For Jamie Dixon, bitten by transfers off his rapidly thinning TCU team now limping toward the finish in the Big 12 basketball schedule and simultaneously jeopardizing its spot in the NCAA tournament, it’s time to fight fire with fire.
The Horned Frogs coach is determined to enter the Division I transfer market.
“It’s the best way of staying old,” he said. “That’s the way the game has gone. It’s going to happen more and more. I don’t look at it as a bad thing.”
The veteran coach needn’t look far to see its benefits. Last week, a savvy Texas Tech squad got 23 points and 18 rebounds from two graduate transfers in rocking the Frogs 81-66 at Schollmaier Arena. The Red Raiders’ Matt Mooney is third in the conference in steals, and Tariq Owens leads in blocked shots.
At Kansas, junior forward Dedric Lawson transferred from Memphis and is the league’s leading scorer and rebounder.
Baylor guard Makai Mason, a graduate transfer from Yale, dumped 40 points on the Frogs in a February game.
Oklahoma grad transfers Aaron Calixte (Maine) and Miles Reynolds (Pacific) are fourth and fifth on the team in scoring, and Calixte is second in assists.
Statewide, Houston junior DeJon Jarreau transferred in from UMass and is the third-leading scorer for the 12th-ranked Cougars, and Texas A&M sophomore Josh Nebo, formerly of St. Francis (Pa.), is second in the SEC in blocked shots.
“Every rule they’ve made has made it easier for kids to transfer,” Dixon said. “So there’s going to be more transfers. And transfers aren’t always a bad thing. They can be a good thing for all involved.”
Meanwhile, TCU has played with only one Division I transfer brought in by Dixon, Ahmed Hamdy from VCU last season. Alex Robinson came in three years ago from Texas A&M when Trent Johnson was the Frogs’ coach, and players such as Kenrich Williams, Vladimir Brodziansky and Shawn Olden were junior college transfers.
This year, Dixon watched four players walk away — Jaylen Fisher, Yuat Alok, Angus McWilliam and Kaden Archie — for injury or personal reasons, or both. Fisher (knees), Alok (broken wrist) and McWilliam (back, concussion) were ruled out or unlikely to play the rest of the season. Archie, a freshman from Midlothian, left after appearing in 10 games and averaging 2.1 points and 10.1 minutes.
The loss of manpower and additional injuries to Lat Mayen and Russell Barlow left the Frogs with effectively seven players down the stretch, hardly enough to practice.
“Whenever there’s injuries involved, everything’s out the window,” Dixon said. “And we had significant, significant injuries. These are beyond major injuries. These are two-year injuries that put a program on hold and put a kid in disarray, to be honest with you.”
Fisher had two knee surgeries in two years and continued to be bothered by swelling in his recovery. McWilliam enrolled early out of high school in New Zealand a year ago, but back issues kept him from practicing that spring and summer. Early in the season, he suffered a concussion that lingered.
Both indicated they would transfer. Dixon said both are still on campus completing the spring semester academically.
Mayen, who had a foot injury in December 2017, now has a knee injury that is keeping him out the rest of the season.
“I’ve never heard of guys being out this long, and we’ve had three of them with year-long, year-and-and-a-half, two-year injuries,” Dixon said. “That completely changes their careers. It changes our rosters dramatically.”
TCU has played without those four players since the start of the league schedule on Jan. 2. After starting 3-3 in the league, the Frogs are 3-8 in conference games going into the regular season finale on Saturday at Texas and projected as one of the “last four in” by ESPN.
This week against Kansas State, TCU scored a season-low 52 points. With a fuller, healthier roster, the Frogs averaged 80.2 points in 12 non-conference games.
The dramatic change in personnel left the Frogs without bodies and experience. That’s part of the reason, in addition to seeking to “stay old,” the Frogs will be more aggressive in identifying and pursuing transfers.
“Transfers are often guys that are coming home, and given our location, that can be an important thing,” Dixon said. As he suggested on his radio show two weeks ago, “Maybe guys want to come home.”
