Trampled: Texas 66, TCU 43

The road to respectability is a long one, and tonight's result just shows how much further there still is to go for the TCU basketball team.  The Frogs defense is getting quite respectable (although it still has the habit of fouling too much when we're in the 2-3 zone), but the offense is prone to fits of complete silence that the coaching staff seems mystified by.  In the second half, the Frogs actually cut a big Texas lead down to just seven, but the Horns called time out, adjusted and ended up putting together a few offensive tweaks that led to decent shots (and free throws) for their big men, while as the Longhorns pushed their lead back to 13, there was simply confusion when the Frogs had the ball, leading to turnovers, blocked shots, long twos and (even more frustratingly) long three attempts.  The first one went in, which seemed to give the Frogs the idea that "Maybe taking contested three pointers from an extra three feet back isn't such a bad idea", as they tried it twice more in the next few minutes.  During those few minutes there was no time out called by Trent Johnson to settle things down, adjust defensive schemes or run a set play (which TCU actually does quite well).  I'm still a big fan of TJ and am happy with giving him another season after this one with no questions asked, but the way that he stubbornly refuses to call time out to try and break momentum in runs absolutely mystifies me.  This isn't a Steve Nash era Mavericks team that's going to be able to answer a huge run with a forty point quarter- sometimes the game needs to be slowed down, particularly when the Frogs are facing a zone heavy team.  The big games left for this team are home contests with Texas Tech and Kansas State, I'd like to see TCU win both to have something to build on going forward.

I'm still confident Johnson can be the man to get us to the end of the road, but some nights the road looks a lot longer than others.

Go Frogs.