drex

This coming Monday night the men's team takes on Denver at home in the SuperPit. All real Mean Green fans are asked, invited and begged to be at this game. The winner of this game will have a leg up on the western division of the 'Belt. Please come support your team....they will need the home cooking. The game will be preceeded by a women's game, so should tip off about 7:30.

Conceivably we could beat Denver by running on them. We have a deep bench and could wear them down. Also, a pressing defense coupled with IMMEDIATELY playing basketball would help. We cannot sleep walk for the first three or four minutes of the game. I think we can win....whether we do is on the shoulders of the players. Do they want this game? Time will tell. If we lose this game by a large margin, the conference race for us might just be over.

Everything on the basketball court is new this year. If you will notice, we redid the typeface and updated the color. The color green is exactly the PMS color that our little friends in marketing/communications dictated. One reason for the new 'brightness' might be the effect the lights have on it. As you know, the lights can play tricks on colors.

Adler's ideas are on the right track. I am crushed that he doesn't like the 'Pack the Pit' slogan that we used way back when....how about the theme being ' valiantly attempt to fill the coliseum'...that seems catchy to me. Anyway, seriously, this year's basketball teams deserve promotional excellence.

It could be done, it should be done and it has been done in the past. All it takes is dedication, hard work and imagination.

Oops, I'm showing my age....I forgot that Tulsa had moved over to the CUSA. Anyway, a good win over a known national school.

Ladies and gentlemen get ready to rumble. The Tulsa win leads me to believe that we have a very good chance of winning the Sun Belt this year. Tulsa is not a top teer team in the Valley, but it is good enough to make me feel real good about our road win. If the fans will show up and support this good team we have, we have a good chance of being undefeated at home in Sun Belt play. Couple that with the team's increasing ability to win on the road and you have a champion. See you at the SuperPit. What a nice change of pace from the DD debacle of '05. Hats off to the women, too. Could both teams go to the big dance? It could happen....hope each of you will be there to share the pride of basketball's return to prominence.

This was potentially a watershed game for the basketball program. My congratulations to the athletic department for not realizing it and doing nothing to promote the game other than a lame email one day prior to the game. Sure, they mailed out tickets to the game to season ticket holders. Was anything said about Houston beating LSU and I think Arizona...No. Were there any promotions at local banks who would have been happy to supply tickets to customers. Was there a Santa Claus at the game for kids? Was there even an attempt made to have cheerleaders and a full pep band at the game? My hat is off to Johnny Jones and the team for playing such a great game that the athletic department managed to make a home game for the Cougars. Had we had even 2,000 of our own people at the game we might have given our kids the home team advantage that they deserved and we might just have pulled off the upset. Oh well, it ain't football, so apparently it doesn't deserve any help from the athletic department. Sure it is close to Christmas, but I bet there were a lot of people who would have dropped by to see the game if they realized who we were playing and the importance of the game to the basketball program.

Will Dickey be at at the banquet, or will there be 'technical difficulties?' If for some reason he does not make it, let the Coke carrier speak.

A good substitute for the New Orleans Bowl. Now let's see Villareal promote the game like he would have had it been the precious New Orleans Bowl. It is a chance for us to knock off a well respected team and do something in basketball that Dickey could not deliver this season. If you really love the Mean Green, go to this game.....it is every bit as important to the athletic program as some of our football games have been.

Oops, I just noticed it in MeanGreen61's post.

Anyone know how to get on the AState message board....I'd like to wish them luck in the bowl.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if Dickey came out of that meeting and held a news conference and thanked all the fans who followed the team through this 'Bataan Death March'? Dickey needs to learn some interpersonal skills....he cannot rely totally on his won-loss record to endear himself to the fan base---assuming that he cares about the fan base. Considering all the negative from the season, the home attendance was decent.

People gravitate to excellence. Here is a quick fix for the problems mentioned. What if the administration and selected members of the Denton business community got together and committed to one 'big time' opponent to come to Denton for football and one for basketball. If Troy can bring Mizzou to Troy, we should be able to bring a Big Twelve team to Denton. We also should be able to bring a 'big time' basketball team to Denton each year. The athletic administration has been way too timid about quality basketball teams in Denton. The SuperPit is a venue that anyone would come to if the money was right. Money is the key to this thing, but if we 'think big', I think that the Denton business community would respond. The leadership for this undertaking has got to be the UNT administration. If the business community was presented with a good plan, they would respond. If we did the forementioned, it would be a good step forward to 'break out' of our preoccupation with mediocrity.

God help these people on the board, since the athletic department will never take them seriously. This is some pr move by someone who has no intention of doing anything that it suggested. Athletic departments over the years at many schools are collared with the 'athletic council' instituted by senior administrators. Once the meeting is over and the obligatory retoric is finished the athletic administrators snicker as quickly as the members have left the building.

Just for the record, it never was SWMS....it was SMS....you remember them, the ones who have been to five NIT's and five NCAA tournaments, making it to the sweet 16 vs. Duke about 5 years ago. They do not have much of a football following and want to concentrate on basketball in the Missouri Valley conference. As a side note, the enrollment of Missouri State is close to NT's.

I have a Hayden Fry era helmet, a jersey worn by Walter 'Weasel' Johnson, a track jersey from the MoValley days which has a lightning bolt on the front and various media guides and gameday programs plus some pics from the filming of 'Necessary Roughness'.

Given the fact that one of the lagacies of UNT athletics is the many logos over the years, I have always thought that it would be interesting to have all of the logos on the floor of the basketball floor....along the sidelines, etc. Of course, the current logos would be big and the former ones smaller. That way, anyone who attends the games could see the logo from their time at NT. This could also be done in some form at the football field.

If I were DD I might begin to look over my shoulder. Bobby Ray is rotating off the Board of Regents and a new president is in the immediate future. Those facts, coupled with UNT's ability to pay for anything that they really want to do, should make life a little uneasy for DD. I think that I am beginning to slightly feel the winds of change blowing into Denton. Has Dickey taken this thing as far as he can? Perhaps, just like anyone at any job, there is finally a wall that you hit.

Great idea to use the old pit. Could you imagine coming into the pit pregame with the old pit dimmly lighted and game films from the old days playing on one wall of the pit with music and snacks and drinks. It would be fun...could be like a pre game pep rally atmosphere. As you remember, it doesn't take much noise to get the old pit rocking. It is my understanding that the old pit will get less and less usage in the years ahead, as intramurals and others will be using other venues. The availability of the old pit should be excellent for such events.

They need to realize that they are in the entertainment business. Halftime performances need to be beefed up. Remember when we had the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the Bud Light Daredevils and the Kilgore Rangerettes? Go more show biz with player introductions like the Detroit Pistons do (this would require dumping the current P.A. guy). The idea of an ongoing student raffle is an excellent one. Remember introducing the 'starting crowd' for tonight's game when all student groups were introduced? All this would require work on the part of the athletic department..............

Does anyone really believe that this guy is going to pay any attention to the survey? This is the guy who ran off the current President. The survey is a public relations gimmick. Remember how we were treated during the logo madness.

With the upcoming retirement of Bruce Bell, there will be one North Texas grad in the athletic department. While I do not advocate too much 'in breeding', it would be productive to have some people in the department who are NT Exes and who really live and die with the fortunes of the department. I suspicion that NT's 2 (soon to be 1) grad in the department is lowest in the U.S. You really need a person or two who remember the history of the school and can relate to the donors and fans.

SMU alumni, thanks for the classy posts and I feel your pain. The thing that you might note is that most college athletic departments are run by vandals and interlopers. The vast majority of them are not from the university they work for and are just a phone call away from jumping to another job. Seems to me like maybe SMU might want to look very close to home for new athletic leadership. Can you say alumni of SMU? Those are the people who can get you on down the pike...people who eat and sleep blue and red. SMU alumni at the key positions would make the work ethhic much better. They would hate to fail for their own careers, plus they would hate to let their alma mater down. Just a thought.

I guess you knew that before kickoff they were confiscating seat cushions. That's right, little old ladies had to go back to their car and leave their seat cushions. Some were literally confiscated until an announcement that it was OK to have seat cushions. No umbrellas with few ponchos at the souvenir stand, no seat cushions, no bringing tortillas, no taking cokes into the Ben E. Keith pavilion....man isn't this fun?