BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 19, 2022

Jamie Dixon

TCU Horned Frogs

Media Day Press Conference

COACH DIXON: Exciting to be here in Kansas City again. Looking forward to obviously our week coming. We had a scrimmage this weekend. Obviously a couple of practices. We have our big event, (indiscernible) live Friday, which is exciting. We've got Ludacris as part of the event.

Players are excited, students are excited. Then we have the big football game on Saturday versus Kansas State. So Fort Worth is going to be an exciting place to be this weekend.

A lot of great things going on at school. Excited about -- I love our team. I love how much we've progressed, especially offensively. I think this summer -- we spent summer and fall, really, getting better, trying to individually and as a team-wise offensively. And I think we've done that.

Got a great group. Excited about them. And they're working hard and they've really connected with our students. I think that's the thing in our campus and Fort Worth and why we have the crowds that we have, the student following that we have.

And so we're just going to continue to try to do the right things on and off the floor and keep this group getting better and engaging with the community because it's a very outgoing group, a fun group. And I'm enjoying being around them on the floor and off the floor.

Q. We've got a lot of guys coming back. I'm curious about how you think Shahada Wells fits into all this. I know he sat last year because of injury, but he had a tremendous career at UT-Arlington. How does he fit into everything you're trying to do this year?

COACH DIXON: We love Hada. We call him Hada. And that's what he likes to go by. But we're excited about him. He was very good for us last year. I hate to say, when we got there last year, we had a lot of new guys.

And in the summer, I guess, when workouts started, he might have been our best guard, along with Maxwell Evans, who had transferred in from Vanderbilt. They might have been our best guards in that summer.

But then they had a couple of injuries in the fall. And all of a sudden we're in a situation where right before the season started we kind of had to shuffle around what our guard rotation was going to be. And that took us some time.

But we're really excited about Hada. And then the timing, when he got healthy again, we had some guys playing. So we just decided to redshirt him and get him healthy and have him ready for this year. We're certainly excited about that.

He played really well in our scrimmage the other day. He gives us a guy that can play both spots for us, the 1 and 2. He's one of our best shooters. He's becoming a very good defender. He continues to improve. He's our smallest guard. We've talked to him about him being more physical, trying to play bigger. But he's got great hands, very active on the ball, and just a great kid. It's just been great.

He's had a few challenges, family-wise, back home. But he just keeps battling, coming back hard. And we're really excited about him. But we thought he was going to be good. He put up some good numbers, as you mentioned, at UTA. And watching him play against Oklahoma State, he had a good game in the non-conference.

We expected good things out of him. I think we knew we could improve ourselves with him coming back this year. That was going to be an area where we could get better.

The guards is where we thought we had to get better. And him being healthy and playing for us this year is a big part of that.

Q. You guys were picked eighth in the conference last year. Fourth now this year, 14th in the AP poll overall. Are you doing anything differently to manage the expectations that have been put on this team?

COACH DIXON: I don't think so. I probably come in -- I've always had higher expectations and we've been, so-called, "picked" or what has gone on at TCU. I thought I had to come in from that mentality from the day I got there at TCU. Obviously we had to raise the expectation, raise the bar, whatever analogies you want to use.

We just had to do that. And some might have thought it was a little bit wishful thinking, I guess, but obviously we knew where we were at at the time, where it had been the last couple of decades, I guess, at TCU.

So raising the bar and not trying to lower expectations is certainly -- I'm not going to start doing that now. We're good. We believe we're good. But our league's really good. And so we need to do the things that good teams do. We need to do those every day in practice. We need to do those off the floor. We need to do that as a program.

So we're not trying to shoot down expectations. We're not trying to lower them. This is a place we needed to raise expectations. There were none. There was no bar. We're not going to stop now.

Q. The transfer portal has been around now for the past couple of offseasons. What are your thoughts how it's functioned and what's your opinion on players transferring within the same conference? There are six that transferred within the Big 12 this year.

COACH DIXON: First of all, I mean, you probably know my history. We had one transfer at Pittsburgh in 17 years, to give you an idea. I guess you could say somebody had to change his ways.

And our school's not built for transfers, to be honest with you. Transfer units, we're not taking as many as a lot of schools. There's a lot of different things that come into grad programs, online courses.

We're not generally built for it. But we had to adapt and find a way because of COVID and some things that occurred.

So it is what it is. It's here to stay. Last year we took a lot. This year we didn't. It's going to be different each year. I think we're at a point now, too, where it used to be there might have been a red flag when there was a transfer. But now when you don't sit out, kids -- most of our success with transfers has come from guys transferring up. So a kid that's having success at a lower program or lower conference than say the Big 12, was likely not going to transfer and sit out a year. He's having success, he's playing well, getting his minutes.

But now, if you are going to play right away, that's what's going to open the doors. It doesn't mean you're going to get the red flag is not a given now. So that's where we're at. It's a new world. Can't compare it.

The transfer within a league, you know, it's not ideal. But obviously there was no way that we're going to be able to make a rule to have -- guys can transfer and play right away everywhere and then not your conference, because it makes sense. Kids generally pick the conference they want to play in as much as they pick the school they want to go to.

And so I think there was just no way that was going to happen. That's where it is.

It's a little strange, but it's not the end of the world. We'll all survive. We'll deal with it. And so a kid gets to play in a conference that he wants to play in. Why shouldn't we allow that?

Q. You had a large part of your coaching career in the Big East. You might not know this trivia, this is the first time that all four Texas schools in the Big 12 have been ranked in the Preseason AP Top 25. I guess what does that say about both your program, building at TCU and the state of basketball in Texas as well?

COACH DIXON: Well, you remember, I played at TCU. So I know a little bit about Texas basketball in the past. And so when it was the Southwest Conference, they were pretty good back in the day, a lot of teams in Texas. We had Houston in the conference at the time.

But I'm not surprised by it. I think there's just better players in Texas now. Just cut to the chase. I think high schools, there's better players. There's more people. For all the reasons obvious, there's just better players for us to choose from.

And I think you're seeing that. But for us specifically, TCU, I mean, I was just talking about it, certainly playing at the school, coaching at the school I played at, and obviously coming and being at Pittsburgh and having a great situation there, the only place I would have left for was TCU. And to coach at your alma mater is different. There's just no question.

It was a dream of mine when we had some success. We won the conference my junior and senior year. So I knew I was going to coach. And coaching at your alma mater at a place you had success at was probably a pretty logical choice. But once it went to the Conference USA, I can't remember all the other conferences there was, maybe it wasn't as much on my mind. But certainly things have changed.

And here possibly, the Big East, and the Big 12 now, we're excited to be here. And like I said, expectations, we wanted to do something special, do something that hasn't been done. And we've still got a lot of work to do. But there's just better players in Texas. It's simply -- there's a lot of different reasons, but that's number one.