TCU gaining confidence from high-wire act, but can it continue?

The TCU Horned Frogs can’t keep up this high-wire act all season, can they?

Aaron Green smiled.

“No, sir.”

They might kill their coach, someone said.

“We’re about to kill ourselves,” the TCU running back replied. “The blood pressure’s rising.”

Of course it is. Games like 56-37, 55-52 and 52-45 will do that. They were all wins, but they all were in doubt in the fourth quarter. One was in doubt until the final minute, another until the final second — actually, past the final second.

“It’s definitely tough,” Green said. “It’s not easy. Definitely, being a senior, you want to win every game. When you have even the slightest doubt that maybe it might not turn out that way, it’s kind of heartbreaking. But we have that heart, man. We just keep fighting. Things keep happening for us.”

Whatever it is that keeps happening for the Horned Frogs, they are glad for it. They’ll welcome it every time it happens; they just hope they don’t need to have it happen on many more occasions, including Saturday night in Ames, Iowa, where they take their 6-0 record for a 6 p.m. game against Iowa State.

“It just shows we have a lot of heart, a lot of fight in us,” safety Derrick Kindred said. “We’re never going to give up. Everybody’s going to try to take us down, give us all they can. It just shows as a team, we’re mature enough to take on any fight.”

Bill Parcells said confidence is born of demonstrated ability. No wonder the Frogs are confident in their ability to come back. They have demonstrated it.

They trailed Kansas State by 18 points at halftime last week before an interception return for a touchdown by Kindred and four touchdown drives by quarterback Trevone Boykin rallied them for a 52-45 victory. Boykin led another go-ahead drive for the winning score with 23 seconds left against Texas Tech in a 55-52 win.

In Week 3, the game against SMU became a one-possession contest in the fourth quarter before Boykin and the offense put it away.

Last season, Jaden Oberkrom’s field goal as time expired produced a one-point win at West Virginia. Also last season, the Frogs rallied from a 13-point deficit in the second half to win at Kansas.

“I think wins like that ultimately bring you closer as a team, as a program, as a family,” Green said. “I think we all know what we want to do. Our goals are right in front of us. We just have to go get it.”

So how is TCU coach Gary Patterson’s heart doing? Fine, he said. His ticker has been through it before.

“In 2005, we had to beat Utah in overtime, we beat BYU in overtime, we played Oklahoma 17-10 in Norman — we had five or six ballgames ... I think some years, when you’re not your best on all sides of the ball, you’ve got to find ways to win,” he said. “That’s what good programs do. They just find ways to win. Some days it’s not pretty. Some days it is.”

The ingredients appear to be in place for another roller-coaster game — night game, on the road, big crowd.

“It’s definitely going to be a challenge,” Green said. “Iowa State is definitely not an easy place to play. We saw what they’ve done to people there in the past. I played there in 2013. There was not an empty seat two hours before the game. It’s always a fun place to play, an environment like that. I mean, people want to come see us play, people want to knock us off. When you’re on top, you want to get everybody’s best shot. We live for it. We live for moments like that. So I can’t wait. I’m excited just talking about it.”

Yes, comeback victories can be a thrill for the team and fans that they talk about for years. But the high-wire act is not Patterson’s ideal.

“You’ve got to give our kids credit. They made stops when they needed to,” he said of the Kansas State game. “Do we need to start faster? Would we rather play like they did against Texas every week? Yeah. But if it was that easy, then everybody would be undefeated.”

Patterson remembered 2013, when the Horned Frogs also played close games. But they lost five by a combined 11 points.

“We were one of the best defenses in the Big 12. But we didn’t go to a bowl game,” he said. “You ask me which way I’d rather have it, I’d rather have it exactly the way it is right now — if I had no other choices but that choice and this choice.”

With Patterson’s team these days, sometimes there’s no choice.

This story was originally published October 16, 2015 at 12:50 PM with the headline "TCU gaining confidence from high-wire act, but can it continue?."