utamav91

If they had made Tony the main player in the offense, could he have averaged 25 points a night? Like, with his size, just dump it into him and let him score around the paint and get to the free throw line?

But didn't UNT used to play only like 2-3 home games and like 7-10 road games in non-conference games as recently as 5-7 years ago or so? I guess every coach has their own scheduling philosophy, but seems like wins would be more important this year than RPI. Maybe UNT is trying to schedule some cupcakes at home because Conference USA is gonna be every bit as tough as Sun Belt.

I really hope they work something out. Next to the OU game at College Park Center, I've really been looking forward to the UNT game in our new gym for a long time. No matter what the score is, a good rivalry is a lot of fun for fans of both teams.

At least in the game they played against us in the CIT tourney, that's a good program. We might go .500 against them if we played 10 times.

congratulations on the new board. We've really enjoyed ours. It's nice seeing instant replay

I wonder if coaches sometimes try to leave a scholarship open for the spring signing period to maybe try to have a chance to sign a transfer from a bigger school?

Great hire... Athough their fans are in for a shock if he coaches the SFA/Princeton system. They could go from the fast-break, no defense style of the current team to potentially 55-point offensive nights but a lot more Ws. I know UTA always had trouble speeding up the games against SFA, Denver, Samford who play that style. He's always had good, strong athletes who really put their team first, ego second and win a ton of games. A class act and a nice addition to our league. And I'd think San Marcos (with Austin and San Antonio nearby) would be easy to recruit to.

He's a good player and with his size, he's hard to stop. That being said, a team with any size should be able to stop him. We couldn't. Why? We only had one guy 6'10 and everyone else was 6'6 or less. Just put 2 big 6'9 guys that can absorb some fouls and his 46%FT will keep him at 15pts a game. NMSU doesn't shoot the 3 very well (only 10 attempts per game I think) and their guards had several passes picked off, so you can collapose the defense inside and dare the Aggies to beat you from more than 10 feet out and see what happens. If they make some 3s, tip your cap because their averages say they won't. We just didn't do a good job guarding him.

The game we played against OU and even UTSA twice in the CPC, there was a good turnout of fans from both teams. With UNT just up the road and the rival these two teams have, it should be a great college hoops atmosphere. How good the teams will be is anyone's guess, but I totally agree. We have to have UNT-UTA on the schedule every year.

Ya'll get to visit the College Park Center next year. Could be a 53-52 UTA loss. Our offense stinks.

Utah State was in Arlington last week to play the Mavs. For team with as many guys injured and playing new positions, they're still very good. They only played 7 guys, 8 total on the bench. And with all those injuries, they're still a 19-20 win team. If they had any depth, they'd be a 24-win team and probably a sweet 16.

sorry to hear ya'll lost tonight. We scored a whopping 51 points against Louisiana Tech tonight. Our offense is just sad sometimes. The dumpster image could come in handy for some of our games too...

I think the score would be UTA 55, UNT 73. I saw in the paper that UNT lost a tough game last night, and we haven't been playing well lately, at least at home. It's been rough at CPC this year. We've failed to score 50 points 4 times this season now. Last night's game for UTA against Seattle was reminiscent of some of the bad mid-80s Mavs teams on the stage. Mavs have no inside game if our main center is defended well, we were 2-23 outside, and got down 20-4 to a team that had only won 5 games on the year and no conference wins. We play well on the road, but rarely win at home. Last night's crowd of 1100 was very Texas-Hall like...not much noise and in a 7000 seat arena, just not much home court advantage lately. Part of it could be we've got basically a Southland team playing in a better WAC, but we're gonna have to get a LOT better if we're gonna go .500 in the SunBelt next year, much less try to contend.

UNT 68, ULM 43

UTA's season is circling the drain. After beating New Mexico State at home by 21 last weekend, we scored a whopping 35 points against Denver the other day, then scored 46 against Boise State last night. Two 15 (or more) point losses at home. We have forgotten how to score. It's obvious we can't shoot the 3, now we can't score from 3 feet away. Looking very much like the bad 80s-90s Mavs teams UNT used to beat by 15 twice a year in the Southland.

Long-term, Benford is a great coach for UNT. Short-term, there could be a rough season or two...but isn't it that way everytime a new coach comes in? And I think Marlin just signed an extension...

It's a tough call for a coach...build his system around a star player for 2-3 years, or look long term and get that star player to fit into the system he's probably been successful with all his career. A couple of years ago we had NBA prospect Marquez Haynes (think he went to an NBA camp, is now playing overseas) who averaged 21+ a game, and even though defenses double and triple-teamed him...he still got his 20 a night plus a ton of assists. He was by far the best player on our otherwise average team (and in the conference probably). But the cool part was all his scoring came within the flow of the offense, not just taking selfish shots. What he put up, he had good looks at. With Tony's game...if you did build an offensive strategy to show off his skills...could it be done within the flow of UNT offense? Maybe set up a lot of pick-and-rolls or try to establish a good inside-outside game? I'm thinking if ya'll had another good 3point shooter or two...that would take pressure off Tony a lot. Our centers face the same thing--not much good Mav perimeter shooting, so our paint players see more defensive pressure.

Making a good facility that much better. Congratulations! The new scoreboard sounds similar in size to what we have. We also have a board that displays scores and stats mostly on the end that doesn't have a balcony. Ya'll will enjoy having a nice board over the center of the court.

UNT by 25. We're not just losing games this year, we're not even in most of them.

Someone earlier was right--we only have like two guys over 6'6 on the team, and one of them hasn't played much this year (our 7'0" guy). We've had a lot of 6'5"-6'6" guys on our roster the last few years that can handle the ball like a point guard, but crash the boards like a 6'9" player. We're getting two 6'9" guys next year (a junior college transfer and a high school kid) to replace Reves (6'10, 240)..but if they're athletic enough, our roster of 6'5" small forwards can handle the glass and we can get away with a much smaller lineup than other teams. Somehow, it works.

Do ya'll have another big center to take the pressure off Tony at all? Or is Tony ya'lls Jordan Reves? We really one have one dominant center and some good power forwards.

The way I saw it, you saw a Mav team committed to playing defense tonight. We triple-teamed Mitchell and crashed the glass all night. Some nights the three just doesn't fall--if it did, we'd have beaten OU. To me, seems like North Texas could use another good strong post player--a back-to-the-basket guy like we have in Reves. Outler and Gruziecki knocked down some threes (hadn't been great from outside this year) and escaped with a nice win. You've got a great coach but it's gonna take a few games (or a season) to get his system down as a team. Mean Green will be fine once conference play really gets going I think.

Not going to talk noise...but you saw some good UTA defense tonight. We made a good team rush some outside shots they'd normally be open for and have time to get a real good look at. I was hoping the defense would be there...we didn't let Mitchell see many good looks in the paint and we dominated the boards. We were able to break your press for some easy baskets. If we don't do all 3 of those things, we lose.

I read they are/were tearing out the bleachers at Texas Hall now that the CPC is open...

It wasn't pretty but we won 64-58. Samford slows the game down like S.F. Austin, which always gives us problems since we like to press and play up-tempo. UTA picked up a lot of fouls early, Samford shot a lot of free throws as a result, we turned the ball over a lot but are developing a nice inside game. A few threes fell for us finally, Samford hoisted and hit just enough threes to make it close and we escape with a win. This year's team isn't as good as last year's at this point in the season, so I'd say it's anyone's guess to who wins next week. If UTA can play a consistent 40:00, I like our chances but Reves and Edwards are gonna have their hands full with Mitchell. If you can open up the floor with some threes, we're in trouble I think.