UTAmaverick

Not sure if this is 100% accurate, but Fri. Nov. 18 has been reported as a very possible date for Nevada's makeup visit to Arlington. Wondering then if they would play you on that Wed. or Sunday? Or maybe even rare back-to-back nights in Arlington and Denton for some early tournament type conditioning?

Ugh. Congratulations on a nice win. Most of the UTA-UNT games are really close but you can see that this UTA team has some good players but is not cohesive offensively at all. UNT has so much more size and speed and organization on both ends of the floor than we do at this point. A lot of our turnovers were our own fault...stepping out of bounds, bad offensive fouls away from the ball, charging, etc. Our guys were tentative on passes and taking shots and just not fast enough getting to the glass or loose balls and you simply can't play that way against a good defensive team like UNT. Hence the 28 point loss or whatever it was. Hopefully we will get better by January for conference play. We still have more NCAA tournament teams like Nevada and Oral Roberts and a good Lamar team to play before conference starts. Good luck the rest of the way and hopefully we will see the Mean Green play an improved Mavs team next fall at the College Park Center. Hard to believe our new arena turns 10 years old in February.

Troy has a nice arena and it's a really great campus down there, but Scott Cross' record at Troy in 2 seasons (and 3 games this year) is 21–40 (.344) Ironically, who did we lose to in the first round of the Sun Belt tournament last year? Troy who was 11-17, 4-12 in conference play. Coach Ogden, now at Texas: Season Team Overall Conference Standing Postseason UT Arlington Mavericks (Sun Belt Conference) (2018–2021) 2018–19 UT Arlington 17–16 12–6 T–2nd 2019–20 UT Arlington 14–18 10–10 7th 2020–21 UT Arlington 13–13 9–8 3rd (West) UT Arlington: 44–47 (.484) 31–24 (.564) Total: 44–47 (.484)

My annual post on this board... UTA changed coaches in the offseason...former UT star Chris Ogden took a non-coaching job with UT and coach Beard after about a .500 record in 3 years at UTA. Longtime assistant Greg Young (going back to the Scott Cross era) is now head coach and this team is definitely a work in progress this season. About 1/2 roster is new, and that was apparent last night against ACU. Offense is going to take some time to gel. ACU is a good team this year that lost by 14 at Utah and took Texas A&M into 2 OT. But UTA lost that game last night because we turned the ball over 28 times and some horrible officiating didn't help as well. If we even turn the ball over just the usual 15-20 times, it's a 10-15 point win easily for UTA. For the first time in probably 10 years, UTA has some major height inside and defends the paint extremely, extremely well and we have signed a couple of strong 6'7 forwards for next year so defense and toughness may be the new direction, rather than guards hoisting a lot of 3s. We held ACU to 28% from the field. Azore is probably our biggest scorer but Shemar Wilson, a 6'9 freshman center turns a lot of misses into putbacks and 6'9 Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu is one of the best shot blockers in the nation. Pedro Castro can score a ton if he gets hot from outside, and Montez Young is a 6'5 freshman that has a ton of energy and can rebound, block shots and score from anywhere. I think North Texas is by far the most experienced team and wins by 10 in Denton. A rebuilding season for us, but I think coach Young can get us back to the Scott Cross level of winning in a year or two and hopefully see the kind of success North Texas has enjoyed he last few years.

Congrats to the Mean Green. Tough game to watch as a UTA fan. Maybe one of worst games we've played at home in a long time on a night where UNT could do no wrong. We had no answer for your height and skill in the paint (Goodman and Deu especially). UNT had no problem getting the ball into paint for easy layups. And whatever shots UTA or UNT missed, UNT was getting easy rebounds. We are not a tall team at all and having our 6'8" center Jabari Narcis pick up 2 quick fouls early really hurt our ability to score and defend the paint. A lot of fouls being called on both teams all night. Good luck the rest of the way, best wishes for a successful season

Looking forward to Monday. It's hard to tell how good this UTA team is. We're 4-4 playing the 5th toughest schedule in the country. Our good win is over a tall, big Tulsa team at home, two non-Div. I's at home, and a win today over Elon on the road. We got blown out by top-15 Oregon, lost by 7 at Nevada, lost by 6 at top-10 Gonzaga (both games we had a very good chance of winning) and lost by 1 to a good Furman team yesterday. Some close games/moral victories but eventually you have to find ways to win those games when get the chance. Had forgotten Woolridge was playing for the Bulldogs. I think he scored 20 against us that night. This is the first year with all-Ogden recruits for the most part. After Coach Cross was let go before the start of last year, the Kevin Hervey/Eric Neal led team had a lot of seniors on it, leaving us with a ton of scholarships to fill. Most of Cross' incoming recruits went to other schools and Coach Ogden had to rebuild a roster basically overnight. That roster, with 14 guys or so that had literally never played a Division I game together (a lot of junior college players, some were existing UTA redshirts), was good enough to give ya'll a close game and wind up winning 16 games, including going 12-6 in conference and a trip to the Sun Belt tourney finals before losing to a good Georgia State team. This year's team can play really well for 10:00 and then go scoreless for 5 minutes. The offense has relied on the 3 a lot (maybe too much at times), and as well all know, the 3 can be really good or really bad for most teams on any given night. We don't really have the size inside to dominate the paint, and our 3 point shooting has been very inconsistent. Our 6'8" 240 lb. center Jabari Narcis has actually been our best 3 point shooter. On defense, we've held teams to some bad shooting nights, we rebound pretty well but don't get a lot of steals. I think our KenPom ranking is around 118 or so. It's still very much a team that's showing improvement and finding out what works best on offense. I think it's going to be a very close game, especially since we're at home this year. What's the feeling in Denton about this year's UNT team? Like us, seems like ya'll have played a very tough schedule too.

SORRY if this goes long... I appreciate all the support on this board for our coach. I thought coach Cross did a great job over the years, ran a clean program and did well with a tiny budget (8th in Sun Belt) but the bottom line is we had a two-year window to make the NCAA tourney and didn't do it. In years past we Texas Hall to use an excuse for not recruting super-great players or losing games or whatever. But with the new arena and some good crowds and all our home games on ESPN3 and about half the road games available on TV as well, no excuses now. After winning 27 games (including two games in the NIT last year), this season there was a LOT of hype from bloggers and basketball writers and a feeling of 'NCAA or nothing' which is tough in a 1-bid league. Truth is (and I was nervous before the season about how good we'd be) we had a much thinner bench compared to last year, and I'd even say our starting 5 was about 80% as good as last year. We depended on guard Erick Neal and forward Kevin Hervey to score 40 or 50 combined every night, and try to find another 20-30 points elsewhere which didn't happen often enough. The crisp ball movement and tight defense and rebounding we saw in 2016-17 just wasn't there anymore. On any team where you have a legitimate pro-potential star or two, you often run the offense through them and other players have trouble finding a rhythm and sorta stand around or pass up good shots and we saw that often this year. Why let the 4th or 5th guy hoist an awkward three when Hervey or Neal can score anytime they want? So with a championship season upon us and a ton of seniors on the roster, we had about 4-5 freshman players redshirt, and a couple of DI transfers had to sit out this season as well...so next year's roster will have a total of two returning scholarship players that played this year (neither of which started very many games), about 7 or 8 guys who didn't play this year, and a couple of incoming HS and juco recruits. To make matters worse, David Azore, a HS scoring phenom from Houston area, probably could have made a case for freshman/newcomer of the year in our league (maybe I'm being optimistic, but he was supposed to be VERY good) and he got injured for the season in our preseason game at Oklahoma and didn't play a minute for us this year while he sat out due to his injury. He probably would have been our sixth man this year, a guy that can drive and shoot from outside. So...17-18 ends with 21 or 22 wins, an inconsistent team that failed to win the hyped mid-major games at Northern Iowa and vs. Florida Gulf Coast (lost by 20 in Arlington), and no big marquee wins this year (we did beat BYU first game of season and lost at Alabama by 1 point, but there were no big Texas/Ohio State/St. Marys/Memphis-level wins like in the last 2 years). And once we started conference play without the big wins and it was clear this wasn't gonna be a 28-30 win team, there seemed to be a little less buzz at the arena and all the writers that were writing about us and all the mid-major polls and RPI numbers that showed how amazing we were quickly seemed to disappear by mid-December. It was wierd. The season that shoulda been awesome, wasn't. Not that 22 wins is bad. But it wasn't 28 or 29. I'll admit, I only went to about half the games this year. Did we get spoiled from last year's team? So...the season ends and the AD has seen a ton of wins, but not any NCAA appearances and with a couple of 6-10 win seasons looming while we rebuild, and the next window for meaningful March games on national TV is realistically 2-3 years away at best. If you're the AD do you wait that long for your next NCAA appearance, or was this the time to make the change if you're going to? Not an easy call and I can't imagine the pressure of being a coach or an athletic director. No matter how much money these guys make, no thanks. I've been laid off several times in my career, and telling your family that you're out of a job is not easy. I can't imagine how painful that discussion was for our coach and the AD. How do let a very popular coach go and not expect for it to get a lot of coverage? Coach Cross will get a great job soon and make a ton of money and probably do quite well as his career progresses. As a fan it will be tough not seeing him on the bench but it'll be interesting to see who they bring in next year and see how the rebuilding process goes. I will renew my seats and support my school as I always have. Just as UNT has rebuilt and shown a ton of progress the last year or two with Coach M, hopefully we can show the same promise that the Mean Green have now.

Good game. Sort of. Ya'll dominated us on the glass, which didn't give us a chance to run much tonight. Both teams looked pretty bad most of the night. We couldn't make a free throw and the refs were calling every minor foul on both sides. The game had no flow to it, which is a shame because I don't think it ever let either team get into a rhythm offensively or let the best players really showcase their skills due to foul trouble. UNT is definitely improved but for all the high expectations of us going to the NCAA tournament, I think our last year's team was better. Next year we will have graduated all of our seniors and we will be mostly freshmen and sophomores, so I'm thinking if ya'll keep improving, and we rebuild, next year ya'll probably get an easy 10-20 win in Denton. Good luck the rest of the way. If I'm a UNT fan, I am very optimistic. Ya'll got a good coach and some good players.

you got a very good coach. just glad now we only have to face him once a season instead of twice. :)

UTA releases their OOC schedule today. Assuming the series is still on, it would be UTA's turn to host at College Park Center this year. With all of UNT's big transfers coming in and UTA's losing some of its best players due to graduation, could be a very good game.

at Georgia Tech http://www.myajc.com/sports/college/dates-set-for-georgia-tech-georgia-game-other-opponents/8X05Yc0B2pCrGMUr1eUk4H/

Wow. Interesting. So if I'm the coach and a star late-bloomer JC or big-conference kid averaging 40 points and 12 rebounds a game wants to play closer to home and can replace my lackadaisical freshman that barely attends practice, I can just release the other player? But I'm guessing if coaches did that too much, their reputation would suffer and future/current players would be afraid to play for them. As a coach is it almost tempting to save a scholarship until the late stages of recruiting in case a star player looking for more playing time or whatever might become available? Does transferring/releasing players affect graduation rates at all? Sorry for all the questions, it's just that I am totally fascinated by this topic, and I never really knew what the pros/cons were for both the students/coaches.

I don't understand this whole hundreds of kids transferring every year. Many of these players are allowed to leave when the school gets another coach. But doesn't the student agree to the school for 4 years? Not just playing for a specific coach? Whatever happened to honoring your commitment?

hoping the UTA-UNT series continues. Our biggest crowd of the season generally.

Tip your cap to Bakersfield. They are not a terribly physical team but are very tall, extremely quick and play good defense. Everytime we touched the ball, we were double-teamed. Our normally freeflowing offense couldn't get the transition game going, which is where we generate most of our offense. This is the first time I've actually seen the team look a little intimidated or frustrated. They shot lights-out from three in the first half and our usually-mediocre outside shooting finally returned to normal and we were down 16 in the first half. We made a nice comeback at the end but it really wasn't that close most of the game. Just got outplayed by a team that is playing very good ball right now. 27 wins for us sets a season record but we are gonna lose some serious talent due to graduation...next year will be interesting to see where the offense comes from.