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Frogs
lose rebounding battle but win game The Horned Frog basketball team showed DePaul Wednesday night why speed is better than a tenacious inside game. TCU (12-12, 2-8 Conference USA) used a combination of quick play from its backcourt and solid team defense to defeat DePaul 92-83 (8-13, 1-8 C-USA) in a seesaw matchup at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum.
The Frogs controlled the pace for the majority of the game with 16 fastbreak points and scored 20 points off of 16 DePaul turnovers. TCU was led
by the backcourt combination of Junior Blount and Corey Santee.
Blount tied a career-high with 34 points and went a perfect 10 of
10 from the free-throw line. Head coach Billy Tubbs said the contribution from the backcourt was the key of the game. “It turned out to be a guards game, which is a key for us,” Tubbs said. “It presented us problems at one of our (positions) later on, because we were guarding their big man with a smaller player. That is where they got in (the lane) and penetrated on us and got some easy points.” Tubbs said the game had many runs and TCU was the final benefactor of those spurts. At the beginning of the second half TCU marched on an 18-0 run that was marked by an emphatic alley-hoop dunk by senior Marlon Dumont from a pass from Blount at the 17:35 mark. DePaul answered that run with its own 11-0 run. The Frogs then responded with their own 8-0 run. “We played the first four or five minutes of the second half really well,” Tubbs said. “That is the advantage of getting a spurt, we were in control of the game. That is what we have been fighting all year, because we make those runs, but we are behind. Tonight we were able to stay ahead and make those runs.” Blount said he felt laziness on defense was the reason for the DePaul runs. “One team was letting down on defense quite a bit,” Blount said. “They let down first and then when they made their run we began to let down.” DePaul 6-foot-9-inch center Andre Brown kept the Blue Demons in the game with his inside play. Brown scored 16 points and recorded 27 rebounds, one shy of a single-game high for DePaul. Brown grabbed 11 of his 27 boards on the offensive end. Tubbs said Brown showed why TCU is not ready for the much powerful inside presence C-USA teams have. “Their big guy (Brown) again was a problem for us,” Tubbs said. “We continue to set Conference USA records in our games, unfortunately it is not us setting the record.” Tubbs, however, was pleased with the way his defense maintained the pace of the game. “We have to score off our defense and to get the run going that we did, we were scoring off our defense. We made some steals and getting down. Then when we quit scoring we couldn’t into our defense that we wanted and they got momentum in the game.” The win was only the second for the Frogs in their past 10 outings. Sophomore guard Nucleus Smith sat out the game with a broken finger that he suffered in last week’s loss to Alabama-Birmingham. Smith had surgery to repair the damages on Friday. Ram
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