Hunter,

Glad you appreciate the basketball articles. With the team practicing for the first time on Friday, you can expect more basketball articles in the near future.

To your e-mail, I will agree and disagree with you at the same time. When saying Neil Dougherty set this program back, I somewhat disagree with you. I would actually say Billy Tubbs bears responsibility for where this program is today. Tubbs had some successful years, but his teams were largely known for running at all costs. That meant no defense, no discipline on the offensive end and using athleticism to wear down other teams. When the talent began to dry up and Tubbs was forced out, the program was left with very little resources to build on.

Regarding Dougherty, he failed to advance the program at all. The NIT run was nice because Dougherty used the leftover recruits from Tubbs and his new recruits to find a blend of athletic offense and hustling defense. For this, he was rewarded with a contract that would ultimately be unfounded.

My disappointment with Dougherty is he could never implement an offense. His recruiting was mediocre, typically consisting of undersized players who would hustle on the defensive end, but showed no coherence on the offensive end. While his focus was on the defensive end, his teams were never technically sound preferring the amoeba defense (resembling 6 year old soccer where every kid runs to the ball). While I respect Dougherty and thought he was a good man, he never seemed to control the proper tools to be a head coach in his first opportunity to lead a program.

But to say he set the program back 6 years seems somewhat wrong to me. Hiring Jim Christian as our coach seemed to transition the Frogs a whole lot easier than when Dougherty took over for Tubbs. Dougherty left Christian with players who were good kids that were doing better in the classroom and whose focus was on the defensive end. The problem is Dougherty added nothing to speak of talent-wise, which is why Christian has run off many of those players since he arrived. After 2004, Dougherty recruited just one 3 star recruit and that was Dallas Hunter who would never see the floor. In 2 years, Jim Christian has recruited four 3 star players in Ronnie Moss, Kevin Butler, Garlon Green and Greg Hill. So the talent has clearly improved.

Year two gets magnified because this is the year where we will get a better feel for whether Jim Christian can develop this talent. It is one thing to get talent and another thing to develop players (see Texas A&M football recruiting classes the past 10 years). So what is he going to do with Zvonko Buljan who is a 1st team All Mountain West selection and Ronnie Moss who appears to be our first realistic talent at the guard position since Corey Santee? Jim Christian has been revered for his ability to coach in-game and develop players. I agree that we have seen an improvement in coaching during the game, but year 2 will provide our first bit of evidence towards his ability to develop players.

Will said it best: “You cannot win consistently without recruits and you cannot consistently recruit well without winning. I tend to lean more towards 4-5 years with this program under Christian. If Tuffie Moss and Garlon Green are the real deal then you have to give him 4 years with Tuffie to see if he assembles enough talent around him to justify keeping Christian another 2-3 years. The problem is Christian is on the first bus out of town if he succeeds.”

I agree with Will, but if Christian were to move on that means we would be winning and I would be a happy fan. Even if he were to struggle this year, I think he deserves enough time to take Ronnie Moss through his senior year. I am not trying to run him out because I think he has the potential to be a good coach, but in a year where TCU is the most experienced team in a conference that should be really poor this year, I think we need to see some progress that can give fans a reason to come watch the Frogs play.

Christian will get 4 years minimum and probably 5 deservedly so, but there needs to be continued improvement. I will not fault him for the lack of talent, but many coaches get a pass because they do not get an opportunity to play with their own players. Christian does not get that pass because heading into year 2, all the players were brought to Fort Worth by him with the exception of Keion Mitchem. So if you have your own recipe (from Kent State) and you have shopped for the ingredients (from Wal Mart not Whole Foods), then it is time to start making something that looks good. And that is what I want to see this year.

-David

Mark,

Thanks for writing and I really do appreciate the feedback. I was conflicted in writing that one because I personally do not think we should have run up the score and winning is all that matters. We had that game in hand and most people received it as a dominant win. For TCU's sake, if they go 12-0, everything will take care of itself and we will get an automatic bid to the BCS which is our main goal.

The one problem I am having in my writing is conveying my thoughts about the Mountain West. I truly believe that most people believe the MWC deserves an automatic BCS bid. If the MWC teams continue to play the way they have, they will earn that right when they negotiate the next television contract in 2 or 3 years. But to attain that, each team has to do their part in convincing people they belong. I think of it as a hearts and minds campaign where not only do people take notice of the MWC because of who they are beating, but also how they are beating them. That last article was in conjunction with that idea because I feel the Frogs could have hung 40 points or more on them if they had kept pressing. But this applies to BYU, Utah, TCU, Air Force, Colorado State, etc. Everyone needs to do their part in this collective effort and when you talk about "dreaming higher", I think the dream is an automatic bid to the BCS where you are respected enough that each year, 12-0 could put you in the National Championship. But to accomplish that, you have to convince people you belong and that means winning and winning convincingly.

Again, my problem is I keep stepping back and viewing it as a Mountain West goal and I am not conveying that well. Within the realm of year-long TCU goal, winning is all that matters and forget all the rest. TCU is not going to a National Championship game any time soon if ever and the goal is to make the BCS and win all of our games. That is what Coach Patterson and his squad did on Saturday and that should be all we ask of them as fans of the team. Furthermore, I respect Patterson more for shutting down the offense somewhat because running up scores will always come back to haunt you.

-David

Kevin,

Thanks for the e-mail. We are in agreement there.

Jared brings up a good point regarding the official roster for baseball. As school starts, rosters tend to shuffle as young men and women decide to transfer or fail to qualify academically to participate in their sports. With school beginning this week, teams have published rosters and some things are worth noting.

One player missing from the football roster is Sir Demarco Bledsoe who will play for Youngstown State this year. His absence has created depth problems at safety, but he left the team for undisclosed reasons.

Basketball saw more turnover for the second year in a row adding and subtracting players. Gone are guards Jason Ebie and Kavon Rose as well as big man Greg Richardson. One player left before he made it to campus as recruit Dernodo Eiland changed his commitment to Cameron in Oklahoma.

But to the question regarding baseball, TCU published a roster containing 38 names even after subtracting Derek VerHagen and Brett Medlin. The NCAA recently changed rules to allow only 35 players on an NCAA baseball roster. However, only players receiving athletic scholarship money such as tuition, fees, books, or room and board count against this limit of 35.

In addition, the NCAA amended a rule to require teams to give at least 25 percent of a scholarship to a player receiving aid. The total amount of scholarships allowed in baseball is 11.7 full scholarships where a full scholarship equals the total amount of tuition, fees, books, and room and board. For a roster of 35 players, many times scholarships are divided into pieces and shared between players. But the NCAA now mandates that any player receiving aid shall get no less than 25 percent of that scholarship and that only 27 players may receive aid.

This is a wordy way of saying that there are indeed 38 players on the roster and the maximum is 35. As I understand it, a team has until competition begins to get down to 35 players. I would expect TCU to lose a few guys off of the roster, but I doubt it would be impact players so I would not be concerned. Furthermore, TCU has never been deeper and any loss should be minimal.

Hope that helps and thank you for the e-mail.

-David

Chip,

Thank you for writing and bringing something to our attention that we had not noticed. I have contacted TCU and we will not be hearing an official announcement on either one but I will take a stab at what is going on.

Derek VerHagen: As I understand it the NCAA allows athletes to play 4 seasons in 5 years. Because he had a medical redshirt year in 2006 during his freshman year and because the NCAA now forces players to sit out a full year when they transfer, I do not believe he has any eligibility left to play. He was previously honored as a scholar athlete by the Mountain West so it would not surprise me if he was quitting to focus exclusively on academics.

We received another e-mail from Jared who asked what we expected the TCU lineup to look like next season. I have put together a write up, but am waiting until Summer Ball concludes before I respond to his e-mail with a post. But the following is what I had written about Derek VerHagen:

VerHagen is a seldom used reliever who will be lucky to see many innings in 2010. Ideally, he would be a valuable arm as 1 of only 2 lefties on the team. However, VerHagen is susceptible to the long ball and is unlikely to be used much.

With that said, I really wish him the best, but this should not affect the team all that much.

Brett Medlin: I would imagine you will see Medlin in another uniform somewhere down the road. As I said before, if he is transferring he will have to sit out a full year per the NCAA transfer rule and much like VerHagen, he is running out of eligibility after redshirting due to injury in 2007.

Medlin is a good player who was never able to seize the opportunity. He opened 2008 as the starter and had some success with a 6 game hit streak. But after struggling, he ended with a .245 batting average. The following is what I wrote about Medlin going into 2010.

An outfielder from Keller, Texas, the window is shutting on his opportunities to play. Coats seems a lock to play left, so he will battle for playing time in center, but will likely lose the battle. It should be noted that he was given the first opportunity to win the centerfield job when Corey Steglich moved to second base, but I think he will likely remain a defensive replacement and reserve runner.

After receiving only 3 starts last year, Aaron Schultz and Brance Rivera were viewed as better options in the outfield by the coaching staff and with Kyle Von Tungeln coming in next year, Medlin would be better off somewhere else. Again, he is a young man who played the right way when given the opportunity and represented the Frogs honorably, but his departure would not likely impact this team going forward.

Thank you for the e-mail Chip and we hope that we answered your question. If we find out more, we will certainly let you know as soon as possible.

We also apologize to Jared for not posting his e-mail as our first mailbag item as well as frequent writer to the mailbag Jim, but we do hope you will keep them coming.

-David