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Just
a numbers game for the Frogs It’s that time of year again for people to get their calculators out of the desk drawer to file their taxes. The men’s basketball team are also doing some number crunching as well. But not to satisfy the Internal Revenue Service. Instead the Frogs are trying to calculate how many games they need to win and how many games they can afford to lose in order to obtain a chance to play in the tournament.
Not the NCAA Tournament, rather the Conference USA tourney which is March 6-9 in Cincinnati. TCU (11-11, 1-7 C-USA) needs to do one thing in its final eight games of the season to make sure they can make that trip to Cincinnati: Win games. Currently TCU is finding itself at the bottom of the barrel in C-USA standings. The Frogs are in last place in the National Division, which is one of two divisions (American Division) in C-USA. TCU is tied for the final spot with DePaul and East Carolina in the entire C-USA standings. In C-USA there are a total of 14 teams, of which only 12 will advance to the conference championships. DePaul East Carolina, Southern Miss and the Frogs are the likely candidates to be left at home. TCU still has four road games on the schedule and four at home, including games against each one of the before mentioned schools. If TCU can win at least two or more of those games they will get a chance to get in. The Frogs have a game against DePaul (8-11, 1-7 C-USA) at home (Feb. 6), face Southern Miss (7-11, 2-6 C-USA) on the road (Feb. 23) and East Carolina (7-13, 1-7 C-USA) back at home (March 2). If a tie-breaker occurs, the Frogs will have the edge over Southern Miss because it won the first meeting Saturday, 75-61, at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum. After winning the Southern Miss game, head coach Billy Tubbs said he wanted to win the remainder of the home games. That request was short-lived when three days later the Frogs lost to Alabama-Birmingham, 77-71. Just simply winning the games against the Blue Demons, Eagles and Pirates will not be enough, TCU must enter each game with the mindset that it can win. The Frogs can start with that mindset Saturday when they hit the road to face Memphis. Memphis is fresh off its 80-70 win over Louisville on Wednesday. The Tigers have arguably the best freshman, and maybe the best player, in the nation in Dajuan Wagner. Wagner leads the Tigers in scoring and is knocking hard on the door of the NBA Draft in June. TCU, which is the No. 3-ranked scoring team in the nation with 87.9 points a contest, will have to take a step back from all that scoring. The Frogs must begin to concentrate on the fundamentals of basketball: Rebounding and defense. Playing solid defense and establishing position under the blocks so the Frogs can rebound the ball is the key to any team, and TCU is no different. But if it was that easy to fix Tubbs would have found a way for his team to do that a long time ago. Instead Tubbs and the team will be getting the calculators out to figure out the chances of making the conference tournament. And if that doesn’t work out, the math will be good practice for them when filing their taxes to the IRS. Ram
Luthra |
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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