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[50's PONY]

Forget Billy Gillispie; TCU basketball has the right guy in Jim Christian
Posted Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010

By MAC ENGEL

[email protected]

For fans of the TCU men's basketball team -- and judging by the attendance there aren't many of you left -- Billy Gillispie is not coming to Fort Worth.

Too much baggage. Too much cash.

And TCU already has a good coach.

The second season of TCU men's basketball under Jim Christian will likely end today. The Horned Frogs play the BYU Cougars in the Mountain West Conference Tournament tonight in Las Vegas. Barring the type of upset Christian's team has come close to but never finished, the Frogs will end the season 13-19.

But the Frogs are going to win with Christian as their coach. Athletic director Chris Del Conte needs to show patience and allow a basketball program that had been all but abandoned by the previous coaching staff to regenerate.

TCU has the right guy in Christian. He gets it. TCU is a hard basketball job and requires serious work by a serious guy who won't throw around excuses as he collects a check and goes off to play 18 holes after stepping off the university plane.

"I think we have done some things to slow the process down. We made some mistakes with personnel. We've done that," Christian said. "We have to own up to that and correct that. I am very optimistic because I can see the development of our young players. But to get there quickly we have to not miss, and we did miss."

Christian had appallingly little with which to work when he arrived at TCU two years ago. He inherited one legit Mountain West-caliber player: then-senior Kevin Langford. There was no sophomore class. The rest were spares, and not serious Division I spares, either.

In what limited time Christian had to recruit, he landed a solid player in guard Ronnie Moss, who next season as a junior should be a first-team, all-conference player. Freshman Nikola Cerina has big upside as well. Throw freshman Garlon Green in there, too. Amric Fields, a 6-foot-9 signee from Oklahoma City, should bring interior athletic ability this team needs next season.

And Christian can't wait for Virginia Tech transfer guard Hank Thorns to play next season. (Personally, I'm always wary of a team that builds excitement around a transfer player who hasn't hit the floor.)

But Christian isn't lying about mistakes. TCU has a small margin for error in recruiting, and some of the scholarships he gave resulted in duds. Too many of these will cost him his job.

"It's like a small-market baseball team going into the free-agent market," Christian said. "If you sign a pitcher and he gets hurt or doesn't have the year you hoped, it sets you back. Not forever, but it sets you back. We have to put the right pieces in place."

In college basketball, the first piece is the coach. TCU has that piece. And the primary piece needs to understand he's going to look inept if he doesn't lure other pieces.

"Let's face it -- it's about players," former TCU men's basketball coach Billy Tubbs said last week. "You have to have players or you won't be able to do anything."

Billy got players. They couldn't guard a tree, but that's another story.

Christian knows his fellow D-I colleagues who are hailed as cure-all gods and who write books about leadership aren't necessarily better X's and O's guys. They just share one common trait -- bigger, faster, stronger and more athletic players who make them look like geniuses.

And Christian knows recruiting to TCU isn't as simple as cozying up to a couple of AAU coaches... but it helps.

Teenage hoopsters are all about cool. Basketball at TCU is decidedly uncool. The local players will do what they can not to play there.

Christian has to go outside the Metroplex, where players aren't too familiar with the environment and he can sell what TCU can become.

He understands the fine art of scheduling, which is not too dissimilar from football coach Gary Patterson's philosophy. Christian will play the nonconference schedule that can improve the team and its RPI ranking, as well as those games that just look pretty. A game that really is more of an easy win dressed in a suit and tie (see TCU's football game last season at Virginia).

This season's basketball team has shown the type of play that looks more like continued failure than progress. They compete for a while, push a good team and fall apart late. They have little idea how to win at this level. This will change.

TCU will post a winning record next season for the first time since '04-05. After that, expect the Frogs to push for one of the top two spots in the Mountain West and an NCAA Tournament bid.

"I don't think we're very far away from competing with the upper echelon of this league and being one of them," Christian said.

The pieces are coming together, albeit slowly and not without pain.

So shelve the idea that TCU needs Billy Gillispie, as some frustrated fans have suggested. It doesn't need him because Jim Christian already gets it.

Mac Engel, 817-390-7760

[ponyinNC]

"a serious guy who won't throw around excuses as he collects a check"---you hear that Doh??

[Pony_Fan]

Gee, sounds very familiar. Doesn't say how long his contract is, I assume he has 3 yrs left.
The recruiting hotbed of DFW seems too hard for these fellas.