Thursday, October 18, 2001

Frogs not happy with play
By Brandon Ortiz
Sports Editor

The master plan called for the TCU football team to be at the top of its game right now.

It called for a big win over Division I-AA Northwestern State (La.) in front of the home crowd, a trip down to Houston to poach lame Cougars and a weekend in the Big Easy rolling over Tulane’s cream puff defense.

The Frogs (3-3, 1-1 Conference USA) only made good on one out of three.

“We probably played our worst football since I have been here,” junior free safety Kenneth Hilliard said. “I myself and some of the other players feel we have played our worst football against Tulane. That was our worst one.”

After embarrassing losses to Northwestern State and Tulane in two of the Frogs last three games, the team is not happy with the direction the season is taking. Having struggled through what was supposed to be one of the easier parts of the schedule, the Frogs enter a tough second half and will play only two more games against opponents with losing records. The Frogs will play East Carolina (3-3, 2-0 C-USA), Louisville (5-1, 1-0 C-USA) and Southern Miss (3-1, 1-1 C-USA) in their last five games.

At the beginning of the season, head coach Gary Patterson wanted his team to enter the second half with the wind behind its back. He said after a 48-22 loss to Tulane Saturday, that hasn’t happened.

“We wanted to be playing our best football,” Patterson said. “We definitely did not want to have a game like Saturday. We wanted to be building momentum going into some of the ball games we have in front of us.”

Offensive coordinator Mike Schultz said: “Obviously it is not our best football. I hope that is not it or we’re in trouble.”

Schultz said inexperience and penalties have held the Frogs back. In the Frogs’ three losses, they committed 33 penalties for 269 yards.

“I feel like we are still doing a lot of mistakes that a young football team does,” Schultz said. “We got to get through that. We got to those details cleaned up. I am not sure when you can say when you have a veteran football team. Obviously right now we are not at the point where we want to be. Our kids are still very committed.”

Turnovers have also plagued the Frogs. The Frogs rank in the bottom half of the nation in turnover margin and have 13 lost fumbles and interceptions in six games.

Schultz said turnovers kept the Frogs out of the game Saturday.

“Look at the Tulane game and you can say one word: five. Five turnovers," Schultz said. “You can’t win a football game with five turnovers. That is not going to happen.

Nobody can win a game with five turnovers. We got to get that corrected. That just can’t happen.

“I am not saying what would happen, but it would have been an interesting thing Saturday if we wouldn’t have had the five turnovers and the penalties we had.”

Sophomore tailback Ricky Madison said the first step to second half success is cutting down on those kind of mistakes.

“Other people can’t see the little things on film that destroy this team,” Madison said.

“Ability wise, we are where we want to be. It’s the mental part.”

Patterson said inexperience has been one cause of the team’s mistakes. The Frogs entered the season with nine returning starters on offense and defense. Injuries at receiver and in the secondary have forced the Frogs to play even younger players.

“One of the things I have talked to the team about is playing a complete game,” Patterson said. “This is what happens when you have inexperience. You fix the hole, then another one pops. You just got to get where we all put our thumbs in the hole.”

Patterson said before the Frogs played Tulane it was time for him to quit referring to his team as inexperienced. Madison said that the Frogs are no longer inexperienced now that they have six games under their belt.

“We have plenty of experience,” Madison said. “It’s a lack of focus. There isn’t really a solution.”

Last season, the Frogs’ offensive game plan was always the same: give the ball to star running back LaDainian Tomlinson. The result was a 10-1 regular season and a bowl bid. Tomlinson has since departed. Without a super star to pick up some of the slack, mistakes that went unnoticed last year are hurting TCU, Schultz said.

“The game plan last year was just as tough as it is this year, the difference is when things went wrong on the football field, No. 5 made things go right,” Schultz said.

“There were some situations where I went back and said ‘we’re not getting this linebacker cut off.’ I went back and looked at last year’s film and sometimes we didn’t get the linebacker cut off then either but No. 5 made that linebacker miss.

“When things sometimes went bad during the game, he got it straightened out real quick on his own.”

Halfway through the season, the Frogs aren’t at the level they want to be at. Junior quarterback Casey Printers said the Frogs will have to roll up their sleeves and work harder to get there.

“We have a long way to go,” Printers said.

Brandon Ortiz
b.p.ortiz@student.tcu.edu