From Texas to TCU, both college basketball teams suffer humiliating losses
Shaka Smart and Jamie Dixon caught a break last spring when COVID abruptly halted college basketball , and neither man has taken advantage of the opportunity.
One year later since it all closed, UT is collapsing its way towards the NCAA Tournament bubble in what has been a mess of a college basketball season while Dixon and TCU will be lucky to finish above .500.
Much like the entire sport itself, these two programs are in desperate need of some kind of reset.
Early Saturday afternoon in Austin, No. 12 Texas blew a 19-point lead and lost, 84-82, to No. 13 West Virginia in front of no fans. Texas has now lost five of its last eight games.
Not to be outdone, a few hours later in Fort Worth, TCU suffered its worst loss under Jamie Dixon, a 62-54 loss to lowly Kansas State, in front of a little more than 1,000 people who were more interested in escaping the house than the final score.
At least West Virginia is ranked, and a good team.
Kansas State, on the other hand, is not a good team. The Wildcats improved to 6-18 with the win, and are now 2-13 in the Big 12. Kansas State had not won in 2021; their program hadn’t chalked up a win in 53 days.
But worse than the what was the how. TCU led 51-46 with five minutes remaining in the game, and appeared to be pulling away in what was an ugly game.
Then Wildcats closed the game with a 16-3 run as the Horned Frogs did not make a single field goal the rest of the way, and made only one of their last 12 shots from the floor.
“[Eight-point swing] that’s a hard thing to do, but we did it,” Dixon said after the game, who provided reasons but had no answers.
Kansas State had lost 13 straight games. Its win on Saturday was its second road conference win in the last two years.
TCU is now 11-9 and 4-7 in the Big 12 with two games remaining on its posted schedule, as of right now. This could change at any minute.
The Big 12 is expected to announce by the end of the week another game or two added to select schedules for teams that had to postpone games because of COVID/weather.
TCU has had five games postponed: Baylor, West Virginia, Texas and both games against Texas Tech. Texas had four games against Oklahoma, Baylor, Iowa State and TCU postponed, plus two others canceled.
And then there is the Big 12 Tournament ... assuming it actually happens.
Both Texas and TCU have remaining games, which could help them feel better about themselves. Or it could make things dramatically worse.
TCU has lost seven of nine and, whatever the explanation, it is again an average team in the best conference in the land. That’s a toxic marriage.
It has some nice pieces in freshman guard Mike Miles and center Kevin Samuel, but Dixon still needs players, preferably scorers.
They are without point guard Francisco Farabello, who will miss the rest of the season to injury.
“Depth on the perimeter we have to fix,” Dixon said. “Francisco not playing has not helped; he’s our most efficient guy on the perimeter. We have to stay healthy. You can’t lose a perimeter guy unless you’re really loaded.”
Farabello’s absence doesn’t explain this because TCU is not really loaded.
The problem is the problem — TCU does not have enough Big 12-caliber players.
Texas has a few more, but Shaka is hanging on.
This time one year ago, Texas was heading towards missing the NCAA Tournament under Smart for the third time in four years. Dixon and TCU narrowly avoided a losing record with a 16-16 record.
All of the major conferences scrapped the remainder of their respective postseason tournaments, as did the NCAA with March Madness. Everybody in the sport threw out the entire season. No one cared about any of the results, and the indifference helped a lot of coaches all over the map.
It’s one year later, and after a nice start for Texas and TCU, the season is exposing both programs.
Texas may yet slide into the NCAA Tournament, which should save Shaka whereas TCU will not make any postseason.
Either way, both programs, and their coaches, are in desperate need of a reset. Especially after Saturday.
