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Football:
If this offense doesn’t adjust at K State... well...
So Patterson and the coaching staff will continue looking for ways to get Duggan into a rhythm earlier. A solution could be going to a more up-tempo offense early on.
Duggan has played his best with an up-tempo approach. That’s the style he had so much success running at Lewis Central High in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
TCU went to the hurry-up in the second half of the SMU game, and Duggan threw three TDs. He had similar success when TCU went that route in the second half against Iowa State.
Granted, those teams were protecting significant leads at the time, but the up-tempo approach has worked well. At Iowa State on Saturday, TCU scored three points in the first half compared to 21 points in the second half.
Asked the difference, senior left guard Cordel Iwuagwu said: “We upped the tempo big time. Credit to them because they started blitzing more in the second half and we picked them up on a couple blitzes leaving the backs and receivers 1-on-1.”
TCU’s receiving corps suffers setback with loss of Dylan Thomas | The Star-Telegram
This absolutely sucks for a really great kid and important piece for TCU.
Thomas, a junior out of Fort Worth Paschal, had been emerging as a possible go-to target for the Frogs early on. He had 121 yards receiving with one touchdown on eight catches this season.
In the SMU game, Thomas finished with 70 yards receiving on four catches. Against Kansas two weeks ago, he had three catches for 44 yards, including a 26-yard TD on the opening drive.
Well that about sums it up.
“We didn’t play very well,” he said. “Vernon did not play very well Saturday. Really probably all three of them didn’t play very well Saturday. We have to play a lot better -- in this defense you have to play a lot better if you want to be really good.”
The poor performances can’t be chalked up to youth, either. Scott is a senior, as is starter Innis Gaines. Sophomore Trevon Moehrig also earned plenty of reps last season. So there’s no excuse, Patterson said, for the “bad” play.
”They’re all good,” Patterson said. “Two of them are seniors. We had four seniors on the field, and to be honest with you we just did not play. Did not play very well. Really starting on Thursday, we kind of went in and we acted more like we did before the SMU game instead of before the Kansas game.
”Defensively, especially, we’ve either been really bad or really good. They have the potential to be really good all the time, but when they’re bad, they’ve been really bad.”
Basketball:
Know your non-conference opponent: TCU | Banners on the Parkway
This should be a really fun game.
Outlook:
In Desmond Bane and PJ Fuller, Jamie Dixon has the studs to build a team around. Samuels is a great complimentary piece, and the grad transfers bring experience. The question is whether Dixon can overcome the turnover he’s experienced to cobble together a contender. When the Horned Frogs come to Xavier it will be a matchup of a team trying to come together against one loaded with veteran talent and trying to return to the top.
Soccer:
Battle-tested Cyclone defense outlasted by TCU attack | Iowa State Daily
Huge road win for a TCU team looking for postseason glory.
TCU set the tone in the first half. During the first half, the Horned Frogs fired 14 of their 27 shots and took seven of their 11 corners.
The Horned Frogs missed out on multiple scoring opportunities and kept Iowa State’s freshman goalkeeper Georgia Wimmer on her toes.
Wimmer recorded four saves during the first half, including a sequence where she made a diving save and made a second just seconds after the diving save — stopping two TCU shot opportunities from point blank range in front of the goal.
While Wimmer and the defense managed to hold TCU scoreless through the first half, they were unable to maintain a similar performance during the second half, in large part due to TCU’s Gracie Brian.