The Horned Frogs have now won three straight games and for the first time since the opening game of the season the team has a winning record at 4-3.
The Horned Frogs’ stifling defense clamped down on the St. Gregory’s University Cavaliers (0-7) from the opening tipoff until the final buzzer in their 80-38 victory Saturday night.
SGU went scoreless for the first five minutes of the contest, and did not make a field goal until the 12:03 mark of the first half. The Cavaliers shot 35 percent from the field for the game and committed 25 turnovers.
TCU took full advantage of SGU’s offensive ineptitude. The Horned Frogs opened the game with a 13-0 run and made nine of their first 11 field goals.
Senior forward Kevin Langford’s layup with just less than five minutes left on the first period gave TCU its biggest lead of the first half at 32-11. The Horned Frogs headed into halftime with a 34-16 lead.
The second half was more of the same story as TCU continued to assert its dominance over St. Gregory’s. Unlike their two previous contests against McNeese State and SMU, the Horned Frogs would not let the Cavaliers work their way back into the game.
The Horned Frogs used a 13-0 outburst that was punctuated by junior forward Zvonko Buljan’s first 3-pointer of the season early in the second half. This stretched their lead to more than 30 points.
Buljan had his best game of the season, scoring a team-high of 16 points on 7-for-8 shooting and grabbing five rebounds.
Head coach Jim Christian said he has noticed Buljan making plays that don’t always show up on the stat sheet.
“At the beginning of the year he wasn’t making any hustle plays,” Christian said. “Now he’s taking charges and diving on the floor. When you start thinking about those things, then offense comes your way.”
Freshman guard Ronnie Moss followed up a fantastic performance against SMU with a similar effort Saturday night. Moss scored 10 points and tallied four assists for his second consecutive double-digit scoring game.
“I think he’s come a long way,” Christian said about Moss. “It was a lot of meetings and a lot of talks with Ronnie, but I think he’s starting to figure out that there’s some things he needs to work on and he’s trying to work and get better at those things.”
Every player on TCU’s roster scored during the game. A.J. Siebert’s layup with 28 seconds left gave him his first points of the season and the final points of the game for the Horned Frogs.
Although the Horned Frogs clearly had a talent advantage over the Cavaliers, Christian said that his team can still learn a lot from games like this.
“It doesn’t make a difference who’s wearing the jerseys,” Christian said. “The talent level obviously changes, but your discipline and the way you attack it is the same way.”