TCU’s Jamie Dixon has embraced the ‘new era’ of college basketball

Drew Davison
·3 min read

Jamie Dixon coached one transfer during his 17 seasons at Pittsburgh as Ben Howland’s top assistant and later its head coach. This year’s TCU basketball roster features seven transfers who have been added since the end of last season.

“It’s a new era,” Dixon said from the Big 12 media days at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center on Wednesday.

“It’s a new time. Now I’ve embraced it. Certainly we did this summer. You just try to improve yourselves. We certainly did with the transfers.”

Dixon is coming off the only losing season in his head coaching career, going 12-14 in 2020. The Frogs battled a number of issues from having practices canceled due to COVID-19 protocols to players being sidelined with injuries.

The talent level and depth of the roster fell short, too, in arguably the top basketball conference in the country. So Dixon overhauled it in the offseason and the Frogs return only four players.

Sophomore guard Mike Miles is the leading returning scorer after averaging 13.6 points per game as a true freshman. Junior guard Francisco Farabello is also back, but was limited to just nine games last season due to advanced COVID-19 tests that revealed a heart condition that had to be monitored.

Other returners include senior forward Chuck O’Bannon Jr., who averaged 6.8 points last season, and sophomore center Eddie Lampkin, who played in only 10 games as a true freshman.

Dixon joked that Farabello and Lampkin are essentially new players given the limited action they saw last year.

“Excited about our new guys and excited about the improvement of our returning guys as well,” he said.

TCU is picked to finish eighth in the Big 12. That may be lower than the Frogs would like, but they have finished higher than the preseason pick in four of the five seasons under Dixon.

And Dixon believes the league is up for grabs with so many teams in a similar situation with plenty of roster turnover, or new coaches. The league has new coaches at Texas (Chris Beard), Texas Tech (Mark Adams), Oklahoma (Porter Moser) and Iowa State (T.J. Otzelberger).

“It’s wide open. That’s the message we’ve given our guys,” Dixon said. “It’s up to us, just like every other team. We have the opportunity to go do it.”

Miles and Farabello joined Dixon at the media day, and talked highly about the offseason practices to date. All of the transfers are bought in and committed to returning TCU to the NCAA Tournament.

Xavier Cork from Western Carolina is a player who has shown flashes in the frontcourt. Damion Baugh from Memphis brings athleticism and defense to the backcourt. Micah Peavy from Texas Tech and Emanuel Miller from Texas A&M have emerged as scoring options.

“We’re getting better every day,” Miles said. “I thought it was going to be hard with so many new faces, but it’s been an easy transition. All of the guys listen and everyone wants to win. Practice is way more competitive than it was last year. In the locker room, we laugh and joke. We all like each other.”

Added Farabello: “It wasn’t that hard just because of the work ethic that these guys had coming in. Everybody works hard. Everybody wants to compete and that makes everything easier. So I think we have a pretty good group.”

TCU opens its season against McNeese State on Nov. 11 at Schollmaier Arena.

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