‘We were bad in every way.’ TCU searching for answers after being routed by Oklahoma
TCU coach Jamie Dixon had a simple assessment of his team.
There’s not much to sugarcoat on the heels of being routed in consecutive games, the latest an 83-63 whipping by Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon.
“We were bad in every way,” Dixon said. “We got what we deserved. We earned it. No question about it. We’ve got to get some things fixed and adjusted. We’re going to go work on it.
“We’ve got to get better. No question about it.”
This was not the kind of effort or performance Dixon expected from his team after West Virginia handed TCU the worst loss of the Dixon era on Tuesday. But it quickly turned into another dud.
TCU still has yet to win a game in Norman in program history, falling to 0-13. OU has won the last five meetings between the teams.
The Horned Frogs couldn’t contain Oklahoma’s Brady Manek, who had a career day with 31 points, including seven 3-pointers.
“It’s amazing that we gave him that many open looks,” Dixon said. “But he knocked them down. Give him credit for doing that.”
The Horned Frogs, the second-best 3-point shooting team in the Big 12 going into the weekend, missed their first 10 attempts from long range. They finished the West Virginia game with 10 straight misses from deep too.
They went 1 of 16 from 3-point range in the opening half and finished 8 of 26 for a season-low 22.2 percent.
“Shot too many of them, but it’s kind of something we do,” Dixon said of the 3-pointers, the second-most attempts by TCU behind the day it set a program-record 18 against Louisiana (18 of 38) on Nov. 12.
“When we shoot a percentage that we did, especially in the first half, it really puts you in a hole.”
TCU didn’t have a made 3-point basket until senior guard Desmond Bane came through at the 4 minute, 24 second mark of the first half to cut the deficit to 27-22.
The Frogs missed their next five 3-point attempts to close the half, and the Sooners capitalized in building a 38-26 lead.
Things didn’t get better in the second half.
OU went on an early 8-0 run to take a 49-30 lead with 16:51 left, spurred by a couple 3-pointers by Jamal Bieniemy and Manek. The Sooners led by as many as 24 points in the second half.
For as poorly as TCU’s offense played, Dixon pointed to the defense as the area that must improve the most.
OU, which had lost its two previous games and scored a season-low 52 points against Kansas on Tuesday, finished by shooting 53.7 percent from the field (29 of 54) and 45.8 percent from 3-point range (11 of 24).
West Virginia shot 57.7 percent from the field against TCU on Tuesday.
“We’ve got to get defense going first,” Dixon said. “You’re taking the ball out of bounds every time. You’re not going to get transition points. We didn’t get much transition today. We’ve got to start there first and then we’ll get to the offense.”
The offense is just as troublesome, though, with TCU failing to shoot better than 40 percent from the field in four consecutive games. This is a team that shot at least 40 percent from the field in 10 of its first 13 games.
Bane, TCU’s leading scorer, has gone just 4 of 15 from 3-point range in the last two games. Kevin Samuel, TCU’s leading rebounder, has just eight combined rebounds the last two games. And the list goes on.
“We’re a team that relies so much on offense that we’ll sit here and analyze the offense,” Dixon said. “They got 83 points and shot 54 percent. The reality is we’ve got to guard better and not let missed threes affect our defense.”
At the end of the day, the Horned Frogs are seemingly back to the drawing board just a week after the program enjoyed a 3-0 start to Big 12 play, its best league start in 21 years.
All was well following a 52-40 victory over Oklahoma State on Jan. 11. Things have gone south in a hurry.
TCU had plenty of turnover in the offseason and didn’t handle the adversity from the first blowout loss well. Dixon is hoping for a different response when TCU returns home to face Texas Tech on Tuesday.
Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. at Schollmaier Arena.
“We didn’t handle adversity well today,” Dixon said. “You talk about what we need to do and we didn’t. I don’t know if we got as much done in practice getting ready for this one. We’ve got to focus on the task at hand and we can’t be distracted.
“We’ve got work to do.”
This story was originally published January 18, 2020 at 2:51 PM.
