Frogs face off against No. 24 Syracuse Saturday
12/2/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 2, 2005
FORT WORTH, Texas -- The TCU men's basketball team will make a trip to the Northeast as it takes on its first ranked opponent of the 2005-06 campaign in Syracuse University. The contest will be featured Saturday on ESPN+ and UPN 21 with tip-off set for 6 p.m. CST.
The meeting will be the fourth all-time between the two teams with the Horned Frogs seeking their first win against the Orange.
Heading into Saturday's matchup, TCU looks to bounce back from a three-game drought while Syracuse has won two straight.
GAME 6: TCU (1-4) at No. 24 Syracuse (5-2)
TIPOFF: Saturday, Dec. 3, 2005 at 6 p.m. (CT)
SITE: Carrier Dome (33,000) in Syracuse
TELEVISION: ESPN+ and UPN 21
Brian Estridge (play-by-play) and John Denton (color analyst) will call the game.
RADIO: WBAP-AM 820 in Fort Worth/Dallas and KTCU 88.7 FM
Scott Masteller and Eddie Fogler will serve as the radio play-by-play and color analyst for the Horned Frogs.
ONLINE: Live Radio Broadcast on www.GoFrogs.com
ABOUT THE GAME:
• Saturday's game with Syracuse marks the fourth all-time meeting between the two schools with TCU seeking its first win against the Orange.• The matchup with the Orange is the second of nine televised games for TCU in 2005-06. In addition, it will be the fourth of a five-game stretch away from home for the Frogs.
• TCU's Neil Dougherty will be facing Syracuse's Jim Boeheim for the first time as a head coach. Dougherty was 1-1 as a Kansas assistant coach against Boeheim and Syracuse with both meetings taking place in the NCAA Tournament. The Orange took a 60-57 decision in the second round of the 1996 tournament, while the Jayhawks won 87-58 in a 2001 second-round game.
• Battling Syracuse over the years has been a December affair. All four meetings, including this year's contest, have been played in the final month of the calendar year. This will be the third of four games against the Orange in the Carrier Dome.
• The two teams met eight years ago in the Puerto Rico Holiday Classic on Dec. 25, 1997, with the Orange edging past the Frogs with an 82-78 victory.
• Syracuse is fresh off an 87-82 overtime win against Manhattan on Wednesday, while TCU is looking to bounce back from an 81-54 defeat at Texas Tech that same evening.
• TCU assistant coach Rick Callahan began his collegiate coaching career as a graduate assistant at Syracuse in 1980. He was promoted to assistant coach a year later. Callahan served a total of seven years under Boeheim, helping guide the Orange to four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances (1983-86).
• TCU is 13-32 all-time against current members of the Big East Conference. The last meeting versus a BIG EAST team came Nov. 10, 1998, when the Frogs posted a 79-77 win at Providence.
GAME 5 RECAP: at Texas Tech 81, TCU 54
• For the third time this season, Nile Murry led all players in scoring with 19 points in spite of a tough loss to the Red Raiders. He also grabbed four rebounds, four assists and four steals while shooting 50.0 percent (6-of-12) from the floor and 66.7 percent (4-of-6) from behind the arc.
• Freshman Clarence Masters collected 10 points for the Frogs, scoring in double digits for the first time in his career. He went 4-of-8 (50.0 percent) from the floor and added a pair of rebounds and an assist. He played 19 minutes, making it a career-high so far this season.
• The 27-point deficit in the loss at Texas Tech was the largest margin of victory by the Red Raiders in a series that dates back to 1932. The previous number was 26 when Tech took a 101-75 win on Feb. 24, 1961, in Lubbock.
• Dougherty's record against Bob Knight, one of the all-time winningest active coaches in Division I men's college basketball, drops to 1-3.
• Judson Stubbs four-game double-figure scoring streak ends as the senior finished with six points on the night. He picked up five rebounds, one assist and one steal in 23 minutes of action.
