The Horned Frogs had lost their last two on the road — been blown out, truthfully — and were 0-5 in the Big 12 away from home.
One of their best players was sick.
Ames, Iowa, is a friendly place, but Hilton Coliseum is not at all kind to opponents.
And there was that other thing — that thing that isn’t talked about much anymore, but hangs heavy over the season. TCU was entering its fifth week without the four players who have left the program since the semester break. Three were lost for the season to injury. All are done in Fort Worth entirely, or pretty close.
Jaylen Fisher, Yuat Alok and Angus McWilliam decided after being ruled out for the season that they would recover and play somewhere else. Kaden Archie apparently walked to the transfer portal in full health, however.
Fisher, with his balky knee, and McWilliam, with a concussion, might have had a chance to help this year. Alok had a broken wrist; he was going to need weeks. Archie? If he was unhappy about minutes, he’d sure be getting them by now. Instead, the Frogs were left to fend for themselves.
And fend they did, gamely jumping out to a 3-3 start in the Big 12 with what amounts to a seven-man rotation. Then came the single worst week for TCU under coach Jamie Dixon. They Frogs lost by 19 at Texas Tech on Jan. 28 and by 26 at Baylor on Feb. 2, the two biggest margins of defeat in Fort Worth for the third-year coach.
The Frogs looked out of gas. They were asked after the Baylor drubbing, could the loss of those four players finally be catching up to them?
Defiantly, the answer came.
From Dixon: “I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s it. We’ve won plenty without them.”
From guard Desmond Bane: “I like our group that we have. This is the group that we had when we began our summer workouts, and it’s the group we have now. I like the guys we have.”
The guys they have are now just 11 players, only two seniors among them, with six freshman, and only four at all who had seen a minute of Big 12 action before this year. TCU is one of just five teams in Division I (Chattanooga, Kentucky, South Dakota and UNC-Asheville) with a majority of freshman on the roster, according to the school’s sports information office.
Entering the season ranked 16th in the nation in returning points, TCU now emphasizes defense and rebounding. In Saturday’s 92-83 win against the 17th-ranked Cyclones, it was the first time in nine games the Frogs shot better than 50 percent.
It’s not a coincidence they scored 92 points, their most on the road since a 94-92 overtime win at Iowa in the second round of the NIT two years ago.
It sure seemed like old times. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, with mighty Kansas and the ESPN Big Monday cameras coming to Fort Worth.
A week ago, in Waco after the game, Dixon had said to reporters who were perhaps growing skeptical of the Frogs’ big-picture goals, “We’re moving forward. You guys are being the past.”
Funny, though. In moving forward, the Frogs keep writing history.
Wednesday’s buzzer-beating victory against Oklahoma State made it eight straight conference wins at home, the most since nine straight from the last WAC home game of 1996-97 to the first WAC home game of 1998-99.
Saturday’s win at Iowa State ended a 49-game losing streak against ranked teams on the road. It had been since Jan. 19, 1998, at No. 24 Hawaii that TCU had gone winless in those games.
The win at Iowa State not only broke serve on the road, it also kept TCU pointed toward a third straight 20-win season, which has been done only once before in school history, and possibly toward a second straight NCAA tournament bid, also done only once before — 66 years ago.
After winning just six games in their first three years in the Big 12, the Frogs have won 20 in Dixon’s not-quite-three years.
“We know we need to go on a run to improve our seeding in the Big 12 and the NCAA tournament,” senior point guard Alex Robinson told reporters in Ames. “This is just another milestone for our program.”
More surely mark the road ahead in this TCU season. The remaining passengers ought to enjoy them as they whizz past.
