Jamie Dixon says TCU basketball has to ‘raise our bar’ going into NCAA Tournament
Jamie Dixon was part of TCU basketball’s last March Madness victory in 1987 … as a player. Now he’s positioned the Horned Frogs once again for a March Madness victory, reaching the NCAA Tournament for the second time in four seasons.
TCU earned the 9-seed in the South Region where it’ll face 8-seed Seton Hall in the Round of 64 on Friday night at San Diego’s Viejas Arena. Tip-off is set for 8:57 p.m. on truTV.
“We’ve got to raise our standards. We’ve got to raise our bar,” Dixon said. “That’s the phrase I was using today [Sunday].”
Dixon reached 11 NCAA Tournaments during his 13 seasons at Pittsburgh, advancing as far as the Elite Eight in 2009. That 2009 team was one of three teams that advanced to the second weekend under Dixon.
Dixon has said all season that he loves this year’s TCU team and feels it has the talent level to make a run. Easier said than done, of course, but the Frogs seem to be peaking at the right time. They defeated three ranked teams down the stretch.
“Every team thinks that way,” Dixon said. “We’re gradually cutting down the turnovers. We’ve got our number down to a good spot and we still want to get that better. Defensively, we’ve shown stretches and we’ve just got to be better. We’ve got to be better. I want to continue to rebound like we have but our offense has improved dramatically.”
Dixon closed his thought by saying, “There’s a lot of areas we can improve on. We haven’t perfected anything if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Among other topics Dixon touched on as TCU prepares for the program’s ninth NCAA Tournament appearance:
On simply reaching March Madness: “We’ve been talking about that since the day we got here. We’re picked eighth [in the Big 12 preseason poll]. We’re not picked to be in the NCAA Tournament. That’s what it is at the start of the year. And if you looked at all the things that were put out and because no one here has been in the NCAA Tournament, we’re young, we’ve got 11 new players, but we proved a lot of people wrong.
“It’s just trying to get the message, what you have to do and what it takes. It’s just work from June on, you know, we’ve gone through a lot. Again, we’re the youngest team in the conference and we responded. I think they’ve done a remarkable job. It was their goal and now we’ve reached that goal. Now we’ve gotta win some games.”
On TCU being in a 35-year drought between NCAA Tournament wins: “I’ll take the four years I played and the years I’ve been [coaching] here. I’ve been battling those 30 years in between since the day I got here. We’re doing fine here now. I can’t do anything in the past. We’ve got an opportunity and we have to go out and play and play well. I’m looking forward to these three, four more days that we can practice.”
On the season: “This is a new team, a new era, a new group and that’s where college basketball is. For me, every year it’s getting better. It’s a good group. They’re working hard and we’ve obviously been, the last couple of years, it’s been a strange situation. We lost games this year [due to the pandemic]. We rescheduled games. We didn’t play all of our games this year. Things don’t go as planned and you adjust. We battled through some challenges more than probably most and put ourselves in a good position to go play. There’s 300 schools who wish they were playing in this tournament.”
On the Big 12 preparing the team for March: “Hopefully, but it could also crush the team too. But we made it through and won some big games. I’m excited about where we’re at. I thought we could’ve played better the other day [in the semifinals of the Big 12 tournament] but Kansas is playing well. … Obviously it’s the best conference so we’re not going to see anything we haven’t seen before.”
On playing in San Diego: “It’ll be interesting. It really will. We played in Orange County for that reason [in the SoCal Challenge in November]. We’ve played out in the Staples Center [now Crypto.com Arena] and we seem to have had more fans than any team we’ve played against, which I think sometimes people are surprised by it.
“I know we have a large contingent in San Diego. Will the Orange County people travel down to San Diego? I think so. Friday probably helps. It’s exciting for us.
“One of my things, kind of like at Pitt, we made this decision that we’re going to go play in New York. That was going to be our thing. And playing in California has kind of been our thing at TCU.”
