TCU reeling going into top-ranked Baylor, but the Horned Frogs have reason to believe
Desmond Bane called these the dogs days of the college basketball season.
For TCU, the days seemingly get longer when you’ve lost four of your last five games and are struggling to find consistency.
One night, TCU looks like an NCAA Tournament team by knocking off No. 18 Texas Tech. Another night, they’re getting blown out on the road by West Virginia or Oklahoma, or struggling to do the little things on their home floor in a one-point loss to Texas.
It’s been a frustrating two weeks for the Horned Frogs.
“We just tend to have ups and downs within our team — emotionally, physically,” Bane said. “We’ve got to find a way to sustain it. Coach mentioned that it’s the dog days.”
It’s in that time of year when, said Bane, where you see things like players getting injured, players getting kicked off teams or teams starting to split apart. “We’re kind of in that time of the year,” he said. “It’s tough.
“We’re 20 games in. We’re traveling all the time, so a lot of guys haven’t been through this,” he said
“We’ve got to do our best to stay locked in.”
But the beauty of college basketball is that the season outlook can change on a nightly basis. The Horned Frogs (13-7, 4-3 Big 12) have a chance to re-establish themselves and make a big-time statement against No. 1 Baylor (18-1, 7-0) on Saturday afternoon in Waco.
TCU has played itself into a corner, and they know it.
“We’re going to have to steal one on the road now,” Bane said following Wednesday’s 62-61 loss to Texas. “We’ve got another tough one on the road this weekend.”
Facing the top-ranked team is always a battle, and the Horned Frogs are 1-6 all-time in such contests. The lone victory came when TCU edged out Kansas, 85-82, in the 2017 Big 12 Tournament.
TCU is just 2-85 all-time against ranked teams in true road games. (This stat does not include neutral-site games such as the 2017 win over Kansas.) TCU’s biggest true road win over a ranked team came last season when it defeated then-No. 17 Iowa State, 92-83, in Ames. The only other such win was a 83-76 victory at then-No. 24 Hawaii in 1998.
But TCU has not played a No. 1 team on their opponent’s floor since 2016, when it lost at Oklahoma, 95-72. The Horned Frogs face a tall task. Baylor has been playing well, defeating conference opponents by an average of 10 points per game.
Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, TCU is 1-7 in games at Waco. Of those seven losses, four have been by 20 points or more, including last season when Baylor rolled to a 90-64 victory.
At the time, that was the worst loss of the Jamie Dixon-era until the 81-49 drubbing at West Virginia earlier this month. But Dixon brushed off any concern for the team’s morale during this sldie. “Morale or no morale, we’ve got to execute better,” he said. “We’ve got to do what we’re trying to do.”
What TCU tries to do every game, as Dixon alluded to, is what they didn’t do against Texas. The Horned Frogs want to limit opposing teams to five three-pointers or less, win the rebounding battle and execute in late-game situations offensively and defensively.
“This is something we can accomplish,” Dixon said. “Given that we haven’t done it in the last couple of games one might wonder if we can do it. And I told them that we could. I believe that.”
