Steven Johnson: TCU basketball sits at a crossroad after demoralizing NCAA Tournament loss to Utah State

It’s one thing to fall just short against an Arizona or a Gonzaga. It’s another conversation when you look like you don’t belong on the same court as Utah State.

The Horned Frogs’ historic season where they accomplished the feat of reaching the NCAA Tournament for a third straight season ended with a whimper on Friday as TCU was out-coached and got pushed around by an Aggies program that hadn’t won a NCAA Tournament game in 20-plus years.

By the end of the game Utah State guard Darius Brown was isolating defenders and taking stepback jumpers. Brown was toying with TCU and there was nothing the Horned Frogs could do to stop it.

The frustration permeating through the fanbase about whether TCU has hit its ceiling will only intensify for head coach Jamie Dixon. To be clear, Dixon isn’t going anywhere and shouldn’t be. Blowout loss aside, there’s no denying what he’s done for the program, but that’s an objective take.

You can understand why being objective would be difficult for any fan after watching their team get picked apart like TCU did in the second half against Utah State.

While we can acknowledge Dixon’s overall success, there’s also no denying that Dixon was wrong about this supposed defensive turn around that he believed he saw at the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City.

There was no transformation. This was still the same team that got picked apart by a mediocre UCF team on the Horned Frogs’ home turf. It’s the same one that got cooked in the second halves by BYU and Texas Tech, two other teams that also got sent home early from the tournament.

TCU was a talented team, but one that had glaring flaws as well. TCU’s guard play deteriorated over the final month of the season and was outplayed by the Aggies’ backcourt duo of Ian Martinez and Brown. Jameer Nelson and Avery Anderson combined to go 4-of-14 from the field while Trevian Tennyson was held to four points or less for the fourth straight game.

The Horned Frogs had one of the best point guard situations in the country last with Damion Baugh and Mike Miles Jr., but this season Dixon acknowledged multiple times that TCU didn’t have a true point guard as Nelson and Anderson were learning how to be playmakers and not just scorers.

In transition, the group showed flashes of being special, but when teams forced TCU to consistently play in the half court like Utah State did with its various defense, sometimes it would be hard to watch the Horned Frogs try to execute like when Baylor held them to 54 points in a loss at Schollmaier Arena.

Ultimately the guards could never made the transition to being floor generals, but the inconsistent guard play wasn’t the only flaw with this team. Center Ernest Udeh has plenty of upside and his future could still be bright, but the Horned Frogs would’ve been better served if they could’ve brought in a more polished big man that had more experience.

The entire front court had limitations. JaKobe Coles was the unit’s best scorer, but had to constantly be pushed on defense. Xavier Cork and Essam Mostafa couldn’t provide much on offense and Udeh was the rawest of the bunch in terms of skill development.

Udeh missed five or six games during the final stretch of the season. TCU has struggled with quality big men all season with or without Udeh in the lineup. Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson had 30 points and 11 rebounds, Baylor’s Yves Missi averaged 20.5 points against TCU and I could go on, but at least the big men in the Big 12 were all-conference level players or had NBA potential like Missi.

On Friday, TCU’s front court was picked apart by a player who only averaged 6.3 points per game. Isaac Johnson had his best game of the season, maybe his career, against TCU. That happened far too many times this season for the Horned Frogs. Defense and toughness has always been a staple of Dixon-coached teams going back to when he was at Pittsburgh, but this team lacked that outside of Emanuel Miller and Micah Peavy.

You are what your record says you are and TCU’s 21-13 finish lets us know the Horned Frogs were an above-average team that had a really good month in January, but overall was wildly inconsistent. This year’s TCU team could look like world beaters in one half and then fall a part in the next.

It’s not as if Dixon didn’t try multiple things over the season from different starting lineups to how he coached. Dixon joked before the NCAA Tournament that he started to cuss more in a plea to get his team to defend. No matter what he tried, the Horned Frogs were never able to look like the team that beat Houston and two more ranked teams in January.

It’s a harsh assessment fitting of such a brutal performance to end the year. Here’s one more damning data point to consider.

Since 2019 Mountain West Conference teams not named San Diego State were 1-13 in the NCAA Tournament and now the conference can use this moment as another milestone for the league. Including the beatdown to Utah State, TCU also lost to fellow MWC member Nevada 88-75 in December.

A team that managed to beat Houston got blown out twice by a mid-major league. If that doesn’t tell you how inconsistent TCU was this year, nothing will.

Step away from the ledge

Now that we’ve had a thorough assessment of how bad Friday night was, it’s important for the fanbase to take a collective deep breath about the state of the program.

Two things can be true. Friday was a horrendous defeat on a national stage, but it shouldn’t overshadow the work Dixon has been able to do the last eight seasons.

The reason you feel this passionate about that game is because Dixon came back to his alma mater and showed that even TCU could compete with Kansas or Arizona or Gonzaga. Dixon understands and acknowledged the Horned Frogs came up well short of taking the next step of becoming a top-25 college basketball program.

“We set all kinds of records, I know it’s not the best time to be thinking about it,” Dixon said. “This wasn’t good enough, eight years ago it would’ve been a miracle if we got in. It hadn’t been done since I played, but right now we feel like we could’ve done more. Our goals were bigger and that comes with what we’ve done the last eight years I’ve been here.”

It’s important to remember that this isn’t the end of TCU’s run, though stars like Miller will need to be replaced, if anything this is the moment TCU shifts to a different phase of the Dixon era.

Dixon, the administration and fans are all in alignment that just making the tournament isn’t enough anymore. But for the fanbase if you expect more, you have to continue to do more.

Yes, the majority of the workload will be carried by Dixon and his staff, but in the name, image and likeness era fans have a bigger impact on the viability of their program than ever before. That means continuing to consistently pack out Schollmaier Arena, including when the competition isn’t a Texas school or Kansas.

That means continuing to help TCU be competitive with NIL, so you can acquire players in the transfer portal like Baylor and Kansas have been able to do.

Friday was a step back no doubt, but it wasn’t as bad as TCU going 9-22 in 2013-14 or going 6-25 in 2005-06 or going ..... Do I really need to continue? The health of TCU’s program has never been better, Dixon is bringing in the program’s best recruiting class of all-time and fan interest and passion has never been higher.

The Horned Frogs deserved to be ripped for the loss to Utah State, but once the emotions calm down it’s important to remember that TCU is still a program on the rise and for them to take that next step it’ll take everybody in Fort Worth from Dixon to the student section.