TCU’s confidence, growing ‘slowly but surely,’ will be tested by OU and Kansas

Just in time for a week with games against No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 7 Kansas, TCU feels as good about itself as it has in a while.

“Our confidence is starting to grow slowly but surely,” coach Trent Johnson said Monday during the Big 12 coaches conference call with reporters. “We’re as healthy as we’ve been in a long time, and we’re just starting to play better. And we just need to continue that, and that’s on me.”

The Horned Frogs broke a five-game losing streak with Saturday’s 75-63 victory against Tennessee, scoring 48 points in the second half to rally from a 14-point halftime deficit. The nonconference win was part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge, in which the Big 12 went 7-3 and the Horned Frogs improved to 3-0 in the ESPN event.

Malique Trent scored 14 of his 15 points after halftime. Chris Washburn and Brandon Parrish each had 14 points. Washburn had a career-high five assists, part of 18 for the game for the Horned Frogs.

“It had a flow because we were making a lot of shots we had been missing,” Johnson said of the 18 assists, the most for TCU against a Power 5 team since the start of last season. “We’ve had some guys struggling shooting from the perimeter, shooting from the post. That was one of the first times in a long time where the ball went down for us, so that helps our assists.”

TCU (10-11, 1-7) heads to Norman for Tuesday night’s game against the Sooners (18-2, 6-2) having played only three times with its full roster available. Washburn missed the first 11 games with a broken finger. Trent missed three games because of a team rules violation. Reserve guard Dalton Dry missed part of December and January with an illness.

In three games since returning to action, Trent has averaged 10.3 points and 3.0 assists.

“Malique’s a really aggressive guard,” Washburn said. “He’s looking to get two feet in the paint; that does a lot with defense switching and helping. He opens up a lot of stuff because he’s always in the lane. Defenses have to respect that. When he’s on the court, we’re a much more aggressive team. It’s great to have him back out there.”

TCU shot under 40 percent in the four games before Tennessee. Against Tennessee, the Frogs were only slightly better at 41.8 percent for the game, but registered a 62.5 percentage in the second half.

With all 11 players available — and Johnson said last week Alex Robinson (transfer) and Kenrich Williams (year-long knee recovery) are able to practice — TCU may position itself to make up ground in the second half of the Big 12 schedule.

“We just want to continue to build off our last half versus Tennessee and continue to play good hard-nosed basketball and stay competitive and play within ourselves,” Johnson said. “We need to continue to work hard and play with a level of confidence like we did the second half versus Tennessee.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 1:10 PM with the headline "TCU’s confidence, growing ‘slowly but surely,’ will be tested by OU and Kansas."