BillySee58

That's not what's in doubt. SFA's exhibition game doesn't count towards their overall record either, but apparently it counts towards the number of non-D1 teams that they've played this year. Which counts towards the max of 4 non-D1 teams that a team can play a year. If exhibition games count against that total (not the overall record), like it did for SFA, then we have played 5 non-D1 teams which apparently would mean we would have to forfeit a game.

Don't know the story other than he wasn't playing. That leaves Mark Lewis and Lajaylin Smith as the only Louisiana guys left on our roster. I wish Jamarcus the best of luck.

Exactly. That's basically my point. Don't be concerned that we can't get a DT or Nick Orr if we get this Texas State commit to flip to us and get Xavier Washington.

We only have two spots left, according to Vito, in our upcoming signing class of 2014. This would give us 21 signees for the class, since we cannot sign 25 due to putting the walkons on scholarship that we have. We have 64 scholarship players on our roster heading into this spring semester, if my count is correct, now that Jamarcus Jarvis has left the team. 5 of those 64 players are members of the 2014 signing class. 1 grayshirt (Avery Fortenberry), 1 high school early enrollee (Connor Means), 1 division 1 transfer (Anthony Wallace), and 2 JUCO transfers (Greer and Akii Smith). With 16 spots left for high school or may JUCO grads set to arrive over the summer for fall camp, that would put us at 80 scholarship players. This also assumes that no one else leaves. There is also some concern that if we get two more commitments and someone like Nick Orr wants to jump on board late, then we won't have a spot, or we'd have to leave someone already committed out. Because we have 5 spots left, with 85 being, there is a way we can blueshirt guys. I brought this up a couple times before but blueshirting is having players come in as walkons and giving them a scholarship before school starts, then counting them towards the next class. The catch is that they can't have had an in-home visit or gone on an official visit to the school. Here are a couple articles on blueshirting. http://www.presnapread.com/whats-a-blue-shirt-anyway/ http://knoxblogs.com/evanseleven/tag/blue-shirting/ Just some food for thought as it pertains to our signing class and our scholarship situation for next year.

I wonder if this is any indication of how we stand with Xavier Washington. I'd love to steal another recruit from Texas State, like Reinhardt last year, but finishing with Washington and Johnson would still leave us with just one DT for the class in Shaq Jackson. Good thing is it looks like Jackson will play nose, which would allow for one of these DEs to pack on some weight and play the 3-technique. Fun stuff to watch with less than a month to go.

I'm pretty pumped about this game. We really need it too, with a couple road games and then two tough home games upcoming.

I'd say Idaho or NMSU are worse. Maybe Eastern Michigan too. But UAB should be a perennial "pad-the-stats" game for us once they join our division.

A-. Grades are relative to the grader, but we can all agree that this was a great season. Awesome to see recognition.

It has come out of people on this board very strongly since the hire (no pun intended. Seriously).

D-linemen make good strength and conditioning coordinators in my opinion.

This scares me as well. I thought our offense looked the best when we were more fast-paced and more spread-style. I thought mixing that in with what Mac's wants to do (pound the rock under center) was a good combo as long as both were occurring.

I'll be honest, my area of expertise is in football and baseball as far as knowing the ins and outs of the game. I played both on a 5A varsity level, still play club baseball at UNT, and I stopped playing basketball for my school once I got to high school. I've been intently following all three sports professionally and college since I was 7, but I'm not going to pretend like I can explain all the zones or hybrids like box and 1 or diamond and 1. But it doesn't take that to understand what our issues are. I'm not screaming for our coach to be fired, but it's pretty obvious that it was a bad hire whether you can coach college basketball or not. Our player's have not developed well under him and many regressed, we consistently get off to slow starts, we have bad fundamentals, we don't have good rhythm or shot selection on offense, and out of the 5 high school kids who have been committed the last two years 0 are playing on the team right now. Not to mention according to Tasty, who knows as much about college basketball as anyone, has said that Benford has been shady on the recruiting trail, committing violations that could hurt this program down the line. Those are the reasons a lot of people want him fired, and it doesn't take a division 1 basketball coach or analyst to see that. We have looked better this year as a team, granted I can't say we've played a team that's indisputably more athletic than us. We do have a chance to make some noise in CUSA play and it should be fun to watch, and we should give Benford a chance and support. We are pretty close to being a good CUSA team especially of USM is at the top of this conference.

If it's a clear-path-to-the-basket call on a breakaway then it means free throws. Comparing it to anything that happens in the half court is not a good reference.

Man, Andrew, I really don't like to bash you at all and I like when I get to agree with you, but come on. Things you've said lately: 1. BYU will be a top 20 team because of the way they shellacked us. Basically you've been downplaying teams before games, saying we have a chance and/or they aren't that good, then saying they're a good team after they blow us out or play us much closer than they should have. 2. Northwood is as good as a bottom level CUSA team. Maybe we do better against the bottom rung of CUSA than we did against Northwood, but come on. 3. We are 11-4 in your world. You better believe we should be 11-4 or better, especially considering we probably have not played a team more athletic than us all season. But we aren't. 4. Turnovers, missed free throws, fundamentals are not coaching problems. You constantly overlook player development and the fact that a good coach has teams that are fundamentally sound. How often do you hear "yeah he's a good coach but his teams are never fundamentally sound and don't play well together," in situation's outside of our's. CJ's development under Benford has been one of the most disappointing things during his tenure. You aren't a Benford backer, but I really feel like you need to open your eyes and take the green-tinted sunglasses off.

As of right now I'd say yes. USM has been one of the more impressive CUSA teams in non-conference. It'll be easier to tell if this was an impressive showing once we see how USM does against CUSA teams, but we'll know more about us by then so we'll see if it was a sign of good things or not. I know, I'm really going out on a limb saying wait and find out.

Really hope Gaines starts looking better. Scared we may have rushed him back. Voss has not always done great offensively against the better teams, but it's disappointing to see he only has 2 boards.

What's going on with our bigs? 0 points and 0 rebounds for Gaines, Coleman fouled out, and Voss has 0 points.

I really have trouble seeing this team do any less than having a .500 record in conference.

TJ needs more shots. Sometimes I hope Benford would just let him try to take over the game.

Come on guys! The football team scored 55 against them! We can score more than that tonight, right?

I have a couple more pleasant surprises. The first other one for me was how well the tight ends blocked. Andrew Power was one of our big losses and when he was out in 2012 it seemed our run game suffered. Miller, Prior, Tanner Smith and especially Marcus Smith really stepped up in the blocking game. Marcus Smith's emergence was really huge because he is the tallest and best receiver out of the group. He now looks like a complete tight end heading into his junior season and hopefully Reinhardt and/or Loving can continue the tradition of good tight end play under Coach Mac. My second surprise was the play of the true freshman. Mac is pretty heavy on redshirting, but we saw 6 out of 13 true freshman straight out of high school play this year after seeing just 5 out of 20 play in 2012. Dajon, Kidsy, Chad Davis, Shilleci, Sed Ellis, and Fred Scott all showed impressive signs as true freshman.

Nothing personal Andrew, but http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=86MO-JWTNjo

If we can beat SMU at home we might be able to hit 6 just on home games. Our home schedule could be SMU, Nicholl St, La Tech, UAB, USM, and an east division team. I know we are not looking great on the d-line, but it's not a catastrophe either. At least IMO. Lincoln and Orr had good years at d-tackle and hopefully some of the young guys like Sir Calvin and Syd Moore can step it up.

What 03 said. But any D1 team they play should have to have their game against UIW count as a game against a non-D1. Apparently including Southland teams.