Monday marked the first day of the second semester at TCU, and when that’s the best news you’ve had in a month or so, it’s obvious you had a less-than-jovial Christmas break.
But such is the case for the TCU men’s basketball team, which is getting graduate-school instruction on how to plod through adversity, along with a proposed hashtag of “whatnext?” for the purposes of searching the wild wide world of the Twitterverse.
Consider:
- The news on Jaylen Fisher doesn’t look promising. Coach Jamie Dixon said the junior guard won’t play for the “foreseeable future” due to continued complications with a surgically repaired right knee. Fisher’s continued issues are part of a seemingly unceasing list of injuries TCU has had to deal with the past year.
- The Frogs (12-3 overall, 1-2 conference) opened the Big 12 season with losses in two of their first three games, including two consecutive on the road to No. 7 Kansas and No. 20 Oklahoma, TCU’s first taste of ranked opponents of the season. Defensive breakdowns in the second half against the Sooners doomed the Frogs, who fell out of the bottom rung slot of the Top 25.
- During the winter break, three players entered the now notorious “transfer portal,” with the intention of leaving the program. Possibly. More on that later.
No matter the difficulty, life goes on whether you’re ready or not, especially in the highly competitive Big 12. On the other hand, while not off to the best start, we’ve got a long way to go, and through the first couple of weeks there doesn’t appear to be any one great team.
The Big 12 is an open city for the taking.
West Virginia arrives for a 6 p.m. tip-off at TCU’s Schollmaier Arena on Tuesday.
The Mountaineers, off to a very-unlike Bob Huggins-era 8-8 start, don’t want to be hearing any whining about adversity. At 0-4 in the Big 12, West Virginia is in the midst of its worst start since 2001-02.
Junior forward Sagaba Konate, a menacing rim protector who had averaged a team-high 13.6 points and eight rebounds per game, won’t play again because of his own sore knee. Looking for a spark and to underline expectations, Huggins benched second-leading scorer Esa Ahmad and Wesley Harris against Oklahoma State on Saturday.
Two of the best things going for West Virginia are freshman Derek Culver and James Bolden, who prefers “Beetle” to his given name.
That’s the stuff we appreciate at PressBox DFW.
The Frogs aren’t whining, that’s for sure, but Fisher’s absence in the first three Big 12 games has hurt.
He is among the team’s best five players on the floor at any time, and his absence further undermines depth. Redshirt freshman R.J. Nembhard, who missed practice Sunday with a case of what Dixon called the flu, and freshman Kendric Davis have filled in the minutes. Nembhard followed up a season-high 14 points against Kansas with two on 1-of-8 shooting on Saturday in Norman.
The young guys will get a taste of West Virginia’s 94 feet of defensive pressure.
“I don’t see him playing for the foreseeable future,” Dixon said of Fisher on Monday. “It was swelling, they drained it again. It’s still swelling. It’s just where we’re at. He’s obviously devastated, frustrated. That’s the situation. It’s meniscus surgery that hasn’t gone as most go.
“You play with the situation you have. We’ll handle it as a program.”
At this point, doctors are prescribing time as the best medicine. If only “time” didn’t have such a concrete, black-and-white existence.
While he’ll never get the time back, Fisher might be able to get some extra time with a medical redshirt, which is a possibility considering he has only played in nine games.
It was something Dixon and staff had been considering as a possibility since the summer as Fisher continued his rehab. Fisher initially hurt the knee a year ago. A second surgery followed this summer to deal with complications.
So, a redshirt is possible.
There was some good news on the injury report on Monday. Lat Mayen has been declared completely healthy. He’ll be tossed right into the fire.
Another possibility apparently is the return someday of Angus McWilliam, a 6-10 redshirt freshman from New Zealand, who has also spent most of 2018 in the figurative infirmary.
During the break the names of McWilliam, along with freshman Kaden Archie and junior-college transfer Yuat Alok all showed up on the NCAA’s transfer portal.
The news that three were leaving the program was met with some consternation by some observers. While at Pittsburgh, Dixon ran into a transfer problem, losing six of his 11 recruits between 2009-11.
Truth is, programs – any program — simply won’t keep them all. Some don’t adjust well to school or a new city or campus. Some find they don’t fit with the program. There are a variety of reasons.
Archie, a highly rated recruit from Midlothian, apparently wanted to play more. He, too, had dealt with an injury in fall practice, causing him to fall behind. Alok, out for the season with a broken hand, was a top-rated player on the junior-college market.
McWilliam, whom Dixon had hopes of being in the rotation this season, will not play this year, but his status as a member of the program, while not sounding as if in stone, is intact, Dixon said.
“He is still with the team,” Dixon said. “He is around. He is working out and trying to get back. I don’t see him playing or practicing. He’s able to practice. Sometimes things get written and said. They’re not quite true.
“But the headline is always more important than the facts, as we know.”
I’ve heard something recently from a so-called social-media “influencer” in Washington, D.C., about these alleged faux news reports.
It’s a jungle out there for everybody, as TCU well knows.
The Frogs don’t appear to be a team playing with any dissension. They played hard against Kansas and Oklahoma, both winnable games.
What’s also definitely not fake news: To compete in the Big 12 you have to protect your home court. The Frogs get that chance against West Virginia.
“Considering it all, we’re battling it out pretty good,” Dixon said. “I feel good about the group we have there.”
