There’s a lot of Jamie Dixon slander on the timeline tonight.

I’m not here for it. Let’s talk about why.

Teams were allotted 40 practices in the preseason this year. TCU was able to use 12 of them due to COVID protocols. That means an almost entirely new roster practiced together 12 times before playing a game. MS teams get more than that.

Since that point, nearly every significant player has missed significant practice/game time. They’ve been dealing with injuries, bumps, bruises, and COVID for the last two months.

When you have young guys, they have to learn how to play hard and how to play through the tough times. The Big 12 is a GRIND. This is a team that won games against good opponents in December, but January hits and so does the wall.

All through football season, Gary Patterson talked about his guys needing to “grow up”. That’s where we are with this basketball program right now. Unfortunately, you don’t get bye weeks in hoops to regroup. Well, not normally. This eight days off is CRITICAL.

But at the end of it are four straight games against ranked opponents, and the fifth is against an Oklahoma State team that just knocked off Kansas. It’s really hard to build in the Big 12 season.

I think this year is kind of a wash for TCU Basketball. They lost a generational talent and an entire recruiting class. The pieces are good. RJ is a great player. Mike Miles is going to be a star. Kevin Samuel is, at times, dominant.

You’ve got really promising young players in O’Bannon, Todd, and Farabello, and strong versatile forwards in LeDee, Pearson, and Easley. But it’s not going to happen this year. The key will be: can you bring the nucleus back in 2021-2022?

COVID hit TCU Basketball really hard. I know no one wants that excuse, but they’ve been impacted as much or more than any other team in the conference to this point. Maybe no losing games in season, but their developmental time was almost completely wiped out.

If, a year from now, we haven’t seen marked improvement, then I think you can start talking about a moderately warm seat. But, before you run off one of the best college coaches of this era, think about this:

Who do you want instead and who would actually want to come?