Three Questions about TCU Hoops with Melissa Treibwasser

OSU heads to Fort Worth, Texas this Saturday looking for it’s third-straight weekend road win. The Cowboys will try and do so against a TCU team desperate for a win to keep their NCAA tournament hopes alive.

Despite facing each other already (in a 79-66 OSU loss), I reached out to Melissa Treibwasser of the SBNation site Frogs of War, to get some insight into this Horned Frogs team. She offered some great information on the team.

Unfortunately, no audio this week.

Phillip Slavin: I wasn’t as convinced by TCU’s great start to the year during their 12-0 start, nor do I think they’re as bad as they’ve looked through Big 12 play. So which is the real TCU?

Melissa Triebwasser: That’s a great question, and I think you’re kind of spot on. The Frogs got off to a hot start. They didn’t really play a true road game, but they do have some wins over some likely tournament teams. So there was reason for optimism heading into the Big 12. You kinda have to take the thought process of, ‘This is a team that was quite possibly the worst basketball program in the Power 5 three years ago.’ Jaime Dixon comes in and has less than a full recruiting cycle, is able to add a couple of dynamic point guards on the fly, and has really… has yet to have impact players come in that he recruited, which should be happening next season.

You can look at it as ‘maybe TCU wasn’t quite as good as we thought they were, they’re losing all these close games that maybe people though they should have one’, or you can say ‘Wow, Jaime Dixon is working a miracle here in the fact that TCU is playing close games regularly against top-10 programs.’ I think it’s kinda somewhere in the middle. I think with Jaylen Fisher out, TCU has been without Ahmed Hamdy at times, they’ve been without Shawn Olden. There are really only seven guys who are seeing significant minutes at this point, and one guy who’s kinda coming in when Alex Robinson is in foul trouble for 30 seconds at a time. They just don’t have the bench at this point in the season to compete against the West Virginias and the Kansas’s, compete against the Texas Techs. Something that I think will change next year. Now, if we’re saying the same things a year from now, then you can start to be a little bit concerned. But at this point in year two, trying to completely remake the program on the fly, I think the Frogs have taken a giant leap forward from where they were a year ago.

PS: TCU is dealing with a lot of injuries right now. Who will be “the guy” on the court on Saturday?

MT: It’s been an interesting thing to see different players have stepped up at different times. Vladimir Brodziansky has been unguardable in the post at times. Kenrich Williams is always capable of having a big game. And Desmond Bane is as elite a finisher at the rim as you’re going to find in college basketball. But the guys who really makes the engine run is Alex Robinson.

[USATSI]

Since Fisher went out ahead of the Iowa State home game about a month ago, Alex Robinson has played 38 minutes or more in all but two games. One of those was the Oklahoma State game in Stillwater where he fouled out after about 29 minutes of play. He has surpassed Jaime Dixon on the all-time TCU assist record and moved into seventh place on his own. He’s been scoring at a much higher rate than we’ve ever seen him do in Fort Worth. He’s one of the better defensive guards. He’s also the only real ball handler on TCU’s roster that’s capable of playing significant minutes. He really makes the engine run on both ends of the floor. He’s not necessarily the emotional leader of the team, but he is the quiet, confident one that everyone looks to when things get tough. So I think A-Rob makes or breaks the success of this team, for better or worse.

PS: What would you say is this roster’s biggest strength?

MT: The Frogs can really shoot it. They’re one of the most offensively efficient teams in the country. They shoot it well from deep, they finish well at the rim. They’re a great rebounding team, really just an elite level rebounding team even being short-handed. Pretty much everyone on the floor can shoot from anywhere on the court. Something you don’t see very often, guys like Brodziansky and Williams who are at your primary forward spots can both sit back behind the arc and consistently make jumpers, which is pretty impressive.

They’ve been getting beat up a little bit on the offensive glass recently. There have been teams that have been able to attack them inside, and part of that is just from foul trouble. They don’t really have two interchangeable players in Kouat Noi and JD Miller, everybody else has just kinda has to watch their back and can’t pick up those one or two cheap fouls you might get on an offensive rebound attempt. It has been rough at times. The sad thing is that TCU’s effort has really improved on that end of the floor in the last couple of games, they just don’t have the depth to keep it up for 40 minutes right now. Shawn Olden should be back for Saturday, and that should help quite a bit especially defensively. He does open things up now that he’s a little bit more of a willing shooter. I think this offensive efficiency and the ability of all of those guys to be double-digit scorers score night-in and night-out is really what sets this team apart.