BonfireBrian

Yes, it was definately cumulative attendance, not for any particular game. I agree that the scoreboards were pretty bad. That was my only real complaint about the arena. Also, the seats become pretty unconfortable by the 4th game of the day. Overall, a great experience and arena though.

A friend and I went to Hot Springs for the Sun Belt Tournament this past week, and I just thought I would share my experiences with everyone: 1. The city of Hot Springs did a great job hosting the tournament. Local businesses were in full support with "Welcome Sun Belt Basketball fans" and so forth. All of the locals seemed very nice and welcoming. The local paper had front page coverage of the tournament each day and covered their sports section with analysis from each game and previewed the upcoming games for that day. 2. Summit Arena is very nice and a great size for the Sun Belt. Parking was free and within walking distance of many hotels, restaurants, bars, and other shopping. The conference did a great job with the tournament, with entertainment during time outs and friendly staff. They even sold beer for a reasonable price inside the arena! 3. The PA announcer said during the Men's Championship that the women's tournament set an attendance record of around 18K, and the men had the most since 2003 with about 24K. 4. At least one bar doesn't close until 5 AM. Trust me. 5. I had the experience of talking with many fans from other schools and all the fans were great. I came away impressed with every school's fans that I talked to. I have to say the best were Western Kentucky's (probably because they beat us). They had a lot of great things to say about our team and many said they felt we were the 2nd best team in the Belt, which I agree with. 6. I had the opportunity to speak with Western Kentucky Head Coach Ken McDonald, Director of Basketball Operations Tanner Ogden, and Athletics Director Cameron Selig. They had great things to say about UNT, and Coach Jones and Rick V. in particular. All three were class acts. 7. The Mean Green faithful was strong and loud. I think we probably had the 3rd most fans behind Western Kentucky and UALR. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the turnout. Rick V. and Dr. Bataille were very approachable and sat in the stands with the rest of the fans. Derek and Rob from the Alumni Association were there and extremely personable as well. Overall, I think the experience was amazing. It is absolutely something that every Mean Green Basketball fan, or just UNT fan, should do at least once. I would suggest starting to plan your vacation and finances now. It's a great experience that you won't regret. I've personally never been as proud to be UNT alum and a member of the Sun Belt Conference then I do right now. I'd love to hear what others who were there thought as well. Please post your thoughts. Go Mean Green! Go Sun Belt!

We are 13.5 point favorites tonight. Accuscore has us winning by 11: http://www.wfaa.com/sports/accuscore/collegeb/ntexas/

Students also get in free to the conference tournament, if you want to make the trip.

Just bought my tickets today from the UNT ticket office. Only $85 each for the whole tournament!!! Anyone else going?

The officiating was definately not one sided. Both coaches were up in the faces of the officials at some point screaming at them. I'm surprised neither got a technical.

Can they turn white from excessive rubbing during every UALR free throw of the second half?

I'm going to disagree with many of you: I don't think we played that bad; we just didn't make shots we normally make. We played good defense in holding UALR to 37% shooting. We also outrebounded them. We committed the same number of turnovers as they did (16). I think our shot selection was OK, but UALR plays great defense. Still, we missed a lot of shots that we normally hit. Overall, we shot 25.5% from the field, and were still in the game at the end. (I'd really like to know how it would have played out had Johnson's steal not gone off the side of his foot.) I thought our guys gave great effort and played hard. Some nights, your shots don't fall. Better to happen now than in the conference (or NCAA) tourney. If we had played most other teams in the conference, we would have still won.

This team definately deserves a big crowd. Come all ye Mean Green Faithful!

We need to pack the Pit for this game. We need to get some die hard football fans in the Pit this weekend. I'll be there with several others.

I'd really like the #4 seed and host FAU in the first round. The #4 and #5 seeds are basically interchangable after the first round since they play each other in the quarterfinals. I don't really want to play New Orleans. We always seem to struggle with them, despite our win Thursday. Does anyone else think the best first round matchup for anyone is a home game vs. Denver? Didn't we win the Sun Belt Tourney as a #4 seed in 2007?

Conference tournament games count, right? I hope we get it before then, but we may get it in Hot Springs.

Here is the tie breaking procedure from the Sun Belt site: Tie-Breaking Formula. The Sun Belt Conference tie-breaking formula is as follows: (a) if one team has defeated the other team twice, that team shall be awarded the higher-seeded position; however, ( if each team has won only one game against the other, the higher position will be awarded to the team that has the best won-loss percentage against the highest-seeded team in the conference; if each team has the same record against the highest-seeded team in the division, then won-loss records against the next highest-seeded team in the conference would be considered and so on down the line until the tie is broken; (d) if the records of the two teams are the same against all teams in the conference, then the seeded position would be determined by a toss of the coin by the Sun Belt Conference Commissioner; (e) in the event of a three-way tie, the won-loss percentage of the tied teams against each other is first considered; (f) If the teams are still tied, records against the next highest seeded team in the conference are considered and so forth until the tie is broken; once the three-way tie is broken, then the two-way tie is broken in the normal two-tie fashion;(g) if there is still a tie, the seeded position of the teams will be determined by a random draw conducted by the Sun Belt Conference Commissioner; (h) for multiple ties larger than a three-way tie, the same procedure will be applied as used to break a three-way tie; (i) for all multiple ties, the tie is broken by first deciding the highest seeded team involved in the tie before deciding other seeded positions.

Myself and at least one friend will be there. Hoping for a big crowd. No excuses on the long drive either. I work SE of downtown Dallas, and I'm still able to get up there for a 7 PM tip. Here's a hint: If you hear about a wreck or just bad traffic on 35E in the south Denton/Corinth area, you can exit Swisher road (FM 2181) and take a left. It curves around and comes right back to 35E at Loop 288. I've saved quite a bit of time going that way if traffic is bad.

I absolutely love tailgating. Don't get me wrong - I also love the games and I always go them. The tailgating does bring out quite a few people that would not come out otherwise and most of them don't come inside. Although I wish we could get everyone in for the game, it sure does make for a great Gameday atmosphere.

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this. We've been complaining about this forever!!! 6 home games = one more tailgate. And if we don't have a home game on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that really means 2 more full out tailgates than the last two years. Who doesn't like that?

Good to hear. This will help us to keep building our program even more.

I'm not so sure about that from a conference standpoint. This was a basketball league before football was added. The league generally does pretty well in the Conference RPI rankings every year and sends a couple of teams to the tournament every few years. I know that there were a couple of Sun Belt games on the ESPN family of networks last year. Was that part of a contract, and has that contract run out? I don't remember seeing any games on this year. We do still get the Sun Belt Tourney Semifinals on ESPN+ and the championship on ESPN/ESPN2 again this year, as it has been in the past.

This should be a great and exciting game. I'm looking forward to it. Hope to see a big crowd there as well. Come on Mean Green nation! We need to get out and support this team on Thursday night! Who's with me?

If we don't win this game, we might as well stop playing basketball altogether. CMJ- When it gets down to a "Huge 1 Game Stretch," we should break each game down farther. How about only focusing on the first half right now? Or each 4 minute spot between media timeouts? In all seriousness, this is a big game and we need a big crowd, but what conference game isn't in late January?

This is terrific news. Can't wait to watch our first home game on a beautiful September 2011 evening and get our first win in the new stadium.

Thanks for the info. I'll look in to that.

Time to set a new record if you ask me. By the way, when is a 6 game stretch of conference games not huge?

Any Mean Green fans out there planning on making the trip to Hot Springs for the Conference Tournament? If so, where do you plan to stay?

The game is on ESPN Full Court.