TCU Basketball: Horned Frogs hire Jamie Dixon
By Doug Winkey
Trent Johnson was the first head coach that TCU hired when they moved to the Big 12 in 2012-2013. In four seasons as the head man of the Horned Frogs, Johnson went 50-79 with a 8-64 mark in conference play.
Those numbers simply weren’t good enough for a team playing in one of America’s hardest basketball conferences from top to bottom.
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Jamie Dixon comes to Ft. Worth from Pittsburgh where the former TCU player went 328-123 in 13 seasons. Despite the success he had with his old team, the narrative had started to sour on a coach that only had one Elite Eight and two Sweet 16s to its name during his tenure.
Both sides were apparently ready to move on after Wisconsin completed a comeback victory over Pitt in the round of 32 over the weekend. That ended a season that was a struggle as the Panthers barely made the Big Dance.
Despite TCU’s Big 12 struggles, the cupboard is far from bare from a talent standpoint. The back court will be the strength of next year’s team with Chauncey Collins, Malique Trent, and former ESPN 100 point guard Alex Robinson from Texas A&M.
Vladimir Brodziansky comes back to provide an inside punch to a potentially dangerous guard group.
The Horned Frogs only graduated one senior, who didn’t make much of an impact most games. If nobody transfers out of loyalty to Johnson, Dixon has a fairly solid foundation from which to try and push out of the Big 12’s basement.
The biggest challenges Dixon faces are recruiting, player development and energizing a fan base that hasn’t seen an NCAA bid since 1998.
On the first two fronts, the new coach seems well qualified. Steven Adams, DeJuan Blair, Aaron Gray, Mark Blount, and Lamar Patterson are some of the names that Dixon has developed to play in the NBA. Most of the Pitt players who’ve made the professional ranks are big men, which bodes well for Brodziansky’s development.
What will be interesting is how he adapts to a team that seems more focused on talented guard play. We will also have to watch just where he gets his recruits from while competing in the same state as Texas, Texas A&M and Baylor.
Currently, the Horned Frogs have just 6’5″ shooting guard Josh Parrish signed for next season, but there are several players who are still considering committing to Ft. Worth for their college careers.
If Dixon can snag any combination of those players currently listed and get a transfer or two to come to TCU, then this team might be on the upswing. It doesn’t hurt that he enters the league the season after most of its star players graduate.
With the addition of Dixon, the Big 12 coaching roster becomes that much more incredible. He joins a stable of coaching talent that includes two national championship coaches and two others that have made the Final Four.
We will get to see how Dixon squares off against such vaunted names as Bill Self, Lon Kruger, and Bruce Weber to name a few. If he can conjure some success like he experienced at Pittsburgh, the conference becomes that much tougher each and every night until potential expansion brings in new teams and coaches.
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Keep your eyes on this coaching change through the college basketball offseason. It might take one or two years, but TCU is positioning itself to scare the Big 12 elites in the near future.