TCU moves to 9-1 after win in first meeting with Georgetown in Big East/Big 12 Battle

TCU’s men’s basketball program had the Horned Frogs’ early season three-game stretch circled on its calendar for a while, and fortunately they came away with an 80-73 win in their first meeting with Georgetown.

Frogs coach Jamie Dixon called Saturday’s non-conference victory over the Hoyas “a great win” for a number of reasons including playing at Georgetown, evening the Big East/Big 12 Battle at 5-5, and most importantly collecting three consecutive wins over Pac-12, SEC and Big East foes.

The Frogs (9-1) have won sixth straight, and TCU has home games remaining against Grambling on Tuesday and Texas Southern on Dec. 29 before opening Big 12 play at No. 7 Kansas on New Year’s Day.

TCU sophomore point guard Mike Miles, who scored a team-high 20 points, echoed his coach’s thoughts on Saturday’s victory.

“Coming here to D.C. and playing in their gym with their fans, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” said Miles, who scored 14 second-half points including a long-range three-pointer that put the Frogs up 69-64 with 5:37 to play. “We also knew we needed this win. We want to get ranked and we want to be taken seriously. This gives us great momentum. We are playing good right now.”

TCU trailed Georgetown 61-59 with 8:06 to play following a three-pointer by the Hoyas’ Kaiden Rice. It was the third of four three-pointers by Rice who finished with 14 points.

From that point the Frogs outscored the Hoyas (6-5), 21-12, to close out the game. Part of that run was fueled by the play of junior forward Xavier Cork, who scored all six of his points during the run and contributed a pair of blocks.

“He was huge for us,” said Dixon of Cork. “We had a discussion and we thought he was the right guy to have in there [late in the game]. Eddie [Lampkin] was a little tired. I thought he’d be better guarding threes.”

Dixon said Cork had been working on his moves in the paint and Cork had a big putback off a missed shot that put the Frogs up 75-66 with 3:02 to play.

Micah Peavy then made three of four free throws in the final 32 seconds to help TCU put the game away.

“We got rebounds and a couple of layups in transition that were huge,” Dixon said of the Frogs play late. “We limited their threes downs the stretch. I thought we did a good job late of not fouling and not giving up threes in the last minutes.”

With Miles on the bench in foul trouble in the first half, senior forward Chuck O’Bannon took control scoring all 15 of his points. O’Bannon, who was making his first start of the season, connected on three three-pointers and added a dunk for good measure as the Frogs led 39-36 at halftime.

“Chuck has been playing well,” Dixon said. “Simply put he’s just gotten better and better. He’s a better defender, he’s a better rebounder now, he’s making better decisions and his shot selection is better.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2021 at 5:01 PM.