TCU Releases Basketball Schedule

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FORT WORTH—The TCU men’s basketball program announced Thursday a 31-game men’s basketball schedule for the upcoming 2012-13 season, the team’s inaugural campaign in the Big 12 Conference and its first under new head coach Trent Johnson.

Headlining the Horned Frogs’ regular season is an 18-game, round-robin conference slate featuring 12 contests against Big 12 teams that advanced to the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Overall, TCU will play 13 games against 2012 NCAA tournament qualifiers and at least two others against squads that played in other national postseason tournaments.

Along with the schedule release was a list ofthose Big 12 games selected to be televised on a network, cable or syndicated basis. TCU will have at least 14 televised contests during the conference season, one on ESPN2, four on ESPNU and nine as part of the Big 12 Network syndicated package. Additional telecasts to be aired as part of TCU’sthird-tier package will be released at a later date.

TCU will open its inaugural Big 12 season at home Jan. 5 against longtime rival Texas Tech inside Daniel-Meyer Coliseum. The Frogs and Red Raiders have played 114 games all-time dating back to the 1930s and in each of the last 12 seasons. The two teams last met in Fort Worth back in December, when TCU posted its second straight victory in the series with a 75-69 win at the DMC.

In addition to Texas Tech, the Frogs will renew two

other longtime series against former Southwest Conference foes Baylor and Texas, both of which reached the NCAA Tournament a season ago. TCU’s series with the Bears ranks as the third-longest in program history, while the series with the Longhorns is fifth-longest. The Frogs will play 2012 Elite Eight qualifier Baylor on Jan. 12 in Waco, Texas, and Jan. 26 in Fort Worth. The Longhorns play host to TCU Feb. 2 in Austin, Texas, before traveling to the DMC for the first time since 1996 on Feb. 19.

Among the teams TCU will begin new conferencerivalries with this season is 2012 NCAA Tournament runner-up Kansas, which visits Fort Worth on Feb. 6 before later playing host to the Frogs in AllenFieldhouse on Feb. 23. Other reigning Big 12 NCAA Tournament qualifiers on the schedule are Iowa State, Kansas State and West Virginia, while the Frogs also will see Oklahoma and Oklahoma State twice during the upcoming season.

Highlighting TCU’s 13-game non-conference schedule is four contests in connection with the 2012 South Padre Island Invitational. The Frogs will play host to Prairie View A&M (Nov. 18) and Navy (Nov. 20) before traveling to South Padre Island for back-to-back post-Thanksgiving games against Northwestern (Nov. 23) and either Illinois State or UAB (Nov. 24). Northwestern, which concluded last season playing in the National Invitational Tournament, will mark only TCU’s fourth opponent from the Big 10 Conference since 1996-97. TCU’s final-round matchup with either UAB or 2012 NIT qualifier Illinois State will be televised livenationally by CBS Sports Network.

Also included in TCU’s non-conference slate are four games against Conference USA opponents SMU (Nov. 15) and Houston (Dec. 4) at home and Tulsa (Dec. 9) andRice (Dec. 22) on the road. It will mark the third straight year that the Frogs will have faced all four schools in the same season. Rice finished last spring in the postseason, reaching the quarterfinals of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.

The Frogs open the 2012-13 regular season with five consecutive home dates at the DMC. A Nov. 9 matchup against Cal Poly tips off the season, followed by games against Centenary (Nov. 12), SMU, Prairie View and Navy. Other non-conference home games will feature Southern Utah (Nov. 29), Southern (Dec. 18) and Mississippi Valley State (Dec. 30). Mississippi Valley State played in the opening round of the 2012 NCAA Tournament after winning the Southwestern Athletic ConferenceTournament championship.

Following the regular season, TCU will take part in the 2012 Phillips 66 Big 12 Men’s Basketball Championship held March 13-16 at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.

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