TheTastyGreek

Bolded for emphasis, and I'd add a /would. Looking at how JJ handled the Sturns situation once upon a time... Kicking him off the team but showing the care and patience that eventually allowed Sturns to return, then keeping him around through an eventual transfer for more playing time... I'm inclined to give this staff credit for knowing how to handle these sorts of situations. Not just Sturns, but the deal last year where Collin Dennis seemed to be leaving the team, got suspended, but was eventually a crucial role player in our end of season run and tournament games. Either they tried to keep Thomas around and he wasn't interested/willing... Or they didn't try, in which case I'll give them credit for having their reasons. Whatever the situation, I'm sorry to see him go and that he didn't get to fulfill his fantastic potential on this team. Hope it works out for him.

I've been effectively gone from the board for about 3 days, and I only slept an hour and a half last night... This won't be a long recap. Here's the basics: We needed two losses by both MTSU and ASU to open the door for the NIT (if we can win out). Half of what we needed happened already, ahead of the schedule I dared to hope for. No matter what happens, tonight's action guarantees us (assuming we can win out) the 3rd seed and a 1st round SBC Tournament bye. FAU still plays Troy. One of those teams must lose the game and fall behind us. FAU still plays MTSU as the tail end of MTSU's Florida road trip, a pair of road games which has led to at least one loss for almost every team that took it this season. Either MTSU or FAU will lose this game and fall behind us. Troy still plays Arkansas State. One of those teams must lose and fall behind us. Even if Arkansas State beats Troy, they have to play the resurgent Hilltoppers. They already lost to WKU a week ago, and the Toppers have only gotten hotter since then. ---------- Based on what happened tonight, the worst thing that can happen for us is MTSU and ASU winning out. That would ensure Troy gets at least 6 losses (through losing to ASU) and FAU also has at least 6 losses (through losing to MTSU). In that scenario, MTSU wins the East, ASU wins the West by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker, and we're the 3rd seed. If we win out, that's the worst that can happen. Let me put it another way... To keep pace with us, anyone else in the league MUST win out, unless we lose a game to either one of the two worst teams in our conference (UALR, winless on the road vs. SBC opponents, or UNO, winless in road SBC games until beating ULM tonight), or lose to ULL at home, a team that's only won one SBC road game (also against ULM). I don't mean to jinx anything, but us winning out is not at all impossible, or arguably even improbable. So, everyone else must do the same to keep tied with us. FAU and Middle can't both win out, because they play each other. And ASU and Troy can't both win out, because they play each other. If Troy wins out, they'll win the East and we'll be the 1 seed. If ASU wins out, they win the West and 3rd is our locked-in seed. ---------- It's tough to explain this all without seeming like I'm talking in circles. If you're a North Texas fan, here's the easiest way to approach the rest of the season: Root for Troy to win out. If Troy finishes 13-5, ASU must fall behind us and MTSU would, at best, lose a tiebreaker for the East crown. That would put us atop the West, Troy atop the East, and us 1st overall thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker. There are many other potential ways for it to happen, many of which are very plausible. Lots of ways for Middle and Arkansas State to lose tough games. But the easiest way to see it happen is to just root for Troy. As long as we don't lose, Troy's success guarantees our success.

Anyone know what the original Oxford English Dictionary definition of "terrorism" was?

I thought that might be true until I lived it. Very underwhelming.

This is unfortunate in that we're losing a talented guy and I wish that a role existed that he was satisfied with. It seemed from the beginning that either he or Shorter were going to find themselves an odd man out. At the start of the year, it was Shorter riding the bench and struggling to get minutes. Since the semester started, though, the roles reversed and Thomas hasn't even been getting much in the way of scraps. I'm sad that it didn't work out for him here, and I hope that wherever he ends up, he gets to show off his talents and get some playing time. But his departure does allow JJ to ease the pain of next year's graduations a little bit. Dear J'Mison- How is the weather in Los Angeles? Not sure if you heard, but I recently had a player decide to transfer. It's a tough choice for a young man to make, but sometimes it's the best possible choice for everyone involved. How is your family? I'm sure you must miss them when you're so far away in California... When you write back, be sure and send a letter to them, too. Best wishes- Johnny Jones

Our game at HBU has no television (shocking, I know) and Houston Baptist doesn't appear to offer any sort of web stream or video. So this one isn't a candidate for ChannelSurfing. But, the ASU/ULM game is at Arkansas State, and they do offer a web feed. I know I've seen a few games at Jonesboro on ChannelSurfing this year, so keep an eye out for it. Odds aren't good for the upset... ULM is on a 2 game winning streak and beat WKU, but they may not have Tony Hooper (missed both games with an ankle problem and still questionable vs. ASU). Even if they do have him... They haven't won a game in Jonesboro in 25 years. Keep your fingers crossed, but realistically, hope that ULM keeps it close and the Red Wolves have to play their starters for hard, extended minutes.

One other thing that merits mention in response to Mo's original post is the RPI of our opponents this year. The conference RPI is pretty terrible this season, it's true. But a conference's RPI is defined by performance in OOC games, and this was a very bad year for our strongest conference mates in OOC games. Middle Tennessee is leading the entire league right now, but during the OOC schedule, they played most of their games without Desmond Yates. Yates, for anyone who doesn't follow our conference mates closely, is arguably (or, maybe not) the single most dominant player in the league. He's a forward with the size and interior game of an Odufuwa or a Tramiel, and the outside shooting of a Tristan Thompson. And for the first 8 games (all non-conference) of the season, MTSU didn't have him due to injury. Unfortunately, those 8 games were more than 60% of MTSU's OOC schedule, and the primary determinant in their (and, by extension, 1/13th of the Sun Belt's) RPI. If Yates is healthy and available, I think that MTSU's 1 point loss to UAB (current RPI: 33) swings to a win. They probably don't lose to Marshall, NC A&T... All in all, their OOC performance is probably a lot more in line with their SBC performance if they aren't playing without their all-time leading scorer for most of the non-conference slate. FAU is playing a roster of almost entirely sophomores and freshmen. A slow start (again, almost entirely in the OOC calendar) isn't unexpected from them. But since New Year's, they're 8-4 with one of those losses a 3 point OT loss to South Alabama a week after USA beat Florida. Once their team finally gelled, FAU is a damn good team. But by the time it came together for them (New Year's, almost to the day), all their OOC games were behind them. Western's RPI is lower than usual because they played a godawful schedule in January. WKU just had a tough run in a short period of time, and wound up in a 5 game losing streak. 5 straight losses in 5 games played in 10 days. Two of them against the top team in the SBC East, one of them a 1 point loss on the road. A one point loss to us, in overtime. Lost on the road to a good but not great Southern Illinois team. Lost on the road at Troy in what was their 3rd game in 5 days. If you look at that run of losses and the two games that led into it, WKU played 7 games in 14 days. Effectively, a game every other day, and they had to do it without their second best player because Sergio Kerusch was out injured. Otherwise, considering their OOC wins against Vanderbilt and Mississippi State, and a loss-that-shouldn't-have-been against Houston in one of the most disgusting cases of referee incompetence you'll ever see (seriously... a foul AND a technical on a loose ball in a tie game with 0.2 seconds remaining??)... I think they'd be a top 100 RPI team without question. I'm not saying this is a banner year for the Belt or anything, but I'm saying that pointing to opponent RPI when so many of our conference opponents fought through injuries, youth, godawful officiating, or some combination of those and other factors during the stretch of schedule that truly determines RPI is somewhat unfair. As to our non-conference schedule, I was one of the most vocal critics during the offseason. But it's hard as hell to get games when you're a school that's as successful as we have been lately, unless you're willing to go on the road and play for a paycheck instead of a return game. We did that twice this year, and we lost them both. But pointing to those games as a failure of coaching is like calling a street whore a failure as a woman because she can't get her tricks to marry her before the hour is up. In both cases, the transaction doesn't generally happen if the party with an open wallet thinks their desired outcome appears doubtful in the slightest. Larger conference teams just don't want to come here while we're so dangerous. Frankly, I'm amazed and I tip my hat to the folks in the Athletics Department for managing to get Texas Tech and LSU to agree to home-and-home deals with us over the next two years. Our home OOC schedule sucked. Our road OOC schedule included two paycheck/no return games. We lost them both. We lost on the road the day after Thanksgiving in freaking Idaho, we lost to the #13 RPI team, we lost to the #37 RPI team. And those are our only non-conference losses. All in all, that's nothing to be ashamed of. I wish our other 8 OOC games were against teams that had better seasons this year or more respectable names... But it's exceptionally difficult for any team to beat a school that isn't playing against them. To that OOC scheduling point... There's not much we can do to predict how well or poorly an opponent will do in a given year that we're scheduled to play them. A good example of that is a look back at last year's schedule, which some folks have been pointing to this year as an example of cupcake scheduling that gets us to 20 easy wins. Last year, we played Indiana State, Sam Houston State (twice, home and away) and New Mexico State. We won all of them. If we had those four games on our schedule this year, we'd have 4 more games (and 4 wins) against top 100 RPI opponents. SHSU is 74, New Mexico State is 76, and Indiana State is 89. Rice hasn't had a good year. Jackson State played their OOC at Memphis, at Alabama, at Tulsa, at Baylor, at Nebraska... A schedule designed to pay bills, not rack up the sort of wins that lead to quality RPI rankings. SE Louisiana hasn't been as good as expected, and that hurts us, too. I wish we had the "signature win" that some of our fans want to point to, like our Oklahoma State win in 07/08. I still see the WKU win as a big statement and a huge victory, but I can understand how someone could chip away at it. But the fact that we didn't come through in either of our two chances to get a "signature win" this year doesn't mean that the season is a failure. The fact that our strongest conference opponents didn't get their legs under them until OOC play was almost over doesn't make them any less talented or formidable today.

One thing I'll say, respectfully, is that I don't know if there's a worse time to accuse us of playing poor defense than right after the game we just played vs. Denver. Denver plays the Princeton offense, and the primary goal of that scheme is to use frequent passes and off-ball movement to open up lanes for wide open layups. It's an odd offense that can be difficult to defend because it's so different than what teams generally see (for you football fans, think of it as a triple option offense for the basketball court). Denver only hit a total of 8 2-point baskets all night. That's four baskets per half, one every five minutes of game time. So basically, we avoided the Princeton offense trap, and we almost completely shut down the primary component of their offensive game. I can only remember them hitting one layup that looked like a defensive breakdown in the whole game. The backup plan for the Princeton offense, the way to keep opponents from just clogging the lane to shut you down, is the 3 point shot. Denver hit 11 of them, and that's the only reason they were able to stay close with us. 3 of them came from guys who were 6'9", taller than anyone we have except for Ben Knox. We also completely shut down one of the frontrunners for Sun Belt Player of the Year, Nate Rohnert. He averages 15 per game on a team that averages in the mid 60's. Last night, he had 3 points. Basically, we went into last night planning on shutting down the layup lanes and locking down one of the best players in our league. We did that to near perfection. The risk of that approach is that you're leaving tall guys open on the perimeter, and we were daring Denver to beat us by having tall, gangly white guys (but not their best white guy) jack up 3's. They did a pretty amazing job of it, all things considered... Hit 11 of them, shot 55% from 3 point land... But they still lost by 5. We took away their high percentage shots. We shut down their all star. They still managed to shoot a ridiculous percentage from the outside, but it wasn't enough. It was a good defensive strategy, it worked, and if we face them again in the tournament, I hope we do it again.

...So you're telling me there's a chance! (A pretty good chance)

Everything I've ever heard about Mo Green is that he's a great supporter of North Texas athletics (in all aspects of the phrase) and a proud, loyal fan. I'm not sure where his dissatisfaction with the basketball program is coming from today, but everyone should probably put down the daggers and ease off on the assumptions and personal attacks. I may come back later and address some of his complaints. For now, I'll just say that from what I understand, there might not be much in the way of North Texas athletics for us to argue about if it weren't for him.

I didn't peg you for complaining. I was just thinking out loud on the situation. But if you want to fight about something... I'll throw down.

+1 just for showing up. Good to see a post from you, Plumm.

Between the noon start on a weekday, all the holiday games while students were out on breaks, the Sunday games against NFL football, the Saturday game that got moved and still semi-conflicted with Cowboys playoff football, the lack of any home opponent that could draw a significant crowd of local alums (either ours or theirs) or casual fans... Finishing with an average of 2500 or higher seems like it would be damn near a miracle. If we get 3059 for the last two home games, we'll get there.

Second on the love and appreciation for Smitty. He's a great fan, and a big supporter of the North Texas athletics community, both official and unofficial. He's the one who created the "Kneeling Man" logo and banner for TakeAKnee.net, and the favicon that shows up on your address bar or favorites menu when you visit or bookmark us. We have some shady characters of questionable moral fiber in our fan base, but Smitty isn't one of them. He's an exceptional talent and exceptional person, and we're all fortunate to have him as part of our community.

"and they say he ran a-waaaaaaaaaay...." +1 I always thought that's how they should fire people who work at AMC movie theates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z66rDVkaK4w No, she does not really see me; 'cause she sees her own reflection.

Great kid, good family. It's a damn shame. He's one of their best weapons, too. This really hurts them tremendously. Sorry to hear he ends his SBC career this way.

Thanks for the tip. Also on channelsurfing for anyone who lacks the supercable.

OT, the only scholarship player who runs out of eligibility this year is Tramiel. Dom should get his medical redshirt with no problems (he's still in a cast) and anyone else on the roster that's a senior is a walk-on. Edwards takes the scholarship that fills our only departing slot, the one vacated by Tramiel.

We all knew it would come to this... Don't worry. Once I make General, I'm staging a coup. I'll need a strongman to enforce my will, and I know you've got a gun and a festering resentment of all the people who did you wrong with -1s. Call me sometime. I think there's a place for you in the junta. All-you-can-eat vengeance.

Don't worry about his free-throw shooting, CBL. I checked their roster, and the Lakers had THREE 6'8" forwards on their roster last year, and they won the NBA finals! Seriously, though... It's strange that the guy shoots just 10% better from the line than he does from the arc. Given our returning roster and our immediate need(s?) for the upcoming season, I'm pretty satisfied.

If he didn't, I'd have expected Vito to break that news. And considering how obsessively we tend to follow this basketball team... If neither you or I has heard it, I'd be surprised if that information was out there and we both missed reading or hearing it. I think Vito just lost track of the fact that we only have one player with expiring eligibility and one scholarship to give. He even mentions in the post that DJ will be back from a redshirt year next season.

You jackasses are all making jokes, but where's your contribution? What are you doing to improve things for 2010? Quit hijacking serious threads.