TCU’s Jamie Dixon hasn’t slowed down to catch his breath yet

In the first week he was on the job, new TCU basketball coach Jamie Dixon had 100 — maybe more — requests for his time.

Interviews. Friends. Job seekers.

He didn’t even have an office — the final touches on the basketball staff spaces are being put on at Schollmaier Arena. He hadn’t hired any assistants. He’d barely gotten to know the players.

But everybody wanted to shake his hand.

“There’s no way to prepare for it,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Except dive right in.

Dixon appeared on radio shows locally and nationally. He threw out the first pitch at a TCU baseball game and later at a Texas Rangers game. He did a Star-Telegram interview. He showed up at the Gary Patterson statue dedication. He attended an annual reunion of former TCU players. Next week, it’s a photo shoot.

In the meantime, he hired three assistants. He signed a top-rated point guard. He hosted more recruits. Last week, another player picked TCU.

And he got to see his family in from Pittsburgh a couple of times.

So when’s the season start?

“You have to accept it and embrace it,” Dixon said with a smile, reminded that coaches are supposed to love the grind. “I’d rather be working than not working, and working hard rather than working with no passion or intensity. So yeah, I do love to work and attempt to outwork people.”

That is a handy skill right now.

The first time Dixon became a head coach, in 2003, he inherited the Pittsburgh program after three years as an assistant under Ben Howland. He ramped up to his first job, and he wound up with the most successful first eight years for a Division I college basketball coach ever.

But getting started at TCU, where he was hired March 21, less than two weeks after the final game at Pittsburgh, means getting started from scratch.

“There’s so much, and you can’t answer it all,” he said. “And we’re not going to have it all figured out in a month and a week, and if you think that you do, you’re probably settling. And that’s something that I realized, that in taking the right guys, in hiring the right people, time and patience is a good thing. Something that may not have been available when I first got here may have been available later, a better player or a better coach.”

TCU has not made any players available to reporters to react to Dixon’s hiring. But Dixon has not minded promoting the team, even as work remains to be done all around him.

His outreach has been noticed and appreciated.

“I think he’s done that on his own, because he just loves what basketball can do and how important it is for our community,” TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said. “He’s a Horned Frog. This is what he does. This is his school, this is what all of our coaches do. All of our coaches are out there.”

The work of preparing for his first TCU season has been invigorating. But Dixon, 50, married and a father of two, cautions he did not need re-energizing. That’s not why he came to Fort Worth.

“I do see all the things I can do here, but I believed that for 17 years in my last place, in Pittsburgh, too,” he said. “To use the word re-energize or whatever, it means to me that you weren’t energized. It’s great, and it’s fun, and it’s different. But at the same time, you still have to put the best 13 players and the best staff together.”

That project remains ahead of Dixon for the summer months. More recruiting, more camps, more work.

“I’ve been excited about every year I’ve ever coached,” he said.

Maybe he can chip away at more of those 100 requests.

Maybe.

Right now, it’s just part of the job.

“There is no catch-your-breath,” he said.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 2:53 PM with the headline "TCU’s Jamie Dixon hasn’t slowed down to catch his breath yet."