TheTastyGreek

Baby steps? TCU beat Prairie View. That's where it all started for them this year. Maybe once Benford figures out how to clear that hurdle, we can get on a run and crack the rankings!

I'll get the obligatory BIH, P out of the way... Sad. My earliest exposure to him was my mom listening to "Up Where We Belong" in the car when I was young. He was attached to a lot of movies and TV shows I'll always link him with. Other than the obvious (Wonder Years), I distinctly remember his version of "Summer in the City" under the opening credits of Die Hard with a Vengeance (until it cut off rather abruptly...), Carlito's Way, 9 1/2 Weeks... And for a lot of songs, I heard his version first (like "The Letter") and I didn't realize until older that he wasn't the first or even the definitive version of so many songs. Talented guy.

I'm pretty big on keeping promises...

Reading that is like seeing the wounded and abused puppies from the Sarah McLachlan charity commercial. I feel sad, depressed, and helpless. I promise you a hug, redeemable the next time I see you in person.

Because of some professional good fortune and the opportunities that came along with it, I was very lucky to get to see a lot of fantastic movies this year. Of everything I saw, there are two that I watched back in January that still stick with me as among the most powerful I've seen not just this year, but in my entire life. Both are documentaries. One is called The Overnighters. For anyone that hasn't seen it (and it cleared under $100,000 during it's theatrical release... So that means pretty much everyone.) I implore you not to read anything about it and watch as soon as you're able to access it on a streaming service or video on demand or home entertainment option. The one sentence synopsis is that it's about a pastor in North Dakota who tries shelter and minister to the men who are flocking there seeking work from the shale/fracking boom, and the challenges he struggles against among his community, his parishioners, and his own family. Courtland, you'll have at least two chances to see this in a theater... It plays at Arena Cinema in L.A. the weekend of the 27th and 28th, and I'll be shocked if it isn't an Oscar nominee, so you can probably catch it during the nominee screenings I know you try to make it a point to catch every year. If I can only convince people to see one movie, it would be The Overnighters. I don't even want to dive into why, for fear of blunting or spoiling what makes the story so emotionally compelling and ultimately shocking. The other was Last Days in Vietnam. It airs on American Experience (PBS) on April 28th. You can all see it then for free.

What's the album that little husky girl put out this year? The one about how her mom told her guys like to bang chubby chicks? That was a pretty sweet jam.

May your PlusOnes be bountiful, good sir.

Unless it happens to be the sabbath. In that case, they toileth not, and won't be able to sign until three stars are visible in the night sky.

Western Kentucky fired Ken McDonald 3 games into the Sun Belt conference season (January 6th). They corrected course wisely, and made the NCAA tournament that same year. It's not too soon, and it's never as late as tomorrow.

Last year was the healthiest, luckiest season for any basketball team that I can remember. One guy missed anything resembling significant injury time, and it was the lowest utilized guy on the roster.

ACTUALLY... By bizarre coincidence, within about a week or two of us getting a commitment from Greg Wesley... We JUST SO HAPPENED to bring on a former college assistant coach that also JUST SO HAPPENED to work with Greg Wesley's AAU team. Also by fortunate coincidence, we didn't hire that guy as a member of the administrative staff (even though that's what his current bio says), because that would have been an unambiguous NCAA violation. No, he found a sudden enthusiasm for higher education, and came to join our basketball operations as a Graduate Assistant. That was only a very tortured, lightly-policed end run around NCAA rules. His academic passion? Interdisciplinary Studies. But... After 7 months, he decided to get back into officially coaching basketball, and left for UT Pan Am. I am not sure the status of his coursework. If anyone finished a post-grad degree in April of 2013 (semesters end in April, right?) when he left... Let me know if you saw him in the graduation program with you! Benford ball!

Very unfortunate.

No, no, you've got it all wrong. Trey helped host P.J. Hardwick earlier in the summer of 2012. Worked pretty aggressively to sell him on coming here. At that point, we were full on scholarships. Then, we brought on T.J. Taylor in late July. At the same time, and by very fortunate coincidence... Trey immediately (within 12-24 hours, as I recall) decided he'd rather not play here anymore, and would rather take his talents to South Dakota instead of playing with the guys he knew from years of high school and AAU metroplex ball. Including future NBA draft pick (presumed lottery pick, at the time) Tony Mitchell and a team that was described in our promotional pieces as the most talented in school history. Sure, he may have put out tweets to the effect of being heartbroken and confused, and the official story that he wanted more playing time didn't jive with the fact that he helped sell another PG on joining the team just a few weeks earlier... But that's definitely what happened. And, 4 weeks before the semester started, Trey discovered his passion for South Dakota winters, and completely independently decided he wanted to leave North Texas. Benford didn't "cut" anyone, and we certainly didn't intimate we'd need to pull his scholarship (even though we couldn't actually provide scholarships for everyone we were committed to educating at that time). Trey, with tears in his eyes, made a personal choice to leave, completely on his own and for his own reasons. Now, ask me about Cody Hopkins and his passionate, sincere, advanced academic interest in Master's level General Studies.

I'm familiar with Professor Robert Palmer's work in the field, and I'd say his insights on interpersonal variation of thermodynamic processes are quite profound.

Is this real life? I didn't think I'd ever see the day when someone told UNT90 to focus more on the 5 game 2015 home schedule.

Adding some useful info here. I split time in high school between Georgia and the metroplex. GA high school did outdoor graduations... MISERABLE. Metroplex high school did graduations at the Super Pit. Pleasant! Should make for a neat graduation atmosphere... Until the first hot spring. EDIT: to add that I'm not criticizing this idea. But, honestly... I'm glad it won't be me sitting in the May sun in a black robe for however many hours it takes to get through the ceremony.

Like so many of RV's other sub-.500 coaching hires, she's obviously tearing our fan base apart.

This is great news, guys. If you rearrange the letters in Eli Howard, you get: A Wild Hero Halo Wired I Herald: OW! This guy is obviously a hero with a good, moral upbringing and he's going to rain pain on opposing offenses. Welcome, Eli. We need more virtuous heroes to inflict pain on our enemies.

People, people... Relax. If you rearrange the letters in Jordan Murray, you get a couple of things. One: "A Major Dry Run". This guy was just a test recruit. Nothing to worry about. We didn't really want him anyway. Two: "Mr. January Rod". Does this mean with absolute certainty that if he'd enrolled early at UNT, he would have violently sexually assaulted a campus female shortly after new years? Well, I can't say that for sure. But I also can't NOT say that for sure. So, best of luck to the practice recruit/post-holiday rapist. Take your implied sex crimes elsewhere, young man.

Correction: Basketball teams HAVE low attendance. We aren't DEALING with anything. The time to deal with it was the offseason, and we didn't. And that's why the basketball teams have low attendance.

You can rearrange the letters in his name to spell "wiener cad". Wiener: 1) Slang - a penis 2) Slang - an insignificant, disliked person Cad: 1) An ill-bred man, especially one who behaves in a dishonorable way towards women. This is not the sort of young man I want representing my university. We're better off without Mr. Wiener Cad. Best of luck at SMU or elsewhere, you Ill-bred, insignificant, misogynist penis. We'll have none of your shenanigans at our school, thank you very much.

DON'T IGNORE THE QUESTION.

Eh... The jury is out on the team, but I think the verdict on the coach came back before he actually even coached his first game. Win or lose, just get out. Anyway, since things got way too serious here... Green P1 doesn't really want to be my pal. Maybe you wanna go ride bikes or throw rocks at cars or something?

And if anyone that likes women's basketball wants to jump in on the conversation, you could probably go on a real tirade that's even longer than what I just typed. On that one sport alone. Thank goodness it's never really been an interest of mine, because add the dismal history and apparent future of that program to how I feel about the stuff I actually follow(ed), and I'd probably have hung myself from that fancy pedestrian bridge by now.