The 2023-2024 season has been nothing short of a rollercoaster for the TCU women’s basketball team. The Horned Frogs started their non-conference season undefeated, the best start in program history, and secured that record after their first conference win over BYU. After that, the team’s fate began to change.
Graduate center Sedona Prince suffered a finger injury in TCU’s loss against Baylor, and the loss of the key player was a first shake toward the program. The Horned Frogs haven’t won a game since the injury on January 3.
“We are still working through trying to get our feet under us without Sedona and create an identity as a new team,” TCU head coach Mark Campbell said after losing to Texas. “Our identity, we play through Sedona, probably 60 to 70% of what we’re doing offensively was through Sedona and defensively we used to do a matchup zone because she’s unbelievable at protecting the rim as a shot blocker and we can’t do that anymore.”
With less than seven minutes of playtime against Houston on January 13, graduate guard Jaden Owens suffered a knee injury. The program announced Owens had torn her ACL three days after the game. Owens was averaging around 10 points per game for the Horned Frogs. Redshirt sophomore forward DaiJa Turner attempted to play through an ankle injury but ultimately her season ended due to injury.
“It’s like you’re doing a brand new training camp in the middle of the season,” Campbell said.
To ensure the health and safety of the student-athletes, the program decided to forfeit two games against No. 7 Kansas State and No. 24 Iowa State. The two opponents will be credited with the wins for the forfeited games under Big 12 rules, but TCU won’t need to credit the games as losses in the overall record per NCAA policy.
Without enough available players, the program announced they would host open tryouts for walk-ons to join the team for the remainder of the season. Full-time TCU students with high school basketball experience and a pre-participation physical from the TCU health center were eligible to participate in the tryouts on January 18 and 19.
The next scheduled TCU game is on January 23 against UCF, where the Horned Frogs will host the Golden Knights holding a 1-6 conference record.