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This season was definitely a number 2.

Sorry if this is too much personal revelation, but it seems to fit the topic, especially given the replies thus far. One of the only times my father ever seemed proud of me was the day I decided to start lifting weights and threw out all of my stupid "participation trophies". I was sick of getting beat up every day and didn't feel like I should get anything for just showing up at sports, being terrible, and then having my teammates and every other kid in school beat the crap out of me on the bus and in between classes. So, you might think that this gained me a bit more respect when I stuck to a strict regimen with weight training, running, and swimming, and got strong enough to fight back and even stand up for other kids, along with finally becoming the varsity athlete he always wanted in a son. Instead, with every achievement - including academics and art, which helped me obtain a scholarship to a school 1500 miles away, where I achieved even more in many areas - he always referred back to his disappointment in my lack of commitment in my middle-school and early teen years. No matter the accomplishment or goal, I was labeled by my own family as such a failure that they don't even want to meet my children, because they "know" that I will be a failure as a father. As our University community has been a better family to me than my own - and considering some of our rifts and trials over the years, yes, that is still the case - this seems like a perfect metaphor. We see underachievement, and are annoyed for long enough to accept it as the standard, but when success arrives, we communally accept it as an anomaly. Then, when things begin to go poorly again, we say, "see, I told you so". This is a two-way issue. The teams need to feel like a kid who is sick of getting punched in the stomach and kicked in the face, and do something about it. But the UNT community must be a more supportive parent and support their child (the kids on our teams) in their quest to do so. And there may be fights lost and goals not achieved, but if we stand by each other and make a real commitment, we will be the University family unit, dysfunctional and diverse as we are, that is needed to pull through this together, for any goal we choose to pursue.

Deonte Houston #10 Profile Class: Freshman Hometown: Bronx, NY Highschool: Wings Academy Height: 6'1" Position: guard

http://www.meangreensports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205418845 Play fast and loose with a purpose. Expect great work ethic. The way he wanted to play: "to win championships you need to play defense". Goal was to be one of the best defenses in the country. Goal is to win big. "Johnny has done a great job... my job is just to take it to the next level" Goal is to win the conference tournament "which we are going to do" and win in the NCAA. "You want to take over a program where they understand how to win" Recruiting - "We are going to build it with local guys" http://sportdfw.com/2012/11/01/north-texas-coach-tony-benford-discusses-tony-mitchell-and-mean-green-basketball-at-sun-belt-media-day/ "I think the new rules for the NCAA allows us to work our guys in the summer, it was really beneficial for us as a staff coming in to a veteran group we were able to work. Like to give coach Jones (Johnny, left for LSU) a lot of credit he did a great job of getting us some really quality players, obviously he had a lot of success here. We were able to kind of put our staff on early as far as how we want to play, how hard we want to play, what we want to do offensively and defensively and our guys have been accountable. They’ve been getting better every day I like where we are at right now." "I have a great staff, a few guys on here (Rob Evans, Bart Lundy) that have won 200-300 games in their careers. Our unity, our chemistry is really good right now. I think the guys understand our system, they understand were going to win games with defense rebounding. They understand that’s our philosophy, offensively were going to try and get easy baskets and force it in transition. They are starting to understand how we want to play but more importantly how hard we have to play if we are going to have a chance to win games." "Yea it really helps when you inherit a really good group, a group that’s had some success. They obviously didn’t have the success they wanted last year but everyone talks about how much talent we have but we only had 1 guy on the all conference team so I don’t know how much talent we do have. You look at some teams middle Tennessee I think could be like Murray State this year. With the players they have back and I think they are really talented, they won 25 games last year. I’ve got a good group; I have 5 seniors and 3 really good underclassmen. We have a kid Keith Coleman who I think is a Big East center at 6’10 and 250; he’s a quality player. We added also PJ Hardwick a guard who originally signed with Mississippi State, he’s a really good possession type point guard we were fortunate to get him when we took over the job so we have some pieces. We are coming together, we have a good group and we are excited about it, were excited about we are excited about the challenge. We have a great player in tony Mitchell but like the coaches said we have talent but we don’t have the best talent because we only have one preseason all conference player." On Mitchell's progress: "Yea Tony has, as you guys know Tony obviously didn’t join the team until the second semester and that’s very difficult. I was telling a couple people the other day. Tony and I were talking about it was tough he wasn’t able to practice during the fall and had to come in and step right up into the fire so to speak. He had a great summer with us being able to work with him on a lot of fundamentals just trying to tighten his game up a little bit. He went to a couple Lebron James camps, Amare Stoudemire camp, played against some really good competition and that was really good for him. He is excited he’s been working extremely hard, he’s getting better every day and we are very fortunate to have a player of his caliber to coach." Now, let's take a look at some numbers: 2011-2012 season This Year Off. FG % 43.4 (169th nationally) 41.3 (ranked 267th nationally) Def. FG% 40.6 (42nd nationally) 41.7 (ranked 119th nationally) 3 pt FG% 32.12 28.46 PPG 70.3 (116th nationally) 68.4 (153rd nationally) Opp PPG 65.0 (106th nationally) 69.4 (241st nationally) Conf. PPG 71.9 68.5 Conf. Opp PPG 65.7 73.2 RPG 39.0 (17th nationally) 37.1 (ranked 63rd nationally) Opp RPG 34.9 (220th nationally) 36.1 (ranked 268th nationally) APG 12.0 (239th ntionally) 10.2 (ranked 317th nationally) Across the board decline from last year. With a team whose main contributors were one year older with one year of college experience under their belts.They are supposed to be getting better, not worse. A center he called Big East worthy averaged 8.4 MPG, 1.3 PPG, 1.6 RPG, and 0.8 TO per game while shooting 34.8% from the floor and 44.4% from the line. Better defense? Uh, no. Run with a purpose? Uh, no. Tighten up Tony's game? Across the boards decline in numbers. Winning games with defense and rebounding? Hardly. Take it to the next level? Yep. Well, actually a couple of levels. Down. We lose 5 seniors, including the most talented player to play here in years, go into a tougher conference, and there are actually people who expect us to be better? Amazing. And we refuse to correct this mistake.

As I mentioned earlier...great idea...but count me out of arranging this thing. You have no idea how much time I put in doing the one-game event I do each year. Don't have the time or desire to expand it into a tournament. But, happy to be a worker bee for anyone who wants to volunteer to set this up. Let me know who the first volunteer is to set this up, front the cash needed and run the tournament, and I'll be the first to volunteer to help. I like the idea and think it's great. Just not my thing to run and/or administer.

Nope. Go check the basketball recruiting threads.

wth?

I asked them, they confirmed my suspicions. Carry on.

This is the absolute saddest basketball thread yet.

Are there 16 teams in the new CUSA?

But that requires work right?

New unnamed conference = old CUSA New CUSA = old Sun Belt

I'm a professor at the University and I am FOR concealed carry. I don't want to be treated like a second rate citizen and not be able to carry, when permitted, because I work at a school. I would also like to have a plan rather than just hope and pray, in the event of a campus shooting. History doesn't dictate the future, so we don't know if a shooting will happen or not. I'd like to be prepared if it happens, and hope that it does not.

Actually, no, it doesn't bother me. I just get the feeling that you want to abolish a breed of dog based on anecdotal evidence the same way many people want to abolish guns for reasons similar. (anecdotal/what "could" happen.) And I find that rather fascinating knowing what a proponent of the 2nd amendment you are etc etc. I like pie though. Lemon Ice Box, cold chocolate, apple of course and egg custard..(No meringue please.) So maybe there is some common ground for us.

Very doubtful. CUSA is not going to add any more for the time being

I don't care if the recruiting threads are sadder than this or not. I just like to have fun looking at them.

But it appears some are too prideful to admit the mistake and move forward. That should make those people's job directly tied to Benford's success or failure, but it won't. Because we are North Texas, and we do things differently.

Benford has hit the trifecta. "I'm gonna stress defense" "I'm gonna stress rebounding" "I'm gonna build the team with DFW kids" I'm hoping against hope that his next promise is that he plans to stay here a while.

CUSA tourney 1-and-done?

We need to start winning, not because I want a good season my senior year, but because if we don't, there will be dire consequences for our program as a whole.

Way off base. I would explain, but you would just argue for arguement's sake.

I got to call two of his games last season as the color man. That kid is all over the place. He would be an excellent pickup for the Mean Green. And yes, he's Tongan. If only Coach McCarney would get me to have a word with Ngalo and Coach Lineweaver . . . -- Stephen

Yippee

Bingo Bango Bongo

My, how we have fallen.

I support this post 100%. How can we throw rocks at other future C-USA members when we may have shown to be the weakest addition???

The thing is, everybody's showing an increased commitment to athletics. We and these others are just jumping on the caboose railing as the train is leaving the station. If we would have shown that commitment 10+ years earlier, we'd be driving the train.

I have no idea what you mean in reference to this topic. I don't expect anyone is going to be damned for accurate reasonable non-misleading reporting of an athletic event. These are not opinion pieces, and everyone expects a favorable slant, but highlighting an event NT got second and third out of three teams.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/edgytim/basketball/recruiting/player-Deonte-Houston-143842

So really you loved being in the Belt.

A loss here or there? Damn, I must have been watching the wrong team!

I believe they should have a different attitude. It is their job after all, but I do think that they care and want to win. For me if I am not coaching then I am ok with a loss here or there. I love the game. Even when we lose.

Im assuming we have interest in this guy? If so, it seems that Benford and company are recruiting the east coast a good bit. I guess some old relationships from his marquette days. Coleman, ward, pj and now this guy. If we can establish some sort of ny and Philly connection that would be pretty nice. Even better would be those two and some Chicago recruits.

I had watched/attended/listened to every game for the last 7 years. After about game 5 I didn't watch/attend/listen to a single game. It was not fun for me.

Less than impressive stats 4.9ppg 31% FG 68% FT 2.2 apg 2.0 tpg

Sadly, this is the attitude of everybody involved with the program that has power, money or both. If you're having "fun" watching losing teams, then why change anything, right?

NMSU

We aren't even talking about next season anymore, already given up and moved onto the one after that???

I bought some jumper cables at Gibson's once. They melted.

But Dallas Lee and the BOR have the final word. Maybe the new President's office will be at UNT-Dallas.

Ever heard of Trey Norris?

Our Gibson's in Weatherford beats Wal-Mart on every front except hours of operation. Rick

1. The fewer Belt team, the better. Like to feel we are moving without taking the whole conference with us.

But, but, but...immature kids and uhhh injuries and uhhh first year and ummm doesn't have HIS players yet and....yeah, he's terrible.

http://www.gomeangreen.com/forums/user/660-green-grenade-ii/

I'm just apathetic to it all. I'm happy with the new conference opponents and will keep enjoying it all. I honestly don't believe that we will ever sit at the big boys table and im fine with that. Conference affiliation doesn't make everything better...drinking and goofing off at games is what I enjoy!!!

You people dance with glee on every corpse, don't you? No matter how small it may be. This crime didn't happen BECAUSE of a gun... it was likely the result of these two kids being raised without a father, discipline, or boundaries in a culture that glorifies violence and dismisses the value of human life. Let's focus on real solutions instead of hyperbolic grandstanding.

And snakes, everyone should have a healthy fear of snakes. I had a student walk in to my classroom one day with a bag of rattlesnakes that he had caught. Wish I had a gun at school that day.

Don't know what story you read , but the gun the kid was holding was absolutely legal. Don't know if you saw the picture, but it is a harmless pic of the kid in hunting fatigues posing with the 22 cal semi-auto rifle held in a very non-threatening position. Just a little background search on dad should have precluded any government contact, much less a freaking knock and talk by police. You should do a little research on democracies throughout history, how long they last, the reasons that they fall, and what the next form of government is after they fall. Everyone should have a healthy fear of government. It is one of the core values on which this nation was founded, after all.

Chocolate Cream