One of the many schools that reached out to Madison Conner after she hit the transfer portal was TCU and first-year coach Mark Campbell.

She quickly had her mind made up.

“Honestly, I had a copy and paste message to Mark saying, ‘Hey, thanks for reaching out, but I think I’m going to go in a different way,‘” Conner recalled.

But, a few conversations just in time changed that.

Her high school coach out of Compass Prep High School was the first, encouraging Conner to give TCU a chance.

“Listen to him. Give him a call and hear what he has to say. You don’t have to go there, whatever,” Conner said the text read.

It quickly paved the way for one of the best shooting stretches in TCU history.

Conner’s two years with the Horned Frogs have seen her 3-point shooting reach new heights for the program and conference.

She broke the TCU records for 3-pointers in a season (127), most points scored in a regular-season game (41), and the NCAA record for most 3-pointers in the first 10 games of a season (52).

She also became one of seven Big 12 players to hit 100 3-pointers in a season and ranks second in league history for 3-pointers per game (3.7).

Conner has averaged 14.6 points per game, shooting 127-for-279 (45.5%) from beyond the arc, with her 3-point percentage ranking eighth in the nation and her 3.47 3-pointers per game ranking second.

The shooting records were no surprise to Campbell, who knew what Conner was capable of before even bringing her on campus.

“He FaceTimed me the first time we talked, and it was an extremely good conversation,” she said. “He was extremely humble. He said to be honest, I have nothing to offer you but an opportunity.

“He knew a whole bunch about my game. He studied my game, things I didn’t know about myself, because I was put in such a box at my previous school, he was telling me things that he could see in me.”

Campbell came to TCU after two seasons as the head coach at Sacramento State, spending 2010-2021 as an assistant at Oregon; he helped the Ducks become one of the top programs in the country across multiple roles.

One of the players he coached at Oregon was Taylor Chavez, who was the 2020 Pac-12 Sixth Player of the Year and later transferred to Arizona.

She encouraged Conner to take a leap of faith and play for Campbell.

Now, TCU will face in-state foe Texas on Monday in Birmingham, with a win sending the Horned Frogs to the program’s first Final Four.

Conner has 19-for-37 (51.3%) from beyond the arc since the Big 12 tournament, averaging 13.5 points per game.

“I talked to him and I called one of my former teammates at Arizona because she played for him when he was an assistant coach at Oregon and she was like, ‘Bro, you have to go there,‘” Conner said. “So I went on my visits, him and his staff, they were humble people. They were trying to sell a 1-17 program.

“It wasn’t really a sell, it was no money, no nothing. It was an opportunity and, I can see you as a person and as a player and we’re going to develop you here. We’re going to create something great.”