BobFam

A little bit of national love from Rich Cirminiello I haven't seen posted: http://cfn.scout.com/2/1342652.html Stockpile more shares in … North Texas Entering the season, the Mean Green hadn’t had a winning streak—of any kind—in nine years. The program has now won four straight, capped by Thursday night’s pivotal defeat of Rice in Denton. North Texas is improbably bowl-eligible for veteran head coach Dan McCarney, and is still holding out hope of catching Tulane in Conference USA West.

My apologies if this was previously posted..... Even so, nothing like a positive UNT blurb..... ____________________________________________________ February 3, 2009 9:37 AM Posted by ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg If things pan out as expected, which is never a given in recruiting, Michigan State's 2009 class could be a program-changer. ESPN's Scouts Inc. currently ranks the Spartans' class 21st nationally, the program's highest rating in quite some time. As national signing day approaches, here are five recruiting moments from the last five years........... ..................Five memorable Independent and Others recruiting moments Riley Dodge, QB, North Texas In 2008, Dodge switched his commitment from Texas to play for his father, Todd Dodge, at North Texas. It was the second consecutive time a highly-touted quarterback from Southlake Carroll (Texas) shunned Texas for another school. Dodge was a backup last year after recovering from surgery, but was abruptly thrust into the starting role a few weeks ago when Mean Green starter Giovanni Vizza announced he was transferring. The Link

Let's just snap our fingers and make this happen! Here's the link My apologies if this has been previously posted. Bob

We were 8-2 that year with losses to only Memphis (12-30) and Arkansas (15-17) Here's a site that you can see all the scores of all past UNT games: http://cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/su...s.php?year=2005 Scroll down and click on the desired year range to see those scores. Bob

New news I haven't seen posted before. Enjoy! Here's the link

Some kudos to the board: Where North Texas fans congregate: Go Mean Green earns bonus points for having a running thread discussing the Countdown since the Western Kentucky preview.

This won't last long, but look at the front page of ESPN.com today - May 1st. They need to thank North Texas for that reference.

As soon as I wrote this, I found out that it's an IT problem at the DRC. Brett should be back up and running by this evening.

Very interesting and great find. Here's his index at the DRC Looks empty at the moment!

Here's the Link 5. The pain in the butt in each conference race will be ... These teams don't have enough in the bag to win their respective leagues, but they're going to ruin the dreams of several favorites, or give a far tougher game than expected. Sun Belt - North Texas Bombs away. Head coach Todd Dodge installed his high-octane passing offense with some wacky, wild results ... and no defense. Oh sure, there was a 601-yard passing game against SMU and 478 yards and eight touchdown passes against Navy, but the Mean Green loses both games. With the offense getting a year to jell, and with the defense getting the most immediate attention from the recruiting class, going from the dregs to the top of the Sun Belt might not be that long a journey. No, UNT won't have a great all-around team, but it'll bomb its way into a few wins.

Article from CFN: http://cfn.scout.com/2/728747.html 1. North Texas The class is heavy on ... The passing game and the secondary. If you're going to throw the ball like the North Texas does in the Todd Dodge offense, you need players to run it. Dodge got them with Riley Dodge, his son, coming in as the team's top quarterback prospect, but do-it-all playmaker Jeremy Phillips and athletic Willie Taylor will compete over the next few years. Five receivers are coming in, along with seven defensive backs, led by star JUCO transfer Adryan Adams at corner, to change the defense immediately. The player who'll someday be a really big deal ... QB Riley Dodge The player you might care about this year ... OT Nate Jenkins What it all means to the real world of college football ... Those Sun Belt fans who got tired of North Texas winning all those championships a few years ago will have to get used to it again if this class is as good as it looks on paper. Dodge has created an exciting atmosphere around the program, and it shows with a loaded group of prospects that should immediately make the Mean Green a player again.

You can read it all and then some at www.midmajority.com Here's the UNT blurb: Game! Of! The! Night! 12/20/2007: Centenary at North Texas Centenary (Summit) at North Texas (Sun Belt) Super Pit - Denton, TX 8:00 PM EST We hear there's some battle royale of double-digit undefeateds happening somewhere tonight, but we don't give a %^#&. Our invisible G!O!T!N! broadcast team will be in Denton, providing virtual "TMM 360" event coverage of two teams that couldn't be more different, disposition-wise: the Gentlemen and the Mean Green. Centenary (7-4, 1-1 SL) is 3-1 against the great state of Texas (loss: at Baylor), and notably took advantage of Bobby Knight's niceness and beating Tech earlier this month. This right here is the 15th-best 3-point shooting team in the country, and the Gentlemen are great from the line, sinking 75.5 percent of their freebies (that's 17th best). And don't forget about the Gents' "white-glove defense", which may allow a lot of shots to go in but ends a lot of possessions prematurely: Rob Flaska's squad forces a Badlands Conference-best 17 turnovers a game. Tonight, the staid Gentlemen will travel from their geodesic Gold Dome to the funky Super Pit, where they will be challenged to get down. North Texas (7-2), defending Sun Belt champions, have shown themselves to be gritty on the glass again, averaging a league-best 37 rebounds and grabbing 59.7 percent of all available missed shots (only 13 teams do it better). The Mean Green are led by 5-10 Josh White, one of the most exciting freshmen in Hoops Nation with his game-winning heroics against Oklahoma State earlier this season, and his 18.6 ppg. He's a nice player -- a perfect gentleman, even -- but the team is Mean! Mean! Grrrr! Tune in for the ultimate battle that will determine the collective mood of Hoops Nation.

My cousin took the route of knowing that he probably wasn't going to play sports professionally after college. He ended up getting a scholarship playing hockey at Harvard. That degree looks mighty nice no matter how you slice it. I bet Tomlin ends up playing at Rice if he can get the opportunity. Just a guess.

Read the article here. And here's the UNT blurb: Excuse me if I say that UNT is a joy to watch. Sure, people use that as a throwaway time-filler statement, but watching the runnin', gunnin', generally undersized Green makes me so happy that I just want to go out and shoot some hoops. The computer disagrees slightly, giving this team a downward bump for a gutty 88-72 loss at Texas, followed by a whopping points-dock for letting Hartford play them too close in a 105-97 Super Pit showdown. Saying "Super Pit" is a joy too. The article also mentions USA and UTA.

You have to wonder if this is the year we get multiple bids to the Big Show. Here's a link from the Mid Majority website. The Sun Belt. It's been a good, if not super-spectacular, early season for a conference that's been pretty much pre-assigned to a single bid for the past decade-plus. Sure, the overall nonconference record's in the toilet (.408) and it can't beat the SEC (0-7), but there have been some good signs: a 5-4 mark against Conference USA, even pulls against the WAC and ACC, and winning records against the A-Sun, OVC and WCC. And there have been a few teams distinguishing themselves. Like South Alabama, coached once again by Ronnie Arrow (who took a few years off to build up Corpus Christi). Team USA is 6-3, and beat Southern Miss last night, 75-68. And 6-2 Western Kentucky, whose 69-62 overtime slog win over Nebraska means that the Huskers can't use the term "Big Red" anymore without paying WKU licensing fees. And there's North Texas, another darling of the computer poll. The league champs' game with Texas was on the Full Court last night, and I thought they handled themselves extremely well after the Longhorns stormed them out of the gate. The Mean Green pretty much won the last 35 minutes of that game, freshman Josh White was fantastic (28 points), and UNT outrebounded them too! Final score: Dirt Brown 88, Mean Green 72.

I might be mistaken, but I believe that OSU was favored by 6. Anyone else remember?

Thought this was good stuff given how many good Mid-Major teams are out there. He's also the only Sun Belt freshman mentioned in the article. Here's the link South • Josh White, North Texas (Sun Belt), 5-10, 167 Averages: 16.3 ppg and 7-for-14 3-point shooting in four games Breakout game: 25 points and six rebounds in a win over Oklahoma State Outlook: White received a lot of mid-major interest out of Baton Rouge's Christian Life Academy. But now that he's arrived on the Mean Green's scene, he's caught some high-major attentions too. The pint-sized freshman's giant performance against OSU, which ended with him being carried off the floor on his teammates' shoulders, earned him Sun Belt player of the week honors.

If you play around with the last four numbers of the DMN link, you can get a couple of interesting Rivals recruiting links: JUCO National Top 50 #25 - Phillip Freeman is on our radar screen Rivals.com 100 to Watch for 2009 We're not on anyone's radar Lone Star Recruiting's Top 100 for 2009 One's to watch in Texas - I like the previous ranking information as well - it's too bad they don't do this for all their rankings.

See Article for additional links North Texas (Sun Belt) at Texas-Arlington (Southland) Texas Hall - Arlington, TX 8:05 PM EST Are you ready? Are you ready to Take It To The Stage? No, not that Stage... this one. Two 3-0 teams will go at it tonight in Arlington, ranked 28th (UNT) and 39th (UTA) in the early version of the RPI. Despite all that, they'll try their hardest not to fall into the audience. You may remember North Texas from such brackets as 2007, as they're the defending Sun Belt champs. They didn't win at the NCAA's, but the Mean Green did take down Oklahoma State last week in an 82-73 Big XII beatdown at the Super Pit. They're averaging 88.7 points per game on the young season, and have found an electrifying scorer in 5-10 freshman Josh White, the reigning SBC player of the week, who was carried off the floor all Rudy-like after scoring 25 points in the OSU upset. One outlet called him the 10th best player in Louisiana last year! How did they get this guy? UTA won this matchup last year on a buzzer-beater, and this is a far better team than the 2006-07 version. The Mavericks lead Hoops Nation in field-goal percentage at 59.3, and have hit an eye-popping 74 percent of their 2-point shots. That is patently ludicrous, but true. And these weren't D-II teams or anything, their wins are versus UALR, Texas Southern and UC-Riverside. Jermaine Griffin, a 6-8 senior who I've been plugging as a possible Southland POY candidate all summer, has gone 15-for-18 from the floor on the way to a team-leading 19.0 ppg. Make my funk the J.G.-funk.

I've never seen this posted before, but my apologies if it has. The former players link is way interesting, showing where former players have most recently played. Bob http://www.usbasket.com/team.asp?Cntry=USA...969&Women=1

Here's a little love - at least we got 13 points in the October 24, 2007 poll: http://www.collegeinsider.com/mmpoll/

CFN has North Texas as a favorite by 6 points. I know the line is UNT +6 or +6.5, but its interesting to note that even with that spread, three of the seven writers picked North Texas to win, and two of them have UNT covering that -6 spread: Scroll down just past the middle of the page 7:00 PM Florida Atlantic at North Texas -6 Fiu – FA Rich – NT* John – NT Zemek -NT MB – FA WIS - FA Clucko - FA PICK - FA

Link .........One of the few highlights for the Dolphins was the play of running back Patrick Cobbs. Because the team currently has three running backs locked onto the roster already, Cobbs has been fighting an uphill battle to make the team. But he might have helped his cause Thursday. Cameron said Tuesday it would be tough for the team to keep four backs -- but it was still possible. With 33 yards on seven carries and two catches for 8 yards in the first half, Cobbs was perhaps Thursday's top performer. COBB MAKES CASE He finished with 44 yards on 15 carries -- not bad considering he was running behind a third-string offensive line. ''I tried to make the best of it,'' Cobbs said. ``I hope I proved to the coaches that I can play.''

Riley Dodge article in Sports Illustrated. Too huge to post here, so here's the Link My apologies if previously posted but I didn't see it. Enjoy! Bob

Link I thought it was interesting to read that he was the practice squad offensive player of the week 10 times before he was activated. Here's hoping his abilities on special teams shine. Tidbits: _____________ Backups Patrick Cobbs, who scored a game-winning touchdown in both exhibition games, and third-round pick Lorenzo Booker have shown enough flashes to give first-year coach Cam Cameron some options. "All of them bring a different aspect to the scheme," 13-year veteran fullback Cory Schlesinger said. _____________ Cobbs has been making big plays, including a touchdown and two-point conversion during an 18-17 win against Jacksonville. The nation's leading rusher and scorer in 2003 at North Texas, Cobbs is determined not to spend another season on the Dolphins eight-man practice squad. He said he was even better in New England's camp in 2006. But he was traded to Pittsburgh, cut after one game and was the offensive player of the week for the Dolphins' practice squad 10 times before he was activated for the final five games. "I feel like I had a good chance to make this team and I still feel like it," he said. "But I'm not getting ahead of myself." _____________