Getty Kevin Samuel of the TCU Horned Frogs
The TCU Horned Frogs and the Houston Baptist Huskies will clash in the first game of their respective seasons Wednesday at Ed & Rae Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth.
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The game (8 p.m. ET start time) won’t be on regular TV anywhere, but you can watch Houston Baptist vs TCU on ESPN+ right here:
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Houston Baptist vs TCU Preview
The Horned Frogs finished 16-16 last season, and 7-11 in the Big 12 Conference. They’ll have two returning juniors leading the way, center Kevin Samuel and guard RJ Nembhard. Samuel averaged close to a triple-double last year, netting 10 points and 8.4 rebounds a game. He also blocked a whopping 85 shots, and the 6-foot-11, 255 pound athletic big man should be quite the asset on both offense and defense for Texas Christian this season.
“He’s improved each year gradually and that’s a lot coming from where he came from when he got here,” TCU coach Jamie Dixon said about Samuel. “We hope his conditioning is a little better, talked to him about his body and trying to become an elite-level athlete, an elite-level physicality, and that’s where I think he’s going.”
The Horned Frogs scored 65.4 points per contest last season, while allowing 65.0. TCU averaged 14 turnovers a game, and they shot 42 percent from the floor and 35 percent from beyond the arc. TCU lost last year’s top scorer, forward Desmond Bane, and the Horned Frogs will have to fill his big shows by committee. TCU has returning big men Jaedon LeDee and Diante Smith, and they’ll also have a new addition in transfer Chuck O’Bannon, Jr.
HBU finished its 2019 campaign 4-25 overall and 4-16 in the Southland Conference. The Huskies averaged 80.1 points a game, but they also gave up an NCAA-high 93.9 points on defense.
“As bad as everything ended last year, there is a hunger to get better, individually and as a team,” head coach Ron Cottrell said. “I feel better about our focus, our intensity, the way guys are going about playing defense. We had to improve in that area, and we still have a team that can really score the ball.”
The Huskies saw their top scorer from last season, Ian DuBose, transfer to Wake Forest, so they’ll also have some big shoes to fill. DuBose led the Huskies in scoring (19.0 points per game), and rebounds (7.3 per game) last season, and the team is going to miss his production in the paint. Houston Baptist will be adding junior college transfers Pedro Castro and Darius Lee, both of whom are listed as guard/forwards on the team’s official website, so it will be interested to see how — and how often — each are employed against the Horned Frogs.