TCU Athletics
Kenrich Williams with his wife and daughter during Saturday's retirement ceremony.
Saturday was spent attending two retirement ceremonies.
Site of the first was the Fort Worth Stock Show where the Grand Champion steer Leadfoot, a 1,300-pounder, will in the near future be retired to the food chain. He sold to Higginbotham for $340,000 at Will Rogers’ Watt Arena, the second-highest bid in the history of the show.
Bugs as nutrition is a difficult sell for activists when Leadfoot is a menu option.
There is a time for everything. We wish Leadfoot all the best in his next iteration, and we thank him for his invaluable service to mankind.
Next, it was off to TCU’s Schollmaier Arena for the jersey number retirement of former men’s basketball player Kenrich Williams, a personal favorite for many reasons.
It was an occasion that left Williams with “joy.”
“TCU did so much for me,” Williams said.
The highlight of the afternoon was clearly in honoring our old friend during No. 25 TCU’s Big 12 showdown with Texas. Williams’ No. 34 was the fifth to be retired by the school. Darrell Browder, James Cash, Dick O’Neal and, most recently, Kurt Thomas, are the others.
“TCU helped me so much to grow as a young man,” Williams said. “I learned how to hold conversations with guys, how to look people in the eye, how to build relationships with people. Those things are very valuable and those things are something that you need in order to play at the next level.”
Williams has been a regular in the National Basketball Association for six seasons, the second-longest tenure of anyone from TCU. Thomas played 19 seasons. Williams went undrafted after his final season at TCU in 2017-18 but stuck for two seasons with the New Orleans Pelicans and the past four with the Oklahoma City Thunder up the road just across the river, where he is playing on a contract of four years and $27 million.
His is a story worth remembering. Williams is a guy who just loves the game and will do anything for it, including hours upon hours inside a gym and floor burns trying to get to loose balls.
He was “Kenny Hustle” for a reason.
College coaches will miss guys in recruiting and they whiffed on Williams, now age 29.
He went essentially unrecruited out of University High School in Waco, not receiving any Division I offers. So, off to New Mexico Junior College he went. He was recruited to TCU by Trent Johnson.
The year before, TCU went winless in the Big 12, but the Horned Frogs began trending upward and Williams was a pivotal reason why.
Williams missed all of the 2025-16 season because of a knee injury, but in Jamie Dixon’s first season, the Frogs won the NIT championship. Williams was selected tournament MVP after scoring 25 points and 12 rebounds in the title game against Georgia Tech.
As a fifth-year senior, Williams helped lead TCU to the NCAA Tournament, only the school’s third appearance in the college game’s most prestigious postseason tournament.
He credited his mother for his can-do attitude in achieving through adversity.
“As a kid, I grew up in a single parent household so I watched my mom struggle a lot growing up and she always had a great attitude, no matter what, she always had a great attitude and that's something I'm trying to carry on over to basketball and just have a great mindset every day,” Williams said. “Every day I show up and hopefully influence people around me.”
Over three seasons at TCU, Williams has all-time program ranks of fourth in rebounding (877) and 25th in scoring (1,125). He recorded 34 double-doubles and is one of five players in program history with more than 1,000 points and 800 rebounds.
The retirement of Williams’ No. 34 was certainly the highlight of the afternoon. The Horned Frogs fell to the antagonist Foghorn Longhorn 77-66.
Texas closed the game on a 13-2 run, all of those 13 points scored by Max Abmas, a Dallas Jesuit guy, who had a game-high 21 points. TCU, meanwhile, was held to one basket in its last seven tries.
TCU didn’t roll out a winning formula. The Frogs were also outrebounded by a wide margin by Texas 34-21, a difference Dixon called an “enormous number.” Texas had 14 offensive rebounds and 17 second-chance points to TCU’s seven and five.
That will get you beat.
Texas was clearly the more aggressive and physical team on Saturday.
Emanuel Miller, who is having a very good season and is a terrific dude, led TCU with 15 points and five rebounds.
TCU, now 16-6 overall and 5-4 in the Big 12, gets a much-needed, albeit brief, reprieve from the Big 12, where every game is like an operation performed without an anesthetic.
The Frogs next play No. 12 Iowa State in Ames at the boisterous Hilton Coliseum on Saturday. (Texas, on the other hand, is 15-7, 4-5.)
“I apologize for not rebounding [today],” Dixon said. “That certainly was the difference. We simply didn’t get it done. I’m really disappointed by it. It’s an enormous number. Somehow I didn’t get the message across that rebounding was going to decide this game.”
