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After a brief hiatus from our summer questions series on UNT football, we are back at it today with question No. 10 — Does the pressure to break through break UNT? I’ve been working on a series of stories that will run later in the summer on the 100th year of UNT football that will look at the program’s past and its future. The one thing I’ve heard over and over from UNT officials, coaches and fans is the bottom line — “UNT just needs to win some football games.” That isn’t exactly breaking news. It’s the same thing fans and boosters have been saying as well. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/07/post-spring-questions-series-no-10-does-the-pressure-build-and-impact-unt.html/

Former North Texas standout Tony Mitchell sat in the seats at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Thursday night, waiting to carve out a niche in Mean Green history at the NBA draft. Mitchell did just that. He just had to wait a lot longer than most analysts projected. Mitchell was expected to be selected in the first round, but he slid all the way to the seventh pick of the second round, where the Detroit Pistons snapped him up. Despite dropping into the second round, Mitchell, a 6-9 forward, was selected higher than any player in UNT history. Kenneth Lyons was the 23rd pick of the second round in the 1983 draft and was UNT’s highest selection before Mitchell. John Horrocks was picked by the Mavericks in the fourth round of the 1984 draft and was the last UNT player selected before Mitchell, who was accompanied to the draft by head coach Tony Benford. Mitchell’s teammates, UNT fans and the team’s assistant coaches gathered at Treehouse Bar & Grill in Denton to watch the draft on television. Read more: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/north-texas-headlines/20130628-men-s-basketball-pistons-draft-mitchell.ece

UNT is officially a member of Conference USA today, the big moving day in the latest round of realignment in college athletics. Several schools, including Middle Tennessee, made their big promotional push today. UNT put out a video this morning, but is waiting until Thursday when it will have a captive audience at the annual fireworks show that is moving to Apogee Stadium. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/07/c-usa-day-arrives-and-a-few-notes.html/

We are just hours away from a milestone in UNT history. The NBA draft is tonight, and just about everyone on the planet has Tony Mitchell projected to be selected in the first round. UNT hasn’t had a player taken in the NBA draft since 1984 and hasn’t had a player selected in the first round ever. The last time UNT had a player selected in the NFL draft was back in 2004, when Cody Spencer — a staple of the Glory Days bowl teams — was taken in the sixth round by the Raiders. Spencer got tired of waiting to hear his name called and went fishing to relax. Bottom line — This is a big, big day for UNT. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/the-big-day-is-here-mitchell-unt-on-the-clock.html/

There was a lot to like about what transpired during the 2012-13 school year when it came to UNT athletics. The UNT soccer and tennis teams made the NCAA tournament. The Mean Green volleyball team made the conference tournament final. UNT fans spent time looking forward to the school’s move to Conference USA this summer. But not everything that transpired was candy and nuts. Today, we look back again in our fourth installment of the year in review on a historically tough year in the Big Three (football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball). The UNT football team was just a year removed from coming within a game of .500 at 5-7 in 2011, but slipped back to 4-8 last year due to a few missed opportunities while rebuilding under Dan McCarney. The UNT women’s basketball team was also coming off a season where it just missed breaking through to finish .500 only to switch coaches and fall back to 11-19 in its first season under Mike Petersen. And then there was the real downer. UNT came into the men’s basketball season projected to be among the top mid-major teams in the country. UNT had posted six straight seasons with at least 18 wins, had a future first-round NBA draft pick in Tony Mitchell coming back, along with its other top six scorers. Then Johnny Jones left for LSU, UNT suffered a host of key injuries, the guys that were left struggled to adjust to the system installed by new head coach Tony Benford, Mitchell stopped being Mitchell and later admitted he coasted through the year and the Mean Green crashed to 12-20. UNT hadn’t finished with a record that poor since the 2002-03 season. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/looking-back-at-the-school-year-part-iv-a-down-year-in-the-big-three.html/

When it comes to sports, I’m of the belief that teams make their own luck, that good teams seem to get all the breaks because they are, well, good. One can point to a bounce here or there that is completely random and changes everything, like UNT’s “Miracle in the Desert” win at New Mexico State years ago, but those breaks are few and far between. Still, as UNT enters the 2013 season, it seems like it is due for a few of those timely and inexplicable bounces to go its way. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/post-spring-questions-series-no-9-will-the-ball-finally-bounce-unts-way.html/

Over the years, there have been a series of key players who have either come pretty much out of nowhere or seen their roles expand unexpectedly and really help UNT. Jeremy Brown was a former walk-on, so was Ivan Delgado. Both ended up playing key roles for UNT. A few years ago, Casey Fitzgerald came out of nowhere to have a really good career at UNT. Scholarship players are a different story when it comes to unexpected contributions, but I dont think anyone expected Zac Whitfield to win a starting job and then play pretty well after making the move from running back to cornerback. Carlos Harris contributed after being thrust into the lineup after Brelan Chancellor broke his collarbone. And that brings us to this season, and the key question Does another difference-maker emerge? Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/post-spring-questions-series-no-7-does-a-difference-maker-emerge.html/

UNT head coach Mike Petersen said a few weeks ago that he was on the verge of signing a top prospect who could make an immediate impact on the program. Petersen confirmed today that player is Janis Peterson. The 2011 California Junior College Co-Player of the Year is in the process of finishing her two-year degree and will enroll at UNT this summer. Peterson originally signed with San Jose State but did not qualify academically. read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/unt-women-add-top-juco-player.html/ This post has been promoted to an article

Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin talked about Kelvin Gaines decision to transfer to UNT today with Bill Koch of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Cronin echoed what UNT head coach Tony Benford expressed yesterday. Cronin said that Gaines is a good guy and a great student who needed to move on to find more playing time. Transferring is a good move for him, Cronin said. He did a great job academically. Im extremely proud of him. Hes a wonderful young man. read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/cincinnati-coach-has-high-praise-for-gaines.html/

Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/a-unt-legend-leaving-denton-gaines-looking-more-certain.html/

UNT fans were pretty spoiled for years when it came to watching great defensive fronts. UNT had Brandon Kennedy, a two-time Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year; Adrian Awasom, who went on to play for the Giants; Evan Cardwell, who played for the Dallas Desperadoes; Michael Pruitt, who passed on an offer from Kansas to play for the Mean Green. The list goes on and on. As UNT heads into the 2013 season, its defensive front is a huge question mark instead of the strength of the team it used to be. UNT lost its most productive player in defensive end K.C. Obi and a nose tackle with size in Tevinn Cantly to graduation at the end of last season. The situation has only become more dicey since. JUCO defensive end Quenton Brown looked like he would step in for Obi, who led UNT in sacks 5.5 and tackles for loss 10.5 last season, but tore his ACL late in spring practice, an injury that will likely put him out for at least the first few games of the season. UNT head coach Dan McCarney later indefinitely suspended Richard Abbe, one of the only guys the team had left with the size to play nose tackle, due to off-the-field issues. High school signee Dylan McDorman had to give up football due to shoulder injuries. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/06/post-spring-questions-series-no-5-is-unt-in-trouble-up-front-defensively.html/

So the story of the Stockstills will now be told simultaneously, probably for the next five years, and there lies some interesting twists and turns — especially for the fans that may judge the special circumstances of a father-son football pair and the media that covers them. Rick was at least slightly concerned about both until his son signed in February at Cincinnati, which recently granted Brent a full release from his scholarship. Father-son example Rick and Brent are both level-headed and ultra competitive, so the coach-player relationship between them will probably work itself out, but that’s another story for another day. The question here is about how fans and media see the unique situation. Brett Vito, the North Texas beat writer for the Denton Record-Chronicle, has first-hand insight into that. Vito covered former North Texas head coach Todd Dodge and his son Riley, the one-time Mean Green quarterback, when they were together from 2008-10. Vito has some words of wisdom for MTSU fans and especially yours truly. “We wrote about Riley being the coach’s son. We acknowledged it right off the bat, and everybody knew it,” Vito said. “But after that, he was mostly just the quarterback. “In newspapers, you often have to acknowledge something that everybody already knows. But eventually you’re just belaboring the point.” Read more: http://www.dnj.com/article/20130528/BLUERAIDERS01/305280028/A-new-chapter-begins-Stockstill-family

UNT offered a player from Oklahoma with one of the best Twitter handles Ive seen recently: Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/05/sunday-morning-recruiting-notes.html/

We have suddenly gotten pretty busy on the recruiting front in the last day or so, with some new developments and UNTs first commitment. I talked to Claude Mathis, the head coach at DeSoto, this morning about Johnavan Grahm, the defensive end who committed to UNT last night. Mathis said that UNT has really gotten a pipeline going to DeSoto and that Grahm should be a steal. Mathis said he has great work ethic and will continue to grow. He could be an inch or two taller by the time he graduates. Hes 6-1 now. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/05/friday-morning-recruiting-notes.html/

The final stop in the Mean Green Caravan (the annual pep talk for UNT fans) was tonight over in Fort Worth. I swung by after arriving back in town. UNT fans really seem like they could stand to have a morale-boosting evening. And the UNT athletic department puts on a pretty good show. It was a tough year in the land of the Mean and the Green with UNT going 0-fer in the big three sports when it comes to posting a winning record football, mens basketball and womens basketball. There were a lot of good things that happened, but its been a long time since UNT went without a winning season in a revenue sport. The theme for the night was why there is hope that type of year will soon be only a memory. The highlights: I asked Rick Villarreal about the 2015 football schedule and the possibility that UNT will have just five home games. Villarreal said the schedule is far from done and the plan is to have six home games every year. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/05/notes-and-thoughts-from-the-final-stop-of-the-mean-green-caravan.html/

Tony Mitchell commented at the NBA Scouting Combine this week about how he coasted at times last season. It has been open season on Mitchell since with people commenting on what that says about Mitchell as a person. I thought it said a lot too about how Mitchell has taken the high road throughout the last year. Mitchell could have said any number of things to explain away last year. Considering his stature as a former Dallas area star and likely first-round NBA draft pick and how last season went, what he had to say carried a lot of weight. And he put the blame on himself instead of anyone else. He talked about how he needed to be more consistent. He talked about the injuries UNT suffered last year. I cant remember a single time Mitchell has uttered a word that would hurt UNTs program after one of the most disappointing seasons in school history. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/05/thoughts-on-mitchell-and-his-not-playing-hard-comment.html/

No. 2 – Can Derek Thompson get it done? I’m sitting in a log cabin out in a state park in East Texas on vacation, pondering the future of UNT football. Ok, not really, but I am taking a couple of minutes to jump back on the blog to continue our off-season questions series. Today, we ponder UNT’s quarterback situation and Derek Thompson. Thompson put up some pretty impressive numbers last season, throwing for 2,649 yards and 14 touchdowns. He threw for 200 yards in seven straight games. Was Thompson perfect? No. No quarterback ever is. Was he pretty good at times? Yeah. Thompson threw for 333 yards against Louisiana-Monroe, 316 against Arkansas State and 282 yards against Louisiana-Lafayette, including hitting Antoinne Jimmerson with a short pass he turned into a 78-yard touchdown catch. The problem was that Thompson also made a few key mistakes, including an interception Jonathan Dowling returned for a touchdown that turned the tide in a season-ending 25-loss to Western Kentucky. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/05/post-spring-questions-series-no-2-can-derek-thompson-get-it-done.html/ This post has been promoted to an article

A few days after the season ended, we ran through the players the UNT men’s basketball team was losing to graduation and what its needs would be for next season. Since then (deep breath) … Tony Mitchell declared for the NBA draft as expected, Clarke Overlander announced he was leaving the program and then P.J. Hardwick followed out the door. Seeing Overlander elect to leave was not a big surprise. Hardwick played a lot, so even though his departure had been a rumor for weeks, it was a bit of an unexpected turn. So where does UNT stand? Here’s a look. Who’s back: G/F Jordan Williams, Jr. — 14.2 points, 3.7 rebounds a game SG/PG Alzee Williams, Sr. — 11.1 points, 3.4 rebounds a game PG Chris Jones, Jr. — 9.2 points a game, 74 assists (16 games) SG Brandan Walton, Sr. — 8.8 points a game, 54 3s made on 36.7 percent shooting from behind the arc (stats from 2011-12 season) C Keith Coleman, Jr. — 1.3 points, 1.6 rebounds a game SG T.J. Taylor — transfer from Marquette and Oklahoma who sat out last year Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/04/lets-try-this-again-whos-back-what-are-the-needs-for-unt-hoops.html/

UNT coach Dan McCarney said that he has been pleased with the Mean Green’s progress in spring practice during his spring wrap-up press conference Tuesday. UNT will hold its annual spring game at 2 p.m. Saturday at Apogee Stadium. “If you really get good at fundamentals and learn the system so that you can play with confidence and then master things that take no talent whatsoever — that is effort, that is toughness and that is the ability to communicate with your coaches and teammates — that is a really good start for 2013,” McCarney said. “We have done a good job of that. I really like where we are at right now.” While McCarney was pleased with UNT’s progress in general, he did single out a few players who performed particularly well, including defensive end Chad Polk and cornerback Kenny Buyers. Read more: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/north-texas-headlines/20130410-notebook-hardwick-wont-return-for-mean-green.ece

I was looking through the UNT football spring depth chart shortly after it was released and noticed something. Has anyone stopped to consider how many seniors will probably be playing key roles this year? Heading into the 2012 season, the talk was about how few seniors UNT would have to replace in 2013. Tight end Andrew Power was a pretty big loss as were defensive end K.C. Obi, wide receiver Ivan Delgado and to a certain extent linebacker Jeremy Phillips. I haven’t had a chance to point it out until now, but there are a ton of vital seniors on this season’s team, which is good from an experience standpoint, bad when you think about replacing some of them. Linebacker Zach Orr might be the best player on the roster and is a senior. So is right tackle LaChris Anyiam and defensive end Brandon McCoy, but it doesn’t stop there. Here are some of the 0ther seniors this year who should play key roles: Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/04/monday-afternoon-thoughts-anyone-notice-how-many-seniors-are-in-the-two-deep.html/

Practice started before dawn today over at Apogee Stadium. Workouts the day before a scrimmage are usually nothing terribly interesting, but there were a few pretty big items of note . First off, I got a chance to ask Dan McCarney about defensive tackle Dylan McDorman. McCarney confirmed that the McDorman has been forced to give up football due to continuing shoulder issues. UNT is really, really short on its defensive line across the board. A few guys will be back in the fall, including Ryan Boutwell and Brandon McCoy, but UNT is not going to be deep there no matter what happens now. Don’t forget run-stuffing tackle Tevinn Cantly finished up last year. I’m not saying Cantly was an all-conference caliber player, but he did play quite a big. The development of guys like Alexander Lincoln becomes awfully important now. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/03/friday-morning-practice-notes.html/

UNTs roster is going to look a whole lot different next season. That was already going to be the case, thanks to the departure of a pretty large group of seniors. Then Trey Norris elected to transfer before the season began. Then Tony Mitchell declared for the NBA draft, as expected. And now Clarke Overlander has also elected to leave the program. There are a couple of ways to look at Overlanders departure simple math and the loss of a player with local ties who just didnt pan out. Lets start with the case of Overlander as a player and a person. Hes a great guy. Anyone will tell you that. He did and said all the right things. He just didnt make the impact UNT had hoped for, and the circumstances he faced didnt help matters. UNT suffered a bad string of injuries last season, which pretty much eliminated the possibility of Overlander playing sparingly and developing over the long-term like he needed to after making a huge jump up in the level of competition from Argyle. UNT needed Overlander to fill the role that Brandan Walton held as the Mean Greens designated 3-point shooter after the senior broke his foot in the Mean Greens season-opener. Overlander didnt come close to succeeding, shooting 15.2 percent. UNT head coach Tony Benford talked all season about how terrible UNT was in terms of 3-point shooting. Its not going to hurt UNT to see Overlander leave, at least not in terms of his contributions on the court. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/03/the-impact-of-overlanders-depature.html/

After looking back through my notes from UNTs football press conference today, the one topic I thought would be worth exploring a little more is the Mean Greens plan to diversify its offense this season. UNT struggled at times last year, and while Derek Thompson was the convenient one to blame a lot of the time, the Mean Greens issues were a little larger than that. UNT really struggled at wide receiver last year. Dan McCarney used some strong words to describe UNTs production, and none of them were particularly nice words. The point is UNTs coaches believe they will have more options and plan to use them this year, thanks to some transfers and guys who redshirted last year. I thought it was particularly interesting that offensive coordinator Mike Canales asked Thompson to drop weight to improve his speed (hes down about 15 pounds). UNT had Thompson put on 15 last year because of the type of offense it was going to run. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/03/mccarney-canales-unt-to-do-a-whole-lot-more-offensively.html/

picture courtesy sportshawaii.com Quenton Brown, a former Central Florida signee who spent last season playing for Eastern Arizona Community College, has signed with UNT. Brown confirmed Wednesday afternoon that he orally committed to UNT on Monday and signed his national letter of intent at 7 a.m. this morning. read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2012/12/breaking-news-unt-adds-juco-de.html/ This post has been promoted to an article

We have been taking a look ahead to the 2013-14 basketball season over the last few days in the wake of UNTs first round exit in the Sun Belt Conference tournament. Weve examined whos coming back (or at least we think is coming back) and the impact the departure of four key seniors will have on the team. Today, we look at who is arriving next year in terms of incoming recruits. When you look at college athletics, there might not be a sport where one player and by extension one recruiting class can make as big a difference than basketball. UNT head coach Tony Benford did the smart thing right off the bat when he took over the program and capitalized on the momentum it had by signing three key high school recruits. UNT also picked up commitments from junior college center Arthur Casimiro and forward Anthony Norris. Unfortunately for UNT, both Casimiro and Norris dropped out of school. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2013/03/unt-mens-basketball-look-ahead-part-iii-incoming-recruits.html/