Greendylan

I think motivation may be a problem, but it's a little different than you're thinking. For the second year in a row, we have a defense that is just almost nonexistent. I mean, we'll sometimes delude ourselves into thinking that they're making progress when they get an occasional stop or two against a really bad team/injured team or an FCS opponent, but if it's a team with a functional offense (i.e., at least mediocre) then it's pretty much a guaranteed touchdown every drive. If you go back and look at the 15 games we've played in the Morris era, it's pretty shocking how few first half punts we have forced. So, this then puts immense pressure on the offense, which leads to mistakes, which leads to blowout losses. We play a schedule most seasons with 4-5 really bad opponents (like bottom 30 in the nation), and those allow us to get at or near bowl eligibility, but meanwhile we're just slipping further behind the teams that are actually decent. So, it's probably hard to keep a team motivated when the defense knows they are helpless play after play, drive after drive against half our opponents each season. The offense also likely feels unmotivated when they know that every drive where they don't score essentially means we're going down by 7 more. Hell, how could they stay motivated? As a fan it's hard to stay motivated when it seems like we have a system only built to work against 100+ ranked opponents. Even wins feel meaningless when you know you'll get horribly embarrassed against the next relevant opponent.

We're way behind where we should be in NIL, and it took our coaches too long to recognize the right way to use the portal. In many ways, NIL is a reflection of how bad your fan base wants it. Clearly, our fans, generally speaking, just don't care as much as a lot of similarly situated schools. So, regarding NIL, I guess we are where we deserve to be. That being said, I can accept being mediocre most seasons, occasionally bad, occasionally good--especially considering the above realities. What is not acceptable is to be absolutely embarrassed and make a mockery of yourselves on national television and do 40+ points worse than an FCS school did two weeks ago in the same stadium. That's not an NIL failure. That's just one of the worst game preparation failures I've seen in many years--coupled also with roster management problems. NIL is an excuse to not compete every year for a conference title. It's not an excuse for this disaster. I've never been so disinterested in NT football after decades of being a fan...

We had one of the worst defenses of all time last season. We bring the coordinator and scheme back and are beyond embarrassingly bad (to historic levels) once again. Meanwhile, the administration has the audacity to ask for a sellout next week. I'm starting to think it would be better if we could just quietly finish this season with as few people paying attention as possible.

Please . . . UNLV is a midmajor peer with similar challenges, and they beat a Kansas team last night that is better than Tech. We are just sucking at preparing a team and having a winning game plan.

It's not just one bad game. It will take many years to recover, perception wise, from this. It's like Portland State but with way more people in Texas paying attention.

A program with pride would fire someone immediately after this.

Well, this is embarrassing. And, please don't fall into this "Tech has Big XII talent" trap. They do, but they are not a good team. There are better teams than Tech in the AAC. North Texas is just awful.

I just don't understand why we thought this would be anything other than a blowout after last week.

As of right now Memphis is ranked #25 in the Coaches Poll and Texas Tech is not receiving a single vote in either poll. This is an opportunity to catch the attention of the casual college football fan in the state of Texas and either confirm or challenge their general default assumption that North Texas football is utterly irrelevant. But, in the grand scheme of things, Memphis is better than Tech, and that game will have bigger implications--possibly Tulane too.

Yeah, especially now with Tahj Brooks back and some big, physical receivers, it's a matchup nightmare. The defense has shown some preliminary signs of improvement through a very limited sampling this season, but I don't think they're anywhere near ready to slow down a legitimate high-powered offense. Tech will have to make a LOT of mistakes for this to even be competitive, and I doubt they will do so at home and desperate to impress their ailing fan base.

45-34 North Texas 22,300 attendance I was happily WAY off with my prediction last week, but I still think some of you may be exaggerating both margin of victory and attendance predictions.

Never forget just how terrible NT was against two bad teams to start last season. We looked like a mediocre FCS team until Week 3. South Alabama 52 North Texas 23

Does the data actually support this? I'm not saying you're wrong, as I haven't yet seen any numbers comparing G5 draftees this year vs. the past. But, just perusing round by round, it feels like I'm seeing plenty of G5, FCS, and occasionally lower levels being represented. Where the G5 might be underrepresented (as compared to past performance) might be the high profile 1st round and maybe 2nd round picks.

This is huge. I hate to see our star players leave, but it looks like we're reloading nicely.

Yeah, sadly, I fear that the answer is pretty simple: we have the worst NIL in the conference. Until that changes, we'll be sending Hodge into a gunfight with a knife. The further we get into the NIL era, the harder it's going to be to keep up the momentum from past success. At this point we're basically just hoping and praying that Hodge is a WAY better coach/recruiter/evaluater than his AAC counterparts. Even if he is really good at those things, we can't just expect him to pull off miracles every single season.

I believe Ousmane played in the first NIT game last year.

I don't know that the new NIT rules will make much of a difference one way or the other for NT this season. It might come out to almost a wash when you compare the auto-bids to power conference teams vs. the auto-bids to regular season champions (since that wouldn't have benefitted us this year). I believe 11 teams earned auto bids last season, and most of those wouldn't have gotten in without the AQ. Of the 12 power conference teams that would have received the AQ bids last year, had the rule been in place then, many of them made it anyway.

That's fair.

Maybe I'm being selfish, but I really want to see more NT basketball from these guys. The NIT is no longer realistic, but I'd be happy to learn that we're playing in the CBI. Might be an opportunity to work on closing out close games--along with being an opportunity for a 20-win season.

Not getting any favors from the refs thus far...

As unlikely as winning the AAC tournament and getting into the NCAA tournament as an AQ would be, that might actually be more plausible than an NIT bid at this point, since there is no way to qualify automatically.

Do we ever win these Sunday road games?

I picked "ASAP," but that's assuming he's fully medically cleared and feeling pretty close to 100%. He's that important to this team, and even if an at-large NCAA tournament bid is no longer in play, these upcoming regular season games down the stretch are still monumentally important. Now, if the question is implying that "ASAP" would be playing him at like 80% and with a medical staff unconvinced, then absolutely not.

Finally one post to unite all the forums...

I think we're really beating a dead horse at this point with continuing this same tortured conversation, but sure, it's nice to see that someone out there thinks North Texas "might end up getting in after going on a splashy run in the conference tournament." I mean, yeah, it's possible, and we're more likely to do it than several other teams in the AAC, but we're also still less likely to do so than the top teams in the conference. And, yes, I know (and agree with you) that injuries is in large part the reason that we've dropped a few games recently (and thus correspondingly dropped in the standings). I still wouldn't say that the team we currently see (factoring in the missing players due to injury) has looked like a contender. Now, if we find a way to adapt in ways we haven't yet seen or get some guys back sooner than expected, then we absolutely could become contenders once again. Believe me, I REALLY hope that happens! I'll be there for the Memphis game, so maybe that will be the first step toward getting some mojo back with or without our injured starters...