Welcome to Basketball Season! Here we go on a run that will hopefully end in early April in the NCAA championship for both TCU Women’s and Men’s Basketball. Schollmaier Arena is the place to be. Get there.

Coach Jamie Dixon and I are both looking forward to TCU hoops this season. Courtesy of TCU Athletics | Photo by Ellman Photography

Congrats to TCU Women’s Basketball for their season-opening win over Duquesne yesterday 61-48. Jordan Moore had 22 points to lead the Frogs (on 11-for-12 shooting!!). Next up for Raegan Pebley’s bunch is Mississippi Valley State at noon on Sunday at Schollmaier Arena.

We lift the lid tonight on Jamie Dixon’s third season at TCU and the Frogs look a lot different. Sure, the starting five are back and guard Jaylen Fisher is still healing that knee, but there are eight new Frogs who have never played in a college basketball game. Should be interesting. I will tell you this from my observations watching practice: the Frogs are much bigger than in recent years. Center Kevin Samuel goes 6-11, 260 pounds. You can’t teach size! JD Miller is back as the Frogs’ most-experienced player with 103 games played. I’m looking forward to watching him this year – he’s a great defender who has taken on that role and Coach Dixon likes it. Alex Robinson, Desmond Bane, Kouat Noi, Angus McWilliam and RJ Nembhard are all healthy and ready to go.

The Frogs welcome Cal State-Bakersfield into Schollmaier Arena tonight. The Roadrunners have some very good players and a coach who knows his way around the game. Rod Barnes is a savvy coach who took Ole Miss to the Sweet 16 a few years back and had his team within a win of playing the Frogs for the NIT Championship in 2017. Bet you couldn’t name the team that Georgia Tech defeated to reach the NIT final vs TCU! Well, it’s Cal-State Bakersfield. They won 25 games that year.

RJ Nembhard was the 3-point champion at last week’s Frog Army Scrimmage. Courtesy of TCU Athletics | Photo by Ellman Photography

The 2018-19 Roadrunners feature a hot-shot guard in Jarkel Joiner, who set the CSB record for free throw percentage last year as a freshman at 90 percent! Look out for #23 Damiyne Durham, who’s hit 255 three-pointers in his career and needs just 24 to set a new record for three-balls at CSB.

After tonight, the Frogs will play Oral Roberts at 4 p.m. on Sunday, then a 2017 NIT rematch with Fresno State at 8 p.m. Thursday, November 15.

In between all the basketball games, and after a win over K-State last week, TCU Football will travel to No. 9 West Virginia. Games in Morgantown are always wild, physical affairs and I expect this 11 a.m. kickoff to provide us all with more of the same. It’s always fun to watch Gary Patterson and Dana Holgorsen square-off in a game of a thousand adjustments. Stay tuned for a detailed look at the Mountaineers on Friday — and the weather, which is expected to be snowy and in the mid-30s!

Until then,

Kick ‘Em High