Jamie Dixon is the 22nd head coach in the history of TCU men’s basketball and is in his eighth season with the Horned Frogs and his 21st season as a head coach.
Dixon, a 2007 TCU Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, returned to his alma mater on March 22, 2016, after serving 13 seasons as head coach at the University of Pittsburgh. His .680 winning percentage entering the 2022-23 season ranks 12th among active coaches with at least 20 years of experience and tied for third among coaches who have served for at least 20 years in a major conference.
Dixon, who has earned four college basketball National Coach of the Year honors, including the 2009 Naismith Coach of the Year, previously served as an assistant at Pitt, Northern Arizona, Hawaii and UC Santa Barbara. Dixon is a two-time gold medalist with the USA U-19 team having won as head coach in 2009 and 2021. He was also instrumental in bringing the USA’s U19 team to train in Fort Worth in 2021. Dixon has been an NABC member for 30 years and recently served as NABC President from 2020-22.
A proven winner, Dixon has a reputation for turning around programs with little success before he arrived. Prior to his arrival at TCU in 2016, the Horned Frogs went 2-16 in Big 12 play and went 0-18 the previous season. The 12-win improvement from 2015-16 to 2016-17 was the second-largest turnaround in school history. Prior to Dixon’s arrival at Pittsburgh in the 1999-2000 season, the Panthers had eight 20-win seasons in its history. In Dixon’s 17 seasons at Pitt, the Panthers had 20 wins a total of 14 times.
As an assistant coach at Northern Arizona, Dixon’s team made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history in 1998. As a graduate assistant at UC Santa Barbara in 1991-92, the Gauchos finished in with 20 wins and second in the Big West. UCSB would go 10 years before another 20-win season.
At TCU, Dixon has led a run that has seen the Horned Frogs make back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time in 70 seasons and win their opening round game of the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons for the first time in program history. In both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons, TCU finished a program-best tied for fifth place in the Big 12 and had a program-best eight Quadrant 1 wins.
During the 2021-22 season, Dixon led the Horned Frogs to five top 25 wins and their first NCAA Tournament win in 35 years with an opening round win over Seton Hall.
Dixon coached Mike Miles to one of the most decorated careers at TCU. Among numerous postseason awards, Miles was the first Horned Frog to be named All-Big 12 three times and the first named to the Big 12 All-Tournament Team twice.
The 2019-20 season saw the Horned Frogs defeat three ranked teams for the first time in program history, including a win over No. 2 Baylor, the highest ranked home win ever at TCU. It was one of 14 home wins by TCU, for a total of 59 home wins by Dixon, the most-ever at TCU over a four-year period. Dixon helped coach Desmond Bane to multiple postseason honors, including becoming the program’s first All-Big 12 Conference First Team member. Bane was selected as the 30th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, TCU’s first player drafted in the first round in 25 seasons. One season later, RJ Nembhard joined the Cleveland Cavaliers to join Bane and Kenrich Williams in the NBA, the first time ever that three Horned Frogs appeared on NBA rosters in the same season.
In the 2018-19 season, Dixon led TCU to the NIT semifinals, the second time in school history the program had made three postseason appearances and the first time since 1999. Another evidence of the winning culture Dixon has brought to Fort Worth, the 68 wins over the three-year period of 2016-19 are the second-most over any three-year period in school history. With a 23-14 record, it was the first time in 19 years that TCU had recorded three-straight years of 20 or more wins. In those 23 wins was a victory at No. 17 Iowa State, the Frogs’ second road win over a ranked team in program history, and three wins to earn the Diamond Head Classic championship. Dixon is one of four active coaches who have had 20 or more wins in 15 of their first 16 seasons as head coach joining Jim Boeheim, Mark Few and Bruce Pearl.
During the 2017-18 season, Dixon led TCU back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 20 years by coaching the Horned Frogs to a 21-12 record. In doing so, Dixon became one of just 10 coaches all-time to make the NCAA Tournament in at least 12 of his first 15 seasons as head coach. Dixon led the Frogs to several marquee wins including their first Big Monday win over No. 7 West Virginia, a win over No. 22 Nevada in the Naismith Hall of Fame Classic and the Emerald Coast Classic championship. TCU’s nine Big 12 wins were its most in any conference in 17 years.
Having took over a program that went 2-16 in the Big 12 prior to his arrival, Dixon needed little time to complete the second-largest turnaround in school history. In his first season, Dixon led TCU to a 24-15 record in 2016-17, an improvement of 12 wins from the previous season. Win No. 24 gave TCU its first postseason championship, when it beat Georgia Tech, 88-56, at Madison Square Garden for in the NIT title. The victory also tied for the second-most wins in school history and was the most in 19 seasons.
Dixon showed the nation that TCU can win in the Big 12 Conference. After compiling eight Big 12 wins in their first four seasons in the league combined, the Frogs won six games in 2016-17. TCU accomplished rare feats like sweeping the season series over Texas for the first time in 30 years, defeating Iowa State for the first time in 20 years and winning at Kansas State for the first time in 18 years. TCU’s run to the NIT title was sparked by defeating a top-ranked team for the first time in school history when it beat No. 1 Kansas in the quarterfinals of the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship.
In his four seasons at TCU, Dixon has coached six players to All-Big 12 honors, three to the USBWA All-District team and two to the NABC All-District team. In his first two seasons at TCU, Dixon helped develop Kenrich Williams, who started 29 games in his first season with the New Orleans Pelicans and is in his fourth season in the NBA, now with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Dixon's 13-year head coaching tenure at Pitt saw the Panthers compile a 328-123 record and earn 11 NCAA Tournament berths, including three Sweet Sixteen appearances and one Elite Eight. He is one of only eight coaches nationally to guide their program to 11 NCAA Tournament appearances in the last 13 seasons and led Pitt to its first two NCAA Tournament No. 1 seeds in 2009 and 2011. Only two coaches (Mark Few and Roy Williams) in NCAA history took their school to the NCAA Tournament more times in their first 13 seasons as a head coach than Dixon.
Dixon guided Pitt to three Big East Championships, including two outright regular-season titles and one tournament championship. He set an NCAA Division I all-time record for best start to a coaching career after eight seasons with 216 victories. In addition, his .658 career Big East win percentage ranks as the best all-time mark in league play, surpassing the likes of Georgetown's John Thompson, Connecticut's Jim Calhoun, Syracuse's Jim Boeheim, Louisville's Rick Pitino and St. John's Lou Carnesseca. Dixon is one of only 11 coaches in NCAA Division I history to win over 100 games during his first four seasons of a coaching career and helped Pitt capture the program's first No. 1 national ranking in 2008-09.
Dixon's players at Pitt excelled as well with Steven Adams, DeJuan Blair, Cameron Johnson, Lamar Patterson, Brad Wanamaker and Sam Young playing in the NBA. In all, he has had six selected in the NBA Draft. Four of his players have earned consensus All-America honors, 16 were All-Region honorees, 10 earned major conference awards, including four league Most Improved Player honorees, and 19 have been named all-conference.
Over 17 seasons, the Panthers rose to national prominence with Dixon’s guidance. The three-year span from 2001-04 produced the winningest period in school history as Pitt won three consecutive Big East regular-season titles, advanced to three straight NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearances, captured the program's first Big East Tournament title in 2003, while compiling one of the nation's three best winning percentages (.846 with an 88-16 record) from 2001-04, including a 51-2 home record. Dixon’s 18 wins without a loss to start the 2003-04 season stands as the fifth-most wins without a loss to start a head coaching career.
Dixon has over 30 years of major NCAA Division I coaching experience, including stints at Pitt (17 years), Northern Arizona (four years), Hawaii (three years) and UC Santa Barbara (one year). Additionally, as an assistant coach, he served under a school's winningest coach in four different stints. Including TCU, his teams have won a combined 10 conference titles, advanced to the postseason during 23 different seasons and his student-athletes have earned five league player of the year awards.
In international competition, Dixon led the USA Basketball U19 Team to the 2009 and 2021 FIBA World Championships. Dixon’s teams went 9-0 in 2009 and 7-0 in 2021 for a perfect 16-0 record in international competition. In the 2021 FIBA World Championships, Dixon and his TCU point guard, Mike Miles defeated France, 83-81, in the championship. Also on that team were five selections in the 2022 NBA Draft including No. 2 overall selection Chet Holmgren. USA has won five FIBA U19 World Cups in 30 seasons and Dixon has won two of them. The first one in 2009 broke an 18-year drought for USA. On the 2009 team Dixon coached future NBA players Klay Thompson, Gordan Hayward and Shelvin Mack.
As a student-athlete at TCU, Dixon played for Jim Killingsworth and led the Horned Frogs to Southwest Conference titles as a junior and senior. He earned All-SWC honors in 1987 and was an All-SWC Academic honoree. In addition, he led the SWC in assists as a senior and earned TCU’s Dutch Meyer Scholar-Athlete Award. He was inducted into the TCU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007 and received a bachelor's degree in finance in 1987. Dixon earned a master's degree in economics from UC Santa Barbara in 1992.
Dixon was selected in the 1987 NBA draft by the Washington Bullets. He went on to play professionally with the Lacrosse Catbirds of the Continental Basketball Association and also in New Zealand.
Dixon is married to the former Jacqueline Corteway. The couple has one son, Jack, and a daughter, Shannon. The son of New York City natives Jim and Marge, Dixon spent much of his childhood in the Bronx. He has two sisters: the late Maggie Dixon, who served as head women's basketball coach at the United States Military Academy, and Julie Dixon, who is a Los Angeles attorney.
