TCU takeaways: Five things from a kick-yourself loss to Arkansas

The first words from coach Gary Patterson late Saturday night were, “Good football game.”

And Arkansas’ 41-38 victory in two overtimes against TCU was a good football game, once it got going.

Kenny Hill and the TCU offense sprung to life in the second half, Arkansas forced overtime with a one-minute drill, blocked a field goal that could have won it and made the last play in overtime.

But the Frogs will have a hard time reliving the ride. “Too many mistakes,” Patterson said, and he was right. The Frogs put themselves in position to win and then opened the door to a loss.

Here are five things we took away from the game:

1. It is hard to stay in the moment. When Kenny Hill scored the touchdown that put TCU ahead 28-20, he couldn’t resist an extra touch of celebration that’s a real no-no. Any kind of motion across the throat is just not allowed. Hill can make a case that he was gesturing from his shoulder down across his chest, but the official is trained to watch after a score. No one gets the benefit of the doubt.

2. Hill has a lot of rebound in him. An impulse throw to Kyle Hicks floated and got returned for a touchdown, and he’ll regret the celebration penalty, too. But the third and fourth quarters showed Hill’s resilience and what he can do when he is throwing in rythmn and running with confidence. The offense woke up when he hit his stride, and he has been true to his word that he leaves bad plays behind. His first half was hampered by penalties and awful down-and-distance. It wasn’t necessarily a slow start. His first drive reached the red zone, but a block in the back and Deante Gray’s fumble at the 7 ended it. What if that drive ends in points?

3. Gary Patterson is going to become more situationally aggressive. What does that mean? The next time he has a chance to put a game away, he’s not going to be talked out of it. The TCU coach said the celebration penalty after the Hill score made him want to go for a two-point conversion. The Frogs would have been up nine points if they had made it, negating the effect of field position from the penalty and all but putting the game away. If the two-point try had failed, the Frogs still had a touchdown lead to protect with overtime as a fallback. Patterson played it safe and didn’t want to.

4. KaVontae Turpin just continues to affect games, and without that many touches. The sophomore receiver’s kickoff return put TCU in position to win the game at the end of regulation, setting up the field goal attempt that was blocked. He had 57- and 43-yard plays to set up fourth-quarter touchdowns. He had a career-high 295 all-purpose yards on seven catches, two punt returns and four kickoff returns. That was 13 touches Saturday night. In 15 games at TCU, he’s averaged 8.5 touches.

5. Comebacks mean everything has to go right. The Frogs had a W balancing in the palm of their hand, but it started wiggling like Jell-O and they couldn’t close their fingers around it. The Frogs had a lot of things go right in rallying from 20-7, starting with a short Arkansas field goal off the upright. They needed just one more thing to go right to win it — their own short field goal, 28 yards. Instead, it was blocked, and their advantage was gone. Minutes later, so was the W. “I told them I was proud of them,” Patterson said. “You had a chance to win it twice.” That’ll be hard to forget.

This story was originally published September 11, 2016 at 10:09 AM with the headline "TCU takeaways: Five things from a kick-yourself loss to Arkansas."