MeanGreenZen

Latrell Jossell and Grant Newell are both from Chicago. College basketball recruiting has gone national. It is not like the old days, or even football. It would not even be too surprising if our roster didn’t have any guys from Texas on it. As long as this dude has connections at places that produce players and can continue to build relationships, we will be in a good spot.

I would guess that Lorient and Floyd both go with him. Everyone else leaves too, but not with Ross.

No need to wait on the end of the season for the announcement. Ross already announced he is gone and I bet we have 100% roster turnover (unless it is an internal candidate) so we need to get the new staff working the portal. Do it now. And about the portal: the first players to move will be the guys out of our price range. Most of our shopping will be in the bargain aisle. Finding guys who didn’t get the deal they wanted or need to prove themselves to get the next paycheck. Those guys will still be in the portal after the NIT is over.

The NBA is a long shot, but this dude is gonna go to the highest bidder in college basketball every season and will make some real money. He also probably gets another year of eligibility because of the whole JUCO deal that his current classmate started. I could see Hodge opening up his new wallet for him.

I get it, but in our situation within college basketball right now, in a one bid conference, having a chance to win the NIT is about as good as it can get for our program. So we should really enjoy this. To force them to let us in the NCAA tournament, we’d either have to win almost 30 games or win our conference tournament. Neither of those things are going to happen often. So if you are going to be a North Texas basketball fan, and I REALLY enjoy being one. You better be happy with and appreciate the NIT. And yes, they are going to take our coach and take our players (and I was crying about it more than anyone when all this started) but they can’t take our TEAM away: the Mean Green basketball squad that represents our university. And as long as we have a team, we can get a new coach to root for with new players. And we can still beat teams like Oklahoma State, Minnesota and Washington State. And if they won’t let us in to the NCAAs, we can win the damn NIT. There is something punk and underdog and rebellious about us and that is fun. F it all, we can still compete and we can still win. And we are going to keep doing it.

I was appalled when CJ Noland left North Texas for New Mexico. Turns out that New Mexico gets crazy levels of support from its community. No real professional sports there so New Mexico games are a big deal and the program has way more $ than other mid-majors.

It is better for Ross if his assistants move up to get their own head coaching jobs. Makes being one of his assistants more desirable. Great coaches are fighting over getting a job on Scott Drew’s staff.

These are just estimates from some random dude in Washington state. Not official NCAA filings.

I’ve had a chance to be around the team a few times and I noticed that Ross always ate with Herl. To me, that meant that Ross confided in Herl and also valued his opinion. That’s just another indicator to me that Herl might be the right guy to keep the momentum going.

Jared has a high-level background in basketball and is 2-for-2 on basketball hires. Plus, he is still buddy/buddy with Thin Wren, who might be the best in the country at hiring basketball coaches. I’m sure Thin Wren gave Jared a list of coaching names to investigate too. Plus, if I was Jared, I might pay our new head coach way less than Grant/Ross and use the savings for men’s basketball NIL. I mean will that coach’s life be much different making $400K a year than it would be making $800K a year? That much money towards NIL at our level can make a HUGE impact on the quality of players that the new coach lands.

I am beginning to strongly support the idea of giving this job to Jase Herl, if he is committed to retaining the slow-pace of play, defensive identity that we have won with the last 8 years. Reasons: Hurl has obviously been Hodge’s No. 1 assistant the last two seasons and is the most active of the staff during games. He was also the primary recruiter for us on Jason Edwards, and a future Dallas Maverick that he coached at one of his prior coaching stops transferred over to another school to join Herl again, which indicates that he can identify and acquire talent. He’s also spent his entire career learning to do more with less at our level of basketball or lower. Like Hodge, Herl is a former assistant of defensive guru Larry Eustachy, who Ross gives a lot of credit for his superior knowledge of X’s & O’s. Herl also spent five seasons on the staff at Missouri State, another school that leaned on its defense to be successful. Like Hodge and McCasland, Herl was a successful junior college head coach for several seasons. And that skill set really transfers to our current NIL and transfer portal situation. Herl was also 1-5 as interim HC at Colorado State, but that was a disaster season for that program where Eustachy was fired for abusing players and the team’s first interim was also removed. I’m not holding that against Herl, who was also only 30 years old at the time. Overall, this is an opportunity to keep a good thing going with a coach who knows how to win here, understands the challenges of our institution and can recruit. Let’s sign him up and reschedule the faculty appreciation lunch for the next few years.

I mean, we played several important games in Fort Worth last week and the crowds weren’t impressive.

More work if the teams are winning. Might have to reschedule faculty luncheons. Nah…

I don’t hate it

I would rather win the NIT before he is gone.