Leaderboard

We get it. But, why every f***ing thread?

I think we'll all do our part to make sure this business succeeds: By drinking in the parking lot while talking about how much we love sushi, and then never going inside.

Very intelligent and well-articulated reasoning. I didn't understand the merits of keeping him on before, but I can definitely see his point of view. Time to move on now and trudge forward.

MGB: UNT athletic director cites several factors http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2017/03/why-wren-baker-decided-to-wait-to-fire-tony-benford.html/

so there is an opinion on this board that, if you have a coach that has demonstrated over 5 years it is VERY LIKELY you will lose out and finish last, that you don't make any change because you might still lose out and finish last? Just want to make sure I understand.

What's everyone's opinion on "Rock and Roll Sushi" being printed on the sides of the Sushi Chef hats?

+100

MGB: Plus some tidbits on where UNT stands heading into the search http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2017/03/mgb-video-wren-baker-talks-about-unts-search-for-a-new-mens-basketball-coach.html/

First Team CUSA All Freshmen Team. http://conferenceusa.com/news/2017/3/7/MBK_0307170526.aspx

You have been wrong on the majority of your 28.5K posts but this one takes the cake. No, I am glad RV is not here so you are wrong there. I am not a shill that takes marching orders from anyone in the AD. In fact, I have never met or talked to anyone in the AD, past or present so you are wrong there. I do give a crap about the success of our athletics, wrong again. No, I don't consider WB changing his pants a major change. Wrong again, 0-4 so far. Mad that you are here. Wrong again. In fact, I like picking on you. Your senseless posts amuse me, you are my pet monkey that makes me laugh. I want this program to stay small and unimportant. Wrong again. Like usual you were wrong on 100% of your entire post. Go grab a banana and get some rest, I have a lot planned for you tomorrow.

What's telling is you ask me what hard decisions he has made and I respond back saying neither you nor I have a clue what decisions he has made. Your response doesn't address my statement at all. You don't have a clue what changes, major or minor, he has made. You also don't have a clue what you are talking about, just admit it and stop your senseless whining.

I don't know and neither do you. No way either of us has a clue what decisions, easy or hard, he makes on a daily basis. Anybody that claims to know is full of s**t. I wonder why you care since you are a Horned Frog now.

DRC: UNT's search for a new men's basketball coach begins with high hopes http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/sports-headlines/20170306-the-search-begins.ece

I would like to thank Brett Vito for having followed up on this question. Whether I like the answer depends on the future. Right now a lot of what he said sounds like the AD version of "coach speak" to me. If he is generally against mid-season changes that is not a disaster. But if he turns out to pair that with being too slow at the trigger even after the season, then that is a problem. I want to believe that he would not have given Benford a fourth , much less a fifth year, had he been here for all his tenure. So far however, I have not seen anything that makes me certain he would have. That said, the n is small so far. Softball -depending on how things go- might be the next test. I can see that WB has organisational talent and he sure is communicating better than RV. But the Wren also needs to hold his coaches accountable, which will mean he has to be a mean man sometimes and so far -from the outside without seeing all the details- it feels like he wants all coaches to think he is their best friend.

I don't think firing Benford halfway through year 5 when he never should have gotten year 3 or 4 would tell anyone anything other than you finally did what should have been done 3 years earlier. The coaching community is tight. They know more than anyone what a disaster Benford is as a head coach and how much rope he has been given. If anything, NOT firing Benford hurt the perception of this program with coaches, not the other way around.

Benford might have been a good x-and-o mind, but his downfall was an inability to coach the kids...on pretty much everything. im of the opinion that new blood likely would have equated to a new energy, better chemistry, and improved execution from fundamentals to game flow/strategy.

I mean, never mind the former players' quotes about the disaster that TB was and how they didn't get up for games. They were just cancers, you see.

There are coaches out there who seem to be able to take solid programs, and there are coaches who are able to take terrible teams and make them into solid winners--it seems that not every good coach can do both. JJ has shown that he can make something of a bad program at North Texas. As bad as the state of the program is right now, in some ways it was pretty comparable when JJ took it over before. He wouldn't be my first choice now, and I think we can do better, but if he could at least take the program to where he had it before, I could think of worse things.

Coaching changes are an opportunity. Not one you WANT to have but it's omelet making. I believe there are VERY few coaches who could be successful at any school. Things have to line up. Each school has its own culture, its own natural recruiting base, its own challenges, a coach has to have the right type of support, it goes beyond recruiting budget and salaries, you just have to get the right fit for all those pieces. Now in my not worth a Starbucks grande opinion AD's mess up more searches than they get right. Sometimes a school goes into a search overvaluing the job. You see it all the time. Schools take a flier at huge names for their spot in the college universe and suddenly hire Who? because they panic when they get a string of turndowns. When Arkansas hired Bobby Petrino he had turned them down early on. The AD finally gave up and hired a search firm who brought him Bobby Petrino. The difference? First time Arkansas told Petrino what the job paid, second time Petrino told Arkansas what the job paid. It was a search nearing disaster until they coughed up a lot more than they planned. Sometimes an AD gets played by agents. The agents have a client who is happy where they are but the agent wants to get the salary up, so they play a few schools to get the guys name out in the market to get the current school to deliver a better deal. Since a raise is the goal, it gets leaked. Get played enough and the search appears to be going south and with that some potential candidates get cold feet wondering what is wrong there that these guys are bailing out. Sometimes an AD just gets sucked in by a good history. Memphis botched a football search by hiring the top recruiter at LSU because he was a great recruiter. Well recruiting to Memphis isn't recruiting to LSU. Sometimes an AD is too sucked in by a great interview to not think about fit, the potential assistants (any competent search includes who are you hiring for your staff), and management skills. Best of luck Greenies.

*whispers into the void* What if we just wait to see who he hires before we continue to rip him?

If JJ wants to be considered, and makes contact, he should be looked at along with the others. We could do a helluva lot worse! I know the conventional wisdom about the second time around, and all that. His situation at LSU IS sad, per the article, because I believe the man can coach. JMHO.

Thankfully he is not holding his cards close to his vest.

UNT90, stop with the negative waves! Don't make me come thru this screen and cursor whip you! LOL! Let's see what happens with this hire.

Shtick?

WB knows more about basketball and running an AD than anybody on this board. He has come out with the exact reasons why he didn't fire TB in mid-season. Nobody can claim he was indecisive or plain didn't do anything about the situation, he absolutely followed his plan. You might not agree with his reasoning but please shut up with the same lame griping that he is sitting around doing nothing.

agree with him or not, you have to like his thought out responses.

When customers stop buying things, people get laid off but rarely will the CEO be fired as a direct result. They hold no water according to ... you? Good to see you're sticking to the script. Keep it up, someone will adopt you ... oh wait, TCU has already. Go whine and complain over on their board since you've said you no longer care about the North Texas basketball program.

Not being a member of that community, your argument sounds plausible. Also, I stopped buying season tickets after year 1. Obviously, I would have found any way out of that fiasco after that year... Certainly after 4 years it would have been obvious.

WB got a pass in basketball this year, because he could blame poor performance on the last guy. I hope the search for a new coach was going on long before the season began. Realistically, not a lot of basketball coaches are looking for jobs midyear and the ones that are, probably are not worth the entertainment. Making this job publicly available at the first possible moment its not viewed as rude to do so says WB is impatient. Making the move mid season, unless you have a guy ready to go, is irresponsible unless the head coach is a total ass hat. For all of Benford's inability to put a winning basketball team on the court, I feel like he is a decent guy. I say that knowing nothing about how he treats players.

I mean, how else will you know who they are?

Ahhhhh the beauty of the ignore button!

Again, not sure why you can't comprehend this, no way anybody outside the AD knows what changes have been made and what changes are in the works and what changes are pushed back to a later date. You have NO clue how an AD is run, but don't hesitate posting continously how it should be run. Not trying to shut you up, I think it's funny how consistently you are wrong. I think you are about the same as CougarQueen. Both supporters of other schools that don't have a life and have to frequent other fan boards.

"We will go and find a coach that will make us highly competitive in this league.” Wren, let's shoot higher than just CUSA. Baker is committed to finding the best possible candidate and is willing to pay whatever it takes. Being the first hire of his tenure, he understands the implications it could have. “If I have to come back and move some money or raise some money to get the right person, I would do that,” Baker said. “I believe the commitment to our university from our donors and fans is at an all-time high. This is an important, important hire at an important time for our athletic department and university.” I think The Wren gets it! Now, go make it happen.

It might, but I agree with 90 with regard to Scott Cross. He just received a contract extension through 2020 last spring. An offer from a solid basketball school is likely on his horizon. And even if not, he would probably better served to stay put with the winner he has built at UTA than to jump into the dumpster fire Benford has left in Denton.

All kidding aside, I drove alongside RV in his brand-spanking new Corvette the other day on Bell. I also felt really ill the rest of the day. Not if sure if the two are related.

And we will agree to disagree that giving a coach every season included in his contract is holding someone accountable.

In a previous post I hypothesized several reasons why Wren didn't make a move at mid season. Nice to know I got something right for once. :)

“Kids don’t respond to interim coaches like they would head coaches. Generally speaking that is the players’ worst academic semester. They are less focused in the weight room and in life. There are going to be more issues with behavior. For all of those reasons, I felt it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

The change could have happened anywhere from 1-4 years. It certainly should have been corrected at the end of last year, but look at the guy in charge of that at the time... I am not sure how firing a guy half way through the season is viewed in the coaching community, but I would imagine, it is frowned upon. Being a good boss that people want to work for includes treating people right. Lets say you are offered the same position from 2 competing schools, money is about the same, and one AD has a track record of firing people mid-season, warranted or not. We can't money whip people here. So making it attractive to good candidates in any way possible has to be a bonus.

I would take JJ back in a heartbeat if it meant we didn't have to sit on our hands this time of year. Edit: and the rest of the season for that matter.

NT is in the exact same place that they would be if they fired Benford during the season. That statement of terminating Benford during the season that many advocated would have accomplished next to nothing. It would have made a few disgruntled fans happier, but the potential loss of a few fans is not going to make much a difference in the long run. What is important is that Baker gets this hire right. What I took from the Baker interview that is very important, is NT's willingness to spend more money on the program. You can try to coordinate all kinds of factors to finding the right combination to be a successful program. The primary coordination is always going to be compensation compared to peer programs. That is going to trump tradition, locations, and facilities. Baker said all the right things in this interview. Talk has been cheap around here for a long time, so no one is likely to get too excited. However, Baker was about as positive as possible about the potential of NT MBB.

But he did deal with the MBB coach, just not to your satisfactory timeline. Now he is working with a search committee to find a new coach. Will it take 1 week or 3 months? I don't know, I am a finance guy so will leave that up to him. You believe that an athlete not having their own equipment or locker is little stuff? I guess you and I just differ in our priorities of the AD.

That aint good. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Script or block text? What about hat stickers?

I can't image there will be too many resume's better than JJ's that apply Proven success at the mid major level and P5 experience as a head coach

He also didn't mention Derek Thompson.

JJ would be an interesting hire. I wonder how this message board would respond. It might be amusing.

J.J. played his collegiate career at LSU. There was more to it than pay.

The Hattiesburg Hustler will promise the finest of Pacific salmon pre-restaurant opening and advertise such ineffectively. But once the restaurant opens, customers will find only fish species found in Lake Ray Roberts offered on the menu... Also, a donation jar for Southern Miss athletics will be sitting on the register counter.

Food might suck, but we know the facilities will be great...