the type of storyline you would expect from some of the best directors such as Christopher Nolan and Ryan Coogler.

To understand why this moment means so much for Campbell, you have to go back to the beginning.

The first choice

For every assistant coach looking to lead their own program, their first job often makes or breaks their careers. Second chances are hard to come by without proven success and taking the wrong job too early can relegate even the best coaching minds to less than what they dream about.

That’s what Campbell had to weigh as he contemplated where he wanted to take his first coaching job. Campbell earned over a decade of experience as an assistant with stops at St. Mary’s, Oregon State and Oregon, where he helped the Ducks enjoy the program’s best stretch ever.

The Ducks made a Final Four, two Elite Eights and a Sweet 16 from 2017-21, which quickly helped make Campbell an attractive coaching name as he developed his reputation as a high-level recruiter.

So why would Campbell take a gamble on Sac State, which had just 11 combined wins in the two seasons prior to his hiring?

“I thought this was the best job in the Big Sky,” Campbell said. “Between me and Xavi (Lopez)’s recruiting that we’ve done, Sacramento, you can attract international players and portal players. It’s the capital city of California. It’s sunny and there’s palm trees. I thought there was enough there that we could attract some really good players, and the league was wide open. There was no juggernaut, no powerhouse in the league.”

Campbell’s relationship with Sacramento State athletic director Mark Orr also played a vital role after the two met during Campbell’s time at St. Mary’s.

Campbell bet on himself, and his faith was quickly rewarded as the Hornets went from 3-22 to 14-16 in Campbell’s first season. Then Campbell led Sac State to a Big Sky regular-season and tournament championship en route to the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance.

It was a surprising result to some, but one Campbell envisioned the moment he took the job.

“I’m a person of faith, and I just had total peace that this was where we were supposed to be as a family,” Campbell said.

Three years since leaving Sacramento State, Campbell returns to Sacramento s one of the rising coaching stars in women’s college basketball. It isn’t just a return to the city that made him though; it also is a return to campus: TCU has held multiple practices at the Hornets’ home ‘The Nest.’

The last time he was here, Campbell was coaching up the Hornets to try and achieve history, and now he’s doing the same for TCU.

“It’s a full-circle moment, incredibly special. All the memories have started flooding back in,” Campbell said. “This is a place I got learn to be a head coach.”

Campbell has come a long way from his days at Sacramento State, and his star players like Olivia Miles got to see that first hand as TCU prepares for the Cavaliers.

“It was a cool experience seeing where Coach Campbell came from,” Miles said. “They allowed him to be a head coach first and then allowed him to go to TCU. So it was a cool place to be in, a full-circle moment for him, and I was just glad to be a little part of his journey.”

Sac State wasn’t just apart of Campbell’s origin story it also played a vital role in the rest of his staff that followed him from California to Fort Worth.

Finding his staff

A coach is only as good as the staff around him and it didn’t take long for Campbell to decide who he wanted to bring with him to Sacramento State.

The first was Xavi Lopez, who also served at Oregon from 2015-21 with Campbell. Lopez made his mark by leaning on his international ties to bring in Germany’s Satou Sabally, who ended up as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 WNBA draft, and Spain’s Maite Cazorla, who ended up as the 23rd overall pick in 2019, to play for the Ducks.

Lopez also worked the Ducks’ guards and helped Oregon become one of the nation’s best shooting teams. Campbell couldn’t think of a better coach to bring with him.

“At this point Xavi is like my brother, literally,” Campbell said. “We took one less assistant here so he could actually make the same salary he made at Oregon. In regards to making sure he was with me, I was gonna do whatever we needed to do. I wouldn’t have taken a job if he couldn’t come with me.”

The move to follow Campbell to Sacramento was a no-brainer for Lopez after the two became close during their time as the lead recruiters at Oregon.

“When he got his first coaching opportunity, I wanted to be there for him and make sure he got this place up and running,” Lopez said. “I know he believed in me from day one, and I believed in him. We wanted to do this together, and it’s worked out pretty well.”

If Lopez is the offensive coordinator for TCU then assistant Minyon Moore is the defensive coordinator. Like Lopez, Moore met Campbell at Oregon.

After playing three seasons at USC, Moore transferred to Oregon in 2019 and earned her third All-Pac 12 Defensive honors as she helped the Ducks get off to a 31-2 start before COVID-19 shut the season down.

Moore took some time to figure out her next move and ultimately settled on coaching due to her experience with Campbell and Lopez.

“The impact they had on my life that one year at Oregon is the reason why when I was at Oregon I said ‘Hey, if you ever get a job, let me know,’” Moore said. “I want to go and learn from you, and that’s what happened.”

A Sacramento native, Moore helped develop four players into All-Big Sky selections, including two earning Player of the Year honors. Campbell believed Moore had the right type of personality to coach, and she quickly rewarded him as she played a vital role in Sac State’s turn-around.

“She was an incredible leader, great communicator and fiery competitor,” Campbell said. “She just had so many characteristics of a future head coach, not just a good assistant. When we hired her at Sac State, she was the youngest assistant at the Division-I level, and she got to come here (where) I believe she’s the youngest assistant at the Power Four level.”

Campbell gave her a chance at Sac State, and now she’s helped TCU become an elite defensive team, which is just one of the many reasons the Horned Frogs made it back to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

It was a triumphant return for Campbell, Lopez and Moore as they received a strong reminder of where they came from.

Humble beginnings

The Nest is a small arena, tucked into a quiet corner on campus that is easy to miss if you’re not paying attention to the signs. The arena seats just over 1,000 people and is fitted with retractable bleachers that may remind some of a high school gym.

The facility is old, built in 1955, and a recent paint job overseen by Campbell and Lopez is doing a lot of heavy lifting to cover up the aging.

The arena is connected to the ROTC building and dozens of classrooms, one of which Campbell and the staff often had to use for film sessions. The small locker room is such a long walk from the court that Campbell and the Hornets did their halftime adjustments in the weight room connected to the court.

The practice gym? It had no air conditioning and could feel like a sauna even on the coolest days in Northern California.

It’s a tough job, but those conditions helped Campbell and his staff become the coaches they are now.

“It’s humbling, but it really taught me young in my career that you can win anywhere,” Moore said. “With my experience (as a player) at the Power Five level at the time, you have everything, all the glitz and glamour. Glitz and glamour are really nice, but to win you have to have people you trust and love. That’s what matters most.”

Coming from such humble beginnings makes it easier to appreciate when you level up in life as Campbell did when he accepted the TCU job.

The Horned Frogs’ basketball facilities are solid for the school’s size and conference, but compared to Sac State, it’s like two different worlds.

“While we were here (Sacramento), you feel like it’s the best job ever,” Campbell said. “You’re excited to recruit and build something special, but then as you get time to reflect — the stuff that we have at TCU, they don’t have here. That shows how hard it is to win in college athletics. This is still Division I, same level as a Power Four school with drastically different resources and budgets.”

Campbell said they had to get it out of the mud in Sacramento, but that difficulty allowed the rebuild at TCU to go just as smoothly.

Working with few resources prepared Campbell for having more at his disposal and he’s used it to become one of the nation’s best portal recruiters and one of the game’s best coaches.

“I truly believe the two years here (Sacramento) rebuilding this program equipped me for the rebuilding project TCU was,” Campbell said. “I learned valuable lessons while I was here that has translated to the next rebuilding (job).”

Emotions will be high as the stakes increase for Campbell and the Horned Frogs.

TCU is two games away from reaching another historic milestone at the same arena Campbell and company were in just a few years for a different reason.

ill “We were out at Golden 1 Center (where the NCAA regional games will be played this weekend), we had to make a presentation about why Sacramento should get the opportunity to host,” Campbell said. “And now being here 80 minutes away from punching a ticket to the Final Four, I don’t know if you can write a better script right now for the way the last five years have unfolded.”