Coming off back-to-back Big 12 titles at Texas Tech in women’s tennis, Todd Chapman decided to give that up and take a job at a school that was in the midst of a 15-year NCAA Tournament drought.

My first thought was he must have lost a bet on a golf course. You win, you can have the keys to my car. You lose, you have to leave the school you took to its first two NCAA tournaments for Kansas University.

Quite the contrary, Chapman said.

“I had a vision a year or two before this job came open,” Chapman said. “You might think I’m crazy, but I thought, ‘Gosh, this place could be good.’ I told my boss at Texas Tech if it ever came open I was going to go hard after the job. I really believed this place could be special. It’s fun to see some of those things come true and it also made me realize I wasn’t crazy.”

Chapman coached Kansas to the NCAA Tournament, where it lost over the weekend to UC Santa Barbara, 4-3.

And that surprising season figures to be a precursor to even better days. Three of KU’s top four players were freshmen, the other a sophomore.

“The exciting part is this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Chapman, named Big 12 coach of the year. “We definitely have the ability to be top 10, especially with the new facilities (12 courts at Rock Chalk Park, a few months from completion), and winning breeds winning.”

The future is bright. Chapman’s awareness that the past was as well was part of what drew him to Lawrence, where his wife and their five daughters reside.

Chapman was well aware that Chuck Merzbacher rattled off four consecutive Big Eight titles in the ’90s. Chapman also said that Michael Center, former Kansas star player and men’s and women’s tennis coach and now the Texas men’s coach, confirmed his suspicions that Kansas had great potential.

Chapman said he normally likes to see a player “25, 30 times” before signing her, so that he can see how she handles bad days, how she interacts with parents, officials and teammates. But he couldn’t attract top local talent until he started winning, a Catch-22 that sent him all the way to Russia for a solution.

Chapman used a recruiting agency in Moscow to find out about prospects, gained a commitment from Nina Khmelnitckaia, the No. 4 player this season as a freshman. She told Chapman about fellow Moscow native Anastasiya Rychagova, who ended up playing No. 1 as a freshman. Janet Koch, a freshman from Durbanville, South Africa, also had a strong season, as did sophomore Smith Hinton of Raleigh, N.C.