TCU puts on its best display this season in routing K-State
If you have the first half of TCU’s game against Kansas State on the DVR, save it. Those 20 minutes are what Trent Johnson has in mind.
“When we’re playing well, that’s what it should look like,” the third-year TCU coach said after the Horned Frogs’ 69-55 victory Wednesday night at Wilkerson-Greines Activity Center, only their fifth victory all time in the Big 12. “When we’re sharing the ball, guys are shooting with confidence, yeah, that’s what it should look like.”
The Horned Frogs made 14 of 22 shots in the first half. They were 3 for 6 on 3-pointers. They had 18 rebounds to K-State’s 13. They produced 11 assists. They had five blocks and three steals.
And they closed the half with a 19-0 run over the final 7:17, punctuating it with a two-handed dunk from Karviar Shepherd off a textbook feed from Chauncey Collins, a sequence that began with a steal from Chris Washburn.
It all meant a 35-15 halftime lead. And considering a 22-7 run to finish the previous game, a victory against Oklahoma State, the Horned Frogs had outscored their opponents 57-22 over a 28:06 stretch.
Even Johnson was impressed.
“For the first half, I thought we were pretty good,” he said. “I thought that’s probably as good a first half of basketball as we played all year.”
Washburn, a sophomore, scored a career-high 17 points with 9-for-13 foul shooting (also career highs), and Kyan Anderson had nine points to become No. 6 all time at TCU in points with 1,519, passing Kurt Thomas’ 1,512.
“We were just trying to stack them up,” Washburn said. “The first time we had a win, against Texas Tech, we came back and laid an egg against Texas. So we were just trying to come back with the same mentality as the previous game. We all knew we can’t just go out there and do the same thing we did the previous time. So we came out aggressive and ready to play.”
It is the first winning streak in the Big 12 for TCU (16-10, 3-10), which joined the league three years ago as Johnson took over. They are only 5-46 all-time in the league.
“We’re growing up. We’re maturing,” Johnson said. “I think the question was asked, ‘Are you learning how to win?’ Well, you have to go through it. And I said this during that slide when we were playing good teams and getting beat — we weren’t playing very well, but we weren’t playing with confidence. And there was a stretch there in the game when we weren’t playing very well, but we sustained our confidence, and that enabled us to get out of there.”
Indeed, Kansas State (13-14, 6-8) cut the 20-point halftime lead to six, at 41-35 with 11:52 left. But Marcus Foster, who scored 23 points in K-State’s victory against the Horned Frogs in January, missed a 3-pointer from the baseline, and Brandon Parrish scored on the other end to stabilize the game again for TCU.
That was the start of a 10-0 run for the Frogs, and they kept the game in double digits from there.
“We knew they were going to make a run at us in the second half, and they did,” Johnson said. “I thought we kept our poise. And right now, we’ve got some guys that are shooting the ball well.
“When you get your post guys shooting the ball and being aggressive and shooting with confidence, it helps.”
Shepherd finished with 12 points and eight rebounds, and Kenrich Williams added 11 points while holding Foster to five points on 1-for-6 shooting. Amric Fields had 10 points and two blocks.
Johnson called Washburn’s game, which included eight rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal, “his best of the year.”
Washburn shrugged.
“Hopefully we can just win. That’s all I’m worried about,” he said. “I’m not worried about the individual stats. I’m just out there to win.”
It looked like it.
This story was originally published February 18, 2015 at 10:56 PM with the headline "TCU puts on its best display this season in routing K-State."