Steven Johnson: What TCU must do to stop struggling and have a strong postseason
At the end of January, I would’ve told you with the right draw, there was a good possibility of the TCU men’s basketball team advancing to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.
College basketball is that wide open this year and the Horned Frogs started 2024 with a bang. They outplayed Kansas in Allen Fieldhouse and were a controversial whistle away from a second straight win in the iconic venue.
They hammered a ranked Oklahoma squad and dissected Houston’s top-ranked defense in the second half of one of the most thrilling games this season. The Horned Frogs won on the road at Baylor and handled Texas Tech on Jan. 30.
Fast forward to this week, just a couple days before the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City, and now what I see is a team in crisis. What I see is a team that could easily find itself on the wrong side of the NCAA tournament bubble if they falter against No. 9 seed Oklahoma at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Based on the latest rounds of bracketology, the Horned Frogs would probably still be in the field with a loss . But the wait until Selection Sunday would become agonizing as TCU would need to cross its fingers that outright chaos wouldn’t ensue across conference tournaments.
There would be no guarantees of that. There’s a reason this month is called March Madness. The brunt of the blame for why TCU is in this position lies within the team itself.
The Horned Frogs closed the regular season 2-4 in its final six games. On the surface, losses to Baylor, BYU and Texas Tech are nothing to be ashamed of. But it’s the way TCU lost in each of those games that is so perplexing.
TCU had double-digit leads in the second half against both the Red Raiders and Cougars, yet didn’t pull out a victory in either game. One victory in Lubbock or Provo and TCU would be getting ready for a relatively stress-free week in Kansas City where they could’ve merely focus on competing for a conference tournament title.
Sandwiched between those two road debacles was a game against Baylor where TCU held the Bears to their second-lowest point total in a game this season (62) yet somehow the Horned Frogs trailed by double digits most of the second half.
As frustrating as those defeats were, all three of those teams could easily make a run to the Sweet 16. The loss in the season finale to UCF was a truly troublesome sign.
We can acknowledge that the Knights aren’t a bad team. they’ve beaten Kansas, Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma. But not only were the Horned Frogs at home, they had to know that this was also a game that could’ve sealed their at-large NCAA tournament hopes. The committee would’ve had an extremely hard time leaving out a team that went 10-8 in the Big 12 and lost a rematch to a team it already beat.
TCU should’ve treated Saturday like it was a postseason game, but instead the Horned Frogs allowed one of the worst offensive teams in the country to have a breakout shooting game. The numbers aren’t pretty, but let’s run through them again quickly.
The 79 points were the most the Knights scored in a league game this season. UCF entered Saturday as the 258th scoring offense nationally, yet still almost scored 80 points. UCF’s field goal percentage of 41 percent was 310th in the country, yet the Knights almost shot 50 percent against TCU.
UCF is one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country, yet the Knights shot 42 percent against the Horned Frogs. Most of the damage came from one player, Daruis Johnson. He scored 33 points against the Horned Frogs, just days after they gave up 36 points to Jesse Edwards, potentially the most a Jamie Dixon team has ever given up to a big man.
I lay all that to get back to what I believe is the root of TCU’s struggles down the stretch and it starts with the team’s lackluster defense. The Horned Frogs currently sit No. 12 in the Big 12 in points allowed per game with 75.4 points per game. Only Oklahoma State and West Virginia are worse.
You could try to say the fact that TCU is the top-scoring offense in the league is enough to offset that. But the problem is so much of the Horned Frogs’ offense is predicated off getting stops. TCU still has the best fast-break offense in the country, but to get in transition you must get stops, deflections and force turnovers.
In the latter two categories, TCU does well, along with defending the 3-point line most nights, but there are still too many defensive lapses for a team that has quality defenders like Micah Peavy and Emanuel Miller.
Dixon believed that the absence of starting center Ernest Udeh played a part in the defensive slide. Udeh returned and provided good minutes against UCF, but it clearly wasn’t enough to fix the team’s defensive issues.
Dixon stresses defense and rebounding in every postgame press conference. Since we know this is something that is important to the program, why is the defense still trying to find itself this late in the season?
“At this point now we know what to do, we’re just not doing it,” Dixon said. “The questions are not questions that we don’t know, things we haven’t discussed. Everything we saw tonight, we’ve seen before and know what to do. We’re not getting it done, I’m extremely disappointed.”
Dixon also mentioned a lack of synergy with the team on defense. Yeah TCU has good individual defenders, but the defensive schemes call for tight chemistry. You’re constantly switching ball screens, sometimes even flare screens away from the ball. In transition you’re trying to find the nearest man and hoping that your teammate will find your assignment.
It’s what makes teams like Houston and Iowa State so fearsome on defense, it feels like there are more than five players on the court at one time. That’s where TCU needs to get to if it wants to compete in Kansas City this weekend. The Horned Frogs have shown they’re capable of it and perhaps that’s what has made the season so frustrating.
The talent on the roster is evident and while there have been some injuries to Udeh and JaKobe Coles, it’s not the same as last year when TCU had to play without its two best players, Mike Miles and Damion Baugh, for long stretches of the season.
It’s not a question of talent or health, but merely execution. Had the Horned Frogs been able to execute down the stretch at BYU, at Texas Tech or even at Cincinnati then they’d be feeling a lot better about where things stand headed into the postseason.
Instead TCU has to take a different mentality into Kansas City.
“You know we’ve got the opportunity, that’s the only way you can look at it,” Miller said. “Everything that led up to this point, regardless of what happened, throw it in the past. We played Oklahoma, I know they’re going to be hungry to play us again. Wednesday’s going to be a fight.
“It ain’t going to be cute or sweet, it’s going be a dogfight and the winner of that fight is going to be the one that advances to the next round. That’s what I’m going to tell my team.”
At the beginning of March, ESPN analyst had TCU with a 90 percent chance to make the field. Now the Horned Frogs could be another loss away from being the last four in or first four out.
It shouldn’t have come to this, but the Horned Frogs are here now with pressure mounting. So which team will show up in Kansas City? The one that out-executed Houston or the one that couldn’t get a stop against UCF?
Your guess is as good as mine.
