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TCU
ready for ‘up and down’ game Head coach Billy Tubbs celebrated his 67th birthday Tuesday with his wife in a hotel room in Cincinnati. But Tubbs had more on his mind than the annual ritual. He was preparing for possibly his last game as TCU coach at the Conference USA Tournament.
TCU (16-14, 6-10 C-USA), the conference’s best scoring team, will take on Louisville (17-11, 8-8 C-USA), the conference’s best three-pointer shooting team, today at 1 p.m. in the first round of the tournament. The winner will play second-seeded and No. 9-ranked Marquette Thursday in the quarterfinal round. TCU, who enters the tournament as the No. 10 seed, has won five of its last seven games, while Louisville, the seventh seed, has won four of the past seven contests. “Louisville is really playing well right now, but so are we,” Tubbs said. “I think we will come into the game probably the best we have played all year.” Tubbs said the match-up between the teams will be similar. Louisville, coached by Rick Pitino, applies full-court pressure from the opening tip-off until the final whistle against its opponents. “It should be pretty much an up-and-down-the-court game because they will press us,” Tubbs said. “That will be fine with us.” The key for TCU in the tournament is to stick with the basics of rebounding and playing defense, Tubbs said. “It gets down to this time of the year, where you have to make shots and where you have to make stops on defense and grab rebounds on the offensive and defensive ends,” Tubbs said. Tubbs warned people that with conference tournaments anything can happen in the month of “March Madness.” “All you have to do is look around and you are seeing strange things happening,” Tubbs said. “If you watch TV, you are seeing some people getting beat that not supposed to get beat. That’s the nature of the beast. We can still do some damage in the tournament we are going into.” TCU needs to enter the game strong, Tubbs said. Louisville has not lost a game this season (14-0) when leading at halftime. He said TCU has fought back in games where it had slow starts. “This team never gives up,” Tubbs said. “We have only had two games that we couldn’t mount a comeback. We have a bunch of guys that don’t quit.” The Cardinals defeated the Horned Frogs 93-85 Jan. 12 at Freedom Hall. After the win, Louisville dropped its next three games. The Cardinals are fresh off a 90-88 overtime win over Charlotte Saturday in the regular season finale. TCU is coming off a win over East Carolina. With only 13 seconds remaining in the contest, freshman guard Corey Santee made the game-winning shot against ECU on Saturday. He said that shot will create some momentum for him entering the C-USA tournament. “That was a big confidence builder with that shot to get me back on track,” Santee said. “It has been an up and down season for me and the team, so I just want to try to stay focused because I am the point guard out there trying to get everybody on the team involved.” Junior forward Bingo Merriex said the best gift for Tubbs would be to win the tournament and receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. “All we want to do is try to keep his (Tubbs’) coaching career at TCU going as long as we can,” Merriex said. Ram
Luthra |
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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