BillySee58

One player we offered who I have not made a thread for is Jalin Barnett, a 5-star o-lineman out of Lawton, Oklahoma. http://247sports.com/Player/Jalin-Barnett-27402 Barnett is a long shot at best, but one of his teammates is very intriguing to me. His name is Mahlik Hanna, and he's a ~ 6'1" 182 lb linebacker http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/player-Mahlik-Hanna-156933 Hanna will be a 3-year starter at Lawton, one of the premier programs in the state of Oklahoma. He's an undersized linebacker who likely projects to safety in college, and that's where most of his D1 looks will likely come at. However, I think he has John Skladany outside linebacker written all over him. Can absolutely run sideline to sideline and hits with some authority. Great closing speed. Had 111 tackles, 3 sacks, and 3 interceptions as a junior. If he continues to grow and improve near the way he did in between his sophomore and junior year, Hanna could be a great fit in our defense. It'll be interesting if he comes down to Denton and the coaches see him in person this summer, because I could easily see them falling in love with his game and trying to get him. Here's Hanna's film. http://www.hudl.com/athlete/556574/mahlik-hanna

These things are always on Saturdays in the spring, when I always have club baseball games :/

Correct. It absolutely works both ways. They have to work together as well. You need good coverage and a good rush to consistently be good against the pass, including the quick passing game as you pointed out. But I do agree with Mean_Green09 that without a good pass-rush qbs will pick apart even good secondaries. But yes, it does work both ways and you need both.

QB play was the difference between TCU of the last two years and TCU during those 4 years of finishing top 15, more so than the move to the big 12. If their qb play would've been anywhere near the play they were getting from Dalton and pre-suspension Pachall, they would've won plenty more games the last two years. They've been competitive in every game and they have one of the best, if not the best, d-line in the big 12. They've recruited to the point where if they have good, on a big 12 standard, qb play they will be successful. Coach Mac has a system in place where if we get at least average qb play, on a CUSA standard, we will be in the hunt for the west division title. If we were ever in the big 12 we would need much more than that from the qb position to be competitive in the big 12. There are two programs in the big 12 that can compete for the big 12 championship with average qb play, and that is Texas and OU and even that has been their downfall over the past few years and helped lead to the rise of schools like OSU and Baylor. I like our potential over TCU if we were to enter the big 12, especially with us being a large public school, but we too would fall into the group of every team in that conference not named OU or Texas. Our success would be dependent, not solely but mainly, on qb play. Just as TCU's is now.

Oops. Wrongful accusation by me. That's a self imposed 2-day ban for me. I thought it was you because of the avi. It was actually MeanGreen13. But yes, that's why I said for good reason. Why had we not heard of him if it was Sam Rice? Also, if him and/or his brother are coming in on scholarship or are put on scholarship before the 2014 season then he/they would count towards the 2015 signing class.

I asked if it was Sam Rice earlier when his name first appeared on the workout sheets and people shot me down (UNT90). For good reason. Why haven't we heard that we got a D1 starting guard , from SMU no less, to transfer here?

I don't think anyone's bashing the fact that there were a lot of people at the game. It's more to do with the conversation this week on here about how attendance has dropped significantly under Benford, and how that would've been true again if you don't count the kids who came to the game on yellow dogs. I, personally, like the promotion. But I understand why it's a joke to some on here. Especially if the attendance from last night, coupled with the fact that we beat the last place team by 2 at home is used as justification for why this season wasn't that bad and things are turning around.

Teams in 5th place through 9th place get a bye, top 4 teams get double byes. This excludes FIU, which is ineligible for the CUSA tournament. FAU currently has the 9th seed (lowest seed with a bye) at 5-6, which we are two games behind at 3-8. We have them next Saturday. If we lose to them there's pretty much no way we get a bye, going into our last two games against Tulsa and UTEP. We are mathematically eliminated from getting a double bye though.

Darn you and your inside info! You heard Akeem Richmond's girlfriend broke up with him and he was going to play bad! Well that's my guess at least.

Statement game. Rough road trip for USM.

A win is a win. Yes, you can't argue that. But when you're continually struggling to win games against bad teams, and non D1 teams, then that's the sign of a team that will likely struggle against good competition. The CUSA isn't even very strong this year, and we're still struggling mightily against this competition.

Yes, whenever Al reaches it he will be with 20th player to have 1,000 points in his NT career. Also, Jordan needs 43 more, so he should get that as well with at least 8 games left.

Yup. The teams we all knew were pretty good. We just didn't care what you had to say about how good they were, because we did not look good in those games. Or how "a win is a win" against all those non D1 or lower level D1 wins. We knew those were bad precursors to when the games would actually count. Surprise surprise, they were.

Are you noticing your trend here? You did what you could to justify nearly ever loss of the year, not just to us but to yourself as well. This almost always included hyping up the team that we lossed to by saying they would be this or that down the road. You were very confident and convinced in what you were saying. And people were not saying that about OU. People were saying they were good coming in and everyone was predicting we'd lose by a lot, not just because they thought we were bad. Same with SFA. Nobody cared how good they were, because we were more athletic than them and there's no excuse for getting run out of our own gym the way we did. They're a really good team, well coached, and could easily make some noise in the tournament. But saying they'd lose few games being in the Southland wasn't going out on a big limb. Especially not when you were saying that after all of our losses.

We should have a chance in every game of the last road swing of the year, just based on talent going against FAU, FIU, and UTSA. But I mostly agree, which is sad considering how much more talent we have than those teams.

Not going crazy at all. Kind of like how Andrew said BYU would be a top 20 team that only loses to teams at or around the top 20. They have lost 10 games and are no where near the top 20, and have lost plenty of games to teams not near the top 20. Then he brought them up a few weeks ago saying our loss to them didn't look as bad, because they were winning home games in the WCC. Sorry Andrew, not gonna let you live that one down . But do know, I only don't let you live that statement down because there was some chatter that the BYU loss wasn't as significant as it looked, and it was okay to get run by 30 points (40 point lead before they let off the gas) because they were good. Also, where did Green Mean direct his statement towards Andrew? I think he was just saying a general statement.

No no, you have the order wrong. It's beans, work out, charts. As in, after having beans, working out will always result in charts. Especially on leg days That wasn't a sufficient answer to your question, was it?

I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. I just think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying a little. I'm not saying a high school coach says "gee, I hope my freshman are good this year so my team might actually be good down the road." You're right. He can't rely on having good players at his school in order to be successful, but he's limited by what players he has to work with at his school. I really don't know what there is to disagree with about that. It's a fact. D1 coaches get to go after the guys they want. They don't get them all, but they are in control of who they recruit and who they get on their team. I realize you are not putting all the blame on the players and none on the coaches. I just feel like you're not realizing that people complain about Benford because of the state that he has put the basketball program. Not blaming him for single-handedly causing any of our losses purely because of bad coaching.

I agree, but at the same time you can't expect too much out of a school devoid of basketball talent in their area. Good coaches get all they possibly can out of their players during the four years that they have them for. That's all you can do as a coach, from a developmental standpoint. And you have to if other schools are getting bigger, faster, and better players from their area. You can't recruit in high school. At least not comparable to the way you do in college. Especially not at public schools. My point is, if a coach at a high school has an annual losing record, and everyone knows he's playing schools with better talent every night, he isn't at fault the way a college coach is, knowing that he is the one bringing in those players.

Sometimes when a team has not quite broken or is around the .500 mark you'll hear their fans say "we might be an improved team from last year, but have the same record or maybe a little worse." Their was some of that from us going from Mac's first year in 2011 to his second in 2012. We might have the opposite situation going into this year. With our schedule, the way we play at home, and Mac's ability to get his team ready for road games, which is now starting to show in the win column, we could possibly be a worse team than last year and still win at, around, or more than 8 regular season games. I also fully believe we were better than an 8 win regular season team last year, but we didn't get it so I can't fully make that claim. Losing 3 games that we all know should've been wins was the toughest part of last season, but it was still a great season and I'm not complaining.

I've been rewatching all these guys film lately and looking at our roster down the road, and I see Tillman Johnson being a 3-year starter. I see him being in the rotation this year and taking over for either Q Brown or Darryl Mason after this year. He might only be 6'1" or 6'2", but he has a good build and long arms, and he could potentially play strongside or weakside defensive end. Really love this pickup and this class. Forgot to add, we had some players offensively and defensively with some crazy stats. Brandon Garner had 10 sacks as a linebacker, Andrew Jones giving up just one completion all year, Goree's 28 receiving tds and all the other skill guys putting up crazy numbers, but Tillman Johnson's numbers seemed to get overlooked by us. Tillman had 7 sacks, and an astounding 37 tackles for loss and 4 forced fumbles. Coach em up Coach KP!

In slightly better news, Alzee Williams is just 7 points away from reaching 1,000 on his career and becoming the 20th player in school history to reach that plateau.

Of all the things that you continue to say that are just complete BS and totally untrue, I'm going to stick to one thing that I want to clarify to you and Greg G (Mean_Green09). You guys both keep saying how everyone on this board is too quick to put the blame on Benford, and not giving the fair share to the players. Both of you have cited that those people on this board don't know about being on a team/legitimate basketball team, etc. The thing is, both of you are focusing way too much on what went wrong each individual game, and who messed up where (players and coaches). This is Division 1 basketball. It isn't high school ball, where the coach has to make due with the players who live in his high school's zone and hope they're good. The head coach in D1 basketball has a system, picks his coaching staff, recruits the players to fit his system, and puts the system into place. Obviously you guys both know this stuff, but you both look past it. Benford is fully responsible for the state of the basketball program, not just the losses or the season as a whole. The loss to Old Dominion you can chalk up to player A doing this wrong or player B doing that wrong, but the state of the basketball program is on Tony B, which leads to these losses. And it's clearly only getting worse. As 90 said, it'll be new players' faults every year as long as this continues. And darn these posts for not being productive! Wait till Tony B gets to bring his own players in to control the paint! Oh wait...

Sometimes you're too skeptical. Just like you kept warning everyone before the season that Ball State wasn't going to be a win in your opinion. It gets talked about every once in a while, but I don't think people realize how good we were last year. In retrospect, it's kind of hard to look at our win-loss record without feeling like we lost all of our swing games, except for maybe Ball State, but we handled them in the second half and you could see who the better team was. The only way a team could beat us was if they had a stellar passing attack and qb, or we were giving up non-offensive touchdowns, coupled with our offense being stagnant (particularly early). 3 of the 6 tds scored in the Tulane and Ohio losses (games we losses by a combined 9 points) were not given up by our defense. Unless FAU's defense was getting scores and/or scoring special teams tds, no way they would've been close to our 2013 team. As for this year, if our offense can be a little more productive and consistent at home, only SMU and maybe USM have the team and passing game to keep things interesting. FAU has the defense to keep it from being a blowout, but let's not forget the superhuman effort it took from Eric Soza just to score 21 points against us in Apogee.

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