Switching gears pretty drastically, Leonard brought to my attention that the TCU basketball roster has been updated and there are some players who earned significant time that are not on there. Logan Lancon, Kevin Butler and Xavier Roberson are all absent from the 2010-2011 roster and it appears that they will indeed not be back.

Lancon appeared in just 10 games and logged just under 4 minutes in each of those games, so his loss is less apparent than the others, but Butler and Roberson transferring out is more disappointing.

At the end of the season I wrote a piece analyzing the 2009-2010 team on the merits of the +/- rating system. What it revealed was that Butler, Roberson, Garlon Green and Nikola Cerina were more productive players on the floor, largely because they played defense which matched well with Zvonko Buljan, Ronnie Moss and Edvinas Ruzgas whose efforts were spent more on the offensive end. But in that same piece, I cautioned that their value would diminish if their offensive games did not develop or they were not surrounded by talented scorers. Well now, we will never know.

Butler actually logged the 4th most minutes of any player on the team. The junior from Duncanville had more experience than most on the roster and was going to be relied on as one of the leaders on this squad. While he offered very little in the way of offense, Butler was an above average defender. Despite his lack of height, he had guarded the biggest players on opposing teams as well as the smallest, and held his own pretty well. He is a prototypical 6th man off the bench that gives you options against any team. Due to lack of depth, I think Coach Christian has been forced to over rely on him and force him into tough situations, but now that the program seems to be forming some depth, it is disappointing to see him leave campus.

Roberson started to see his minutes increase around the turn of the New Year and deservedly so. If not for an injury late in the year, he could have served an even more integral role late in the year. Roberson had become our best on ball defender against opposing guards when he went down. Not only that, he was shooting 42.6% from behind the arc and had shown a quick step in getting to the basket. I was pleasantly surprised with his development and really thought he had a chance to compete for significant time this year.

TCU did have one of their best recruiting classes of the decade this offseason and is poised to improve, but losing these guys does hurt. Usually teams are only as good as their starting 5, but often times it is the bench that wins championships. I have no idea what to expect out of J.R. Cadot, Andre Clark, Amric Fields, Cheick Kone, Jarvis Ray, Hank Thorns, and Sammy Yeager. All of their highlight reels get me excited about them scoring baskets, but they never show these guys playing defense in these YouTube videos. I have seen Roberson and Butler play defense and I am not sure where the defense will come from now.

I am in no way infatuated with either of these players and wish them the best as the move onto their future destinations. They played hard while they were here and represented TCU as best they could and for that I say thank you and wish them the best. Ultimately these are two college kids who will likely not play basketball on the next level so this is about playing as much basketball as possible before they have to enter the real world. I do not begrudge them that and neither should you.

The only concern for me with this is the Academic Progress Report that the NCAA now follows. Each school has a responsibility to see to it that their players graduate college and with so many players transferring out of Fort Worth since Coach Christian got here and treating TCU like a revolving door, I am worried. If these guys do not get degrees, TCU will lose basketball scholarships and we struggle enough without having an additional handicap. That will be something to keep an eye on as time passes.

Anyway, I have a few more baseball items to tidy up, but I am almost ready to start looking ahead to the football season. Less than 2 months until we kick off against Oregon State!