Universities, programs, even countries go through progressions and evolutions. TCU athletics are no different. For several years, we’ve been stalking the tennis giant growing under the tutelage of Coach David Roditi on the purple courts, and last year they finally reached their ultimate goal of winning the program’s first outdoor national championship. TCU tennis wasn’t an overnight success after Roditi took the helm, but if we’re comparing timelines, Jamie Dixon of TCU basketball should be hoping for a similar shift toward consistent playoff relevance that has yet to be realized.
The defending national champions of the tennis courts sampled bitter disappointment at the hands of second-seeded Wake Forest in the finals of the ITA indoor championships last week, hosted at SMU. The 16-team seeded tournament was divided into groups of eight in Waco and Dallas, respectively. The Frogs dispatched the hosting Bears 4-1 before beating ninth-ranked San Diego 4-2. The semifinals moved to Dallas, where TCU blanked 11th-ranked Stanford before facing the top team from the opposing bracket in the Demon Deacons from Winston Salem. TCU had been ranked first in the tournament and in the overall ITA rankings — as they should be; they’re the defending champs — but are currently second after the championship match loss. A 5-7 loss at third-line doubles awarded Wake Forest the doubles point, and a heartbreaking third-set defeat of Jack Pinnington at first-line singles was the difference in a 3-4 match. The Frogs lost in the championship match of the indoor finals last year as well but to Ohio State. Still, after winning back-to-back indoors in preceding years, Roditi’s ringers have now advanced to the finals for four consecutive seasons, a herculean accomplishment on its own.
Updates out of Schollmaier Arena are not bad, per se, but akin to rewatching Friends for the 37th time. It feels familiar, and there’s plenty of feel-good plotlines, but you know how the story ends and that it’ll leave you wanting more. Jamie Dixon’s Frogs are 8-8 in conference and tied for seventh with Baylor in the group of 16 teams. The Bears have a one-game overall-record advantage, but TCU beat them straight up in Waco in late January. A .500 conference record among a familiarly loaded Big 12 is objectively good but a mark the Frogs have consistently achieved while falling short in the NCAA tournament. The fear is that they’re hurtling toward a similar fate this season.
Dixon’s dribblers capped a season sweep of ninth-ranked Texas Tech in Fort Worth last week, and they’ll have a similar opportunity against Baylor in the penultimate conference tip next week. The Frogs are sitting ahead of all their remaining opponents — except Baylor — in the conference standings, and this squad has the opportunity to finish the season with a winning Big 12 record, something Dixon has never done.
Alas, the Frogs aren’t on anyone’s bracketology list as of now, and with their 2-7 road and 0-3 neutral-site record, plus decisive losses to the top teams in their conference, it’s not hard to see why. Baylor and West Virginia are projected to be the last two conference selections with their names called on Selection Sunday, but the two are flanking the Frogs in the current standings. You’ll know by the time this is posted and goes to press if TCU was able to notch their second win over West Virginia as the squads met in Morgantown on Tuesday. This final stretch — with some consideration for the conference tournament, as well — will be the decider if the Frogs squeak into consideration for March Madness or if they’ll accept a conciliatory bid to the NIT.
But are there considerations other than purely conference record? The Frogs, as I’ve illuminated many times in the past, are still missing a double-double center or power forward to prove a reliable life raft when guard shooting falters or TCU’s run-and-shoot style is overpowered in the paint. In many ways, it seems the projections of excluding the Frogs from the tourney might be a humane way to temper fan expectations. Though Dixon and company are on the cusp of their best Big 12 win-loss record, the reality for this squad advancing past the first round of the tournament still seems marginal at best, especially away from Fort Worth, should they even receive an invite.
Is it really fair to compare Roditi and Dixon, both decorated alumni lettermen? Yes and no. Roditi took over in 2011, and it took him three seasons to build a roster to be included in the NCAA tournament, and in Year 5, the Frogs reached the semifinals. But it took another eight years to return to that level — though they regularly reached the round of 16 and quarterfinals during that stretch. Dixon arrived in 2016 and won the NIT in his first season and quenched a long NCAA tournament drought for the Frogs in his second. But in four tournament appearances, the Frogs have won only two first-round games, and it doesn’t seem that this team is equipped to improve upon that. Tennis is a smaller sport, with around 100 fewer universities fielding teams, and most definitely a less visible sport considering national attention to the collegiate game. Still, with TCU women’s basketball enjoying their best season in school history and projecting a second-seed in their tournament, and with TCU men’s tennis winning some sort of national championship for the past three seasons, I assume the pressure is mounting on Horned Frog honcho Dixon to transition from consistently competitive to actual contender.
Courtesy TCU Athletics
