You should have been at Schollmaier Arena. The TCU Horned Frogs could have sat down, put their arm around you and said, “Been there, buddy.”
For them, it was one of those weeks. Monday night, in the loudest basketball night ever on campus, the Frogs stubbed their toe at the end of regulation and lost to Kansas. Friday, their second-leading scorer did worse — he sprained his ankle. Saturday, they played with seven scholarship players and lost to Oklahoma.
Blew an early 20-12 lead to do it, too.
What a week. In seven days, TCU went from the thrilling rush of a landmark victory at Iowa State that put them even in the Big 12 to dispiritingly shooting 38 and 35 percent in two home games and putting their NCAA hopes at risk.
Can this week just start over?
“We’ve had four guys with season-ending injuries. That’s unheard of,” coach Jamie Dixon said after the 71-62 loss to Oklahoma on Saturday that left the Frogs at 17-8, 5-7 and needing to win four of their last six just to finish .500 in the league and be reasonably assured of an NCAA Tournament bid.
“It is what it is,” Dixon said.
Here’s what it is.
Junior point guard Jaylen Fisher never got his knee right and decided to transfer.
Junior college transfer Yuat Alok broke his wrist and decided to transfer.
Redshirt freshman forward Angus McWilliam suffered a concussion that lingered and decided to transfer.
Freshman guard Kaden Archie simply decided to transfer.
That was January.
Saturday, redshirt freshman forward Lat Mayen sat and was declared out for the season with a meniscus problem in his knee, an issue he’d been trying to play through to give his short-handed mates even a few minutes a night.
Sophomore forward Kuoat Noi also sat Saturday, watching the game from the bench with his left foot in a boot, the result of a rolled ankle in practice.
“We’re down to six or seven in the rotation. It’s hard on our bodies,” said Miller, who played 38 minutes, his most in eight games. “We’re playing a lot of minutes. We just got to keep fighting. We ain’t got that long left.”
Speaking of time, Dixon said he doesn’t know how long Noi will be out. But anybody in a boot is not going to just suddenly start moving like normal in a couple of days. Three weeks remain in the regular season. That’s not long to get back up to speed for anybody.
“You can sit here and call it an excuse, but it’s not,” Dixon said. “You got to figure it out. That’s what our intention was going into today’s game. You got to figure it out. No one’s feeling sorry for us.”
The Frogs tried shooting their way out of their problems. They took 32 shots from deep against the OU zone. That was almost half the Frogs’ 65 attempts. Fine if they’re going in, not fine if they’re not. Only nine found the net. Without Noi, it was a logical result.
“When you don’t have a premier 3-point shooter like Noi, it makes a difference,” Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger said. “I think a lot of it was TCU was short-handed, as much as anything.”
Said Dixon: “The looks weren’t good enough. We took too many 3s. Looking at the percentages, you never want to be over 40 percent of your shots being 3s, so we took too many. And we didn’t get enough penetrations, interior touches. But again we’re playing guys at different spots throughout. That may have had something to do with it. But you’ve got to find a way. It’s disappointing. We ran a number of different looks. There may have been some things we could have done earlier that were more successful, but we didn’t really make the shots. We had some guys maybe shoot too many 3s, but then we had our best shooters go 1-for-6 and 1-for-5. That’s a problem too.”
Dixon put freshman guard Kendric Davis in the lineup for Noi and got 14 points and four assists from the Houston Sam Houston product. JD MIller also gave the Frogs 14 points, plus 11 rebounds for his third double-double. Kevin Samuel had nine rebounds.
But veterans Alex Robinson (3-for-11), Desmond Bane (3-for-12) and R.J. Nembhard (4-for-13) went 10-for-36. On 3-point tries, they were 5-for-22.
That’s it. Aside from two fouls in two minutes from freshman center Russell Barlow and 15 seconds from Owen Aschieris, that’s all TCU had to work with and all TCU got.
“Obviously, the questions will be about the guys that didn’t play,” Dixon said. “But I believed that we could find a way and win the game and get some guys playing in different spots and do some things, but we weren’t able to do it. Disappointed in how we executed both offensively and defensively. We got what we deserved. We’ve got to figure some things out.”
They have 48 hours. Monday night, they play at Oklahoma State.
Another week will begin.