Halfway through Big 12 season, TCU basketball gaining no traction

TCU hit the halfway point of the Big 12 basketball schedule Tuesday night in Norman, Okla.

If it was a checkpoint in Trent Johnson’s fourth year as head coach, it was a sobering one. Oklahoma’s 95-72 victory provided a stark reminder of how far Johnson and the Horned Frogs are from the conference’s elite. (And in Oklahoma’s case, the country’s elite).

“They’re good players. They’re a better team. Let’s be honest about it,” Johnson said.

Johnson has consistently been that.

Last month, he told a business luncheon that it has taken longer than he thought to get the Horned Frogs untracked, but that he remains confident “this thing will get going.”

Injuries have set back Johnson’s attempts every year. This year, he is playing without his top returning rebounder, Kenrich Williams, who is out for the year recovering from knee surgery performed at the end of last season. And junior forward Chris Washburn missed the first 11 games of the season with a hand injury.

The Frogs have had a full roster for only four games. Still, they are 1-3 in those games. Even at full strength, the Frogs were 13 points worse than Iowa State, 17 worse than Texas, needed a big comeback to defeat Tennessee after trailing by 14, and lost by 23 at OU.

The second half of the league schedule begins with No. 7 Kansas visiting Fort Worth on Saturday.

Last week, Johnson said his team needed “long and hard practices” now that it was healthy. Maybe that will have an effect on the second half of the season.

“We just need to compete more,” sophomore forward Vladimir Brodziansky said Tuesday night after scoring 17 points in the Oklahoma loss. “Maybe play all 40 minutes, not just halves, second halves.”

The league has been unforgiving to TCU’s slow starts, or its league-worst scoring (62.8 points per game) and shooting percentage (38.2) in conference games.

“It’s real tough,” Brodziansky said. “Every night you have to go 100 percent or you will lose. You have to put everything you have out there and try to compete as much as possible and try to win every night, step by step.”

The Big 12 itself is unforgiving. It’s a hard place to try to raise a basketball program. Five teams are in the top 17. The league is No. 1 in RPI. It’s home to the leading contender for national player of the year, Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, and its .820 nonconference win percentage this year is the highest by any league in 12 years.

So even if a team got better, it might not show.

“At times, it does get to your confidence,” junior guard Brandon Parrish said last week following the Tennessee win. “You know, you sometimes think you’re not good enough, and then you know you play in the best conference in the country. But at the end of the day, we’re here for a reason. Each and every one of us was recruited to play at TCU and in the Big 12 for a reason, because we had a talent and we all had the potential. So it really is all about us just putting it together.”

TCU seemed on the verge of a breakthrough after going 18-15 last season and adding a recruiting class that included a top-rated junior college guard, Malique Trent, and a 22-point-a-game scorer from Seagoville, JD Miller.

Trent has emerged as the leading scorer (11.5 points a game), but his absence for three games interrupted his momentum. Miller has found it harder to get established, shooting only 36.3 percent. Still, he’s played in all 22 games and flashes athleticism around the basket.

Brodziansky, in his first year in Division I, is the second-leading scorer at 11.0and a team-best .545 shooting percentage. But he does not have the size to compete consistently against Big 12 frontcourts. He averages 5.0 rebounds, veteran Karviar Shepherd averages 6.0, and TCU is ninth in rebounds.

In the backcourt, sophomore point guard Chauncey Collins (40.7 3-point percentage) and junior Brandon Parrish (44.9 3-point) are having good all-around seasons, but TCU is last in the league in assist-to-turnover ratio. Collins, Trent and Michael Williams have combined for 130 turnovers against 160 assists.

The tenacity and savvy of Kyan Anderson and Trey Zeigler from a year ago have not been replaced, not that it was likely. The Frogs began the season with only four players who had started in Division I, and it became three with Williams’ injury.

“We are a young team,” Brodziansky said.

Johnson can point to certain positives as the second half begins.

But reality is important to him. He stresses avoiding “false confidence.” He can see how far he and the Horned Frogs have to go.

“I have good kids. But they’ve got to understand — you want to be good, you’ve got to pay a price,” he said in Norman. “Oklahoma’s obviously paid a price individually and collectively, because they’re really good and they’re really skilled. We weren’t very good tonight.”

At least the second half brings more chances to fix that.

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Halfway through Big 12 season, TCU basketball gaining no traction."