FORT WORTH, Texas _ Watching game film with TCU basketball coach Jamie Dixon, it's easy to see why so many people in this profession are no longer right in the head.
The morning after TCU defeated Winthrop on Dec. 11, Dixon sits in his office to watch the game on his computer. He doesn't look like he's slept much, and he's already watched this game once.
"This is unbelievable," Dixon said as we watche the game's first play, which resulted in a TCU turnover. "We worked on this for, like, three days straight. The play got all screwed up.
"They should have gotten it to (center) Kevin Samuel. We spent all week on it getting to (the center). And he gets tangled up, which happens. We get into the game, we're not making the right read. Even after he gets tangled up, he comes back and does what we tell him not to do."
On the ensuing possession, Winthrop scores on a dunk. On TCU's second possession, senior guard Desmond Bane missed on a forced, contested 3-pointer.
"This is unbelievable," he said. "The two things we worked on the most these last two weeks we did wrong in the first 19 seconds of this game."
It's impressive that Dixon didn't smash his monitor with a brick. He's gone over this time and again with his team, and these are the immediate results.
TCU won the game comfortably by 10 points, but in reviewing some of this game with Dixon, it's evident just how difficult it is to do this job _ and how much ground this program has to cover.
They aren't dumb kids. They aren't bad kids. They are kids.
Dixon is in his fourth year at TCU, and this buildup remains a work in progress, beginning right here in front of game film and the painful process of eliminating error.
