untjim1995

Kansas looked like they figured a lot of things out last night against K-State. I have a feeling that they are gonna be better for this poor stretch, but they still have tough games at Okie Lite, Iowa State, and Baylor. We'll see, but they looked a lot more like Kansas than they did last week, that's for sure.

If Rivals think this class was underwhelming, wait and see what we would pull if McCarney went out on the recruiting trail with just one year left on his contract. I wouldn't want to see the ratings on those kids that say, "Yeah, Coach, I know that you may be gone after this year, since your contract expires at the end of the season, but I want to come play for you--that sounds like a very stable idea. I'm sure that you will be my coach for as long as you are telling me." Lamar and Abilien Christian would laugh at how much better their recruiting classes would be than ours in that scenario. Sadly, now that I've typed that hypothetical out, it will probably go down that way...

If Coach Mac goes 2-10 here or worse this season, he will be gone. Otherwise, he will be here for a 4th season. However, to get to a 5th season, he will either have been extended or fired during his 4th season, just like Dodge. You cannot let a coach go out and recruit with one year left on his contract--he wouldn't get any kids worth a damn to commit. Other schools' coaches would play that card all day if he went into the final year of his contract. No one ever does that to their coach. We will know sometime in 2014 if Coach Mac will be here for a while or if we are going to be looking for another coach in 2015.

I completely agree with you. It just makes you laugh at how ridiculous it sounds to think of our team as a potential Top 25 program, even though the returning talent made so many others believe it was very possible or probable. Then, we lost to Alabama-Huntsville...

Did you learn how to spin things from Baghdad Bob? At this point, I am starting to believe you post on this board just to troll. Defending Benford's coaching ability all season is what most people would call "low basketball IQ". You will get your chance to be proven right, in regard to Benford, since he will be back again, but to me, that shows a low basketball IQ by the BOR and the AD. Actually it shows a low basketball commitment by the BOR and the AD, but that's nothing new. I will say this--you are the perfect fan for the BOR and administration here.

George apparently talked Craig Miller out of coming up to Denton to watch a game because we "aren't very good". We went from being billed as a top 25 team at the beginning of the season to the play-by-play game announcer telling his former roommate to not really go watch his team. Thanks Benford and RV.

The defense will get help if the offense can move the ball and score. The defense last year just got run into the ground from too much time on the field and a lack of depth. Whether the depth issues have been addressed adequately is subjective, but the offense needs a guy who can throw the ball. Plus, DT would be a great backup if Berglund can play like we hope he can, just in case of an injury. To me, its kind of like the Rangers--their pitching may not be great, but having gold glove players in the infield sure helps you to get outs and stay in games until your offense can score more runs. Our defense, especially the line, may not be anywhere close to what we want it to be, but if we can give them more rest by having the offense control the ball and the clock, they will get better. Probably not better enough to challenge for a conference title right now, but good enough to get to 5 or 6 wins, which would show us all that we are still improving.

I want to tell you that I appreciated your hope and belief in your post about Benford being gone. Youth and common sense will tell you that North Texas SHOULD make changes like this. As you will see, this type of athletic leadership does not exist here. It really never has. We fire coaches when it is cost effective first, performance second. The BOR wouldn't let RV fire Dickey, supposedly, after we lost at ULM in 2001 to go 0-5 and his overall record as head coach at the time was 8 and 31. We let Todd Dodge come back to coach a 4th year of his 5-year contract after he had gone 5-31 in his previous 3 years. He promptly went 1-6 before getting fired. In hoops, we let Vic Trilli coach here for 4 years. He went 20-87, including a fine 4-24 record to reward us for giving him that extra year. We won't be firing Benford anytime soon. He will be here for a bare minimum of 2 more years, and the track record for UNT suggests that he will here for 3 more years. As I posted a while back, we might be stuck with Benford for the next 2-3 years and having to still deal with a buyout at the end of this nightmare, but the guillotine should fall on RV. He made this hire, just as he did for Todd Dodge and Shanice Stephens. You can say others were involved in making those hires, but the fact is that they all occurred on his watch within the past 6 years. He gets a lot of credit around here for the tailgating and for faciliy upgrades, as he should since they also happened on his watch, but the on-field performance of your money sports in most of his time as AD has been awful in football and looks to heading back that way again in mens basketball. At almost any other school in the country that plays at the level we play at, with our size enrollment, would make a change or two in leadership to get things rolling in the right direction. As you have read, though, history tells all of us quite clearly that it doesn't work that way here. We just don't care about athletics enough to be a legitimate player in college sports. We love our music, arts, and education programs a lot here at UNT and in Denton. They don't cost too much to run. Its just too bad that they don't give your university a chance to bring in thousands of people at once to celebrate our school. But the university loves to talk "value", which is great on a lot fronts, but it reads as "cheap" to a lot of folks. And the proof in the pudding for that "value"-oriented approach is not running an athletic deaprtment anywhere near where it could or should be run.

It wasn't so much that Self got out-coached, as it was that their team just got outplayed and outhustled. Even Trent Johnson said after the game that TCU needed all the help they got to win that game. It was amazing to watch a team with that much talent simply miss shot after shot. It was very UNT-esque in that they couldn't shoot from outside 5 feet. They are probably a fraud, but college hoops this season has been a crapshoot. Literally, anyone that makes the tournament this year has a chance to make serious noise. This is why our season is so amazingly disappointing. It wont surprise me to see a team like MUTS end up in the Sweet 16. Its gonna be a year where a mid major is playing games deep into the tournament. We should have been a team that others were talking about in this vein. Instead, the only Texas schools that will probably make the tournament are SFA and Baylor. As usual, we blew the chance to garner so much attention, almost solely, for our school in athletics in the area and the state. Benford'd and RV'd

Best post on this board in quite some time...you beat me to it.

I think there are 5-6 wins on this schedule if our QB play is improved to just average play. If its stay below average, then I think that 3-4 wins is the most likely result for 2013. If the QB play is above average, I think you have potential for 7+ wins on the schedule, not including a bowl. Tulane, La Tech, Idaho, UTEP, UTSA, USM, and MUTS are very winnnable games. I think Ball State and Rice are beatable, as well. I think games at Ohio and Tulsa will be tall orders, for sure, but the only 100% loss on the schedule is at Georgia (Where we fund all of the non-revenue sports from the proceeds). You gotta win your home games, which I can see us doing with at least 4-5 wins, so getting 1-2 wins on the road gets you your improvement.

Part of the reason we have had poor QB play is because of poor scheme and poor OL play. In Dickey's last years, Woody Wilson could make plays with his feet and his arm, but Dickey didn't like his freelancing. He wanted a guy to hand off to Patrick Cobbs and Jamario Thomas and run the clock out. His offensive scheme was so poor, that 9 or more in the box was almost what Meager/Wilson/Phillips dealt with durnig his last two years. Then Dodge gets here and his offensive line was just awful. Vizza probably would've been a great QB here, but he took one hell of a beating because the OL was a sieve. Dodge totally ignored linemen, so we were set to get our QB killed. Basically, the same thing happened to Riley Dodge and Nathan Tune, both of whom just took outrageous beatings. Part of that was scheme, but a bigger part was the OL not being very good and Riley, especially, being too small for FBS quarterbacking. Now, since Coach Mac has been here, his OL has become pretty good and the running game has been solid. But, defenses could still load up 9 in the box as the season progressed because Thompson couldn't accurately throw the ball down the field and he wasn't mobile enough to keep the defenses honest. If BB can throw the ball with accuracy, and his mobility can buy him some time, the improvement here should be very telling. Assuming health and eligiility stays the same, the OL and running game should be solid. All we need is for a QB that can throw the ball accurately downfiled to take pressure off the running game.

I don't care about UTSA--I just think their ceiling is really high on where they can go if they start winning quickly. I don't care about Texas State, either, but I think they have a chacne to look a lot like we did when we first got in the Sun Belt, being very competitive and winning the conference. NEither of them really matter to me, but for comparative sake, I think its good for North Texas to see how we are doing against two new FBS startups. And I agree about SMU--they don't care about us, but we are easy to make fun of since we are always trying to creat a rivalry with them that they have shown time and time again not to want. Their chief rival will always be TCU. They have rivalries with Tulsa, Tulane, and Rice. They have a rivalry with UH. Maybe one day we will be on that list, but you have to actually play each other for more than two games to get a decent two-way rivalry going. And it has to create headlines in the media and cause near capacity attendance. We aren't UTSAs rival, nor are we SMUs rival. We aren't anyone's rival in football. You could say we have a rivalry with UTA in basketball, but that's about it. And even that one doesn't really create much heat amongst the UNT citizenry. When UTA comes to town, we get about 2500 to 3000 at the 10,000 seat Super Pit. I suspect that when UTSA comes here in football or we go there, the attendance will be in the 20k range for either home team, until we both are winning. Our students and alumni overwhelmingly care about the opponent, otherwise, they won't come out to watch. When we play a former SWC team, its a big crowd. When we play a bigger name AQ team at home, we get a good crowd. When we don't, we get 15k-18k for announced crowds when we play SBC teams. I doubt very seriously that will change much now that much of the SBC and WAC have moved into CUSA. We are in a winner's market--the pro teams show us this, just as winning at TCU has shown us. The DFW fans care about perception, which is probably not any different than most metro areas. Our perception has been crippled by i-aa and low level FBS conference play for the last 30+ years. You just can't beat teams from your conference that no one cares about in this state. And you cannot continuously get slaughtered by the huge AQ names that we play each year for our $$$ game. Call them douche fans or bandwagoners or T-shirt fans, but the only way to get them involved in your program is to beat people they have heard of, or at least play competitively against the biggest names in the game.

I wonder how much of the advantage Texas State seems to have built up quickly in recruiting also involves their location. San Marcos is really beautiful with it being in the Hill Country and I know that the San Marcos river has been known to attract a few pretty coeds in the spring and summer. Match that up with a good pedigree in Coach Fran and I wonder how much that helps, if that is even measurable. I also wonder how much Coach McCarney's stroke has hampered recruits, too. As I have done the last few months, I'm just trying to find some decent excuse as to why we cannot get Texas HS kids to want to play here. This isn't the old North Texas, playing at Fouts, in the SBC, after a 1-11 year, under a high school coach. It just doesn't make sense to me. AS for UNT BOR or Lane Rawlins getting involved to do anything regarding personnel changes in the AD, I wouldn't exactly hold my breath on that. Now, if the Director of the Green Brigade is not performing to their standards or if the College of Arts isn't getting enough students into art classes, I think you'd see that BOR move a whole lot faster. That's what we care about at North Texas the most. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but the others schools in this state that play FBS football don't quite see things in the same vein.

I went to this game last night. TCU is really bad, but they caught KU sleepwalking. The Jayhawks acted like the name on the front of the jersey was enough to be the Forgs. TCU was smart, though. They took the air out of the ball on offense, just running down the clock on almost every possession. They called timeouts just as KU would get a mini run going. And most improtantly, they made enough FTs to keep KU at bay. The saddest part of this game was that Daniel Meyer Coliseum seats about 7400 and over half of them in attendance last night were KU fans. TCU is bad, so I get that their students and alums aren't too excited about their hoops team, but it does hit on the fact that being in the Big XII (or the old SWC) is just such a huge advantage for a private school like TCU or Baylor. They get butts in seats just because of who they get to play. To make it UNT related, if we were to play TCU, Tony Benford may or may not cuss out Trent Johnson while we lose by about 25. I may or may not cuss Trent Johnson out, too. Him leaving LSU gave JJ his dream opportunity and now we are stuck with a guy who cannot beat Alabama-Huntsville. Damn you, Trent Johnson!!

Tech won't schedule us anytime soon because they play Baylor here every year and then play TCU every other year. I'm sure they will drop SMU soon, too. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me to see us play them in Lubbock. I could see them buying a game out there in OOC. The teams that would visit here from the Big XII are up north--OSU, KU, KSU, and ISU ought to be the targets for home-and-home series. I still think that Colorado, Nebraska, and Mizzou would play games down here, too, just to get a foothold back in Texas recruiting again.

I can't see this one. Unless its to be the non-football team that the MWC adds to make up for Hawaii. But I think they have SBC written all over them right now, which beats the heck out of FBS independent.

Reading is hard...I said if we lose to them, MOST LIKELY it will mean we will have a losing record. Obviously, if we went 8-4, but lost to UTSA, no one would lose their job. But the reality is that if we los to UTSA in football this season, we aren't going to have more than 2 wins, in my opinion. There is no way a brand new FBS program should beat our team. As far as supporting your school, drop it already. The clear majority of students and alumni don't even give $.02 to this university's athletic department. For those of us that have given 20+ years of our fandom to our alma mater, only to see the school barely act like they care about athletics has been difficult, to say the least. We want to see the program progress forward--losing to UTSA is moving backwards. Now, if we move backwards by only winning 3-4 games this year, but we beat UTSA, I know that McCarney will be back. But if we go 3-9 or worse, with one of those losses being to UTSA, that should be enough for the university to realize that a change needs to be made. If that still didn't happen, that is telling all of us, young and old, that we just aren't serious about winning here, just funding something for lip service. Some on here have been following this program for over 40 and 50 years. Their patience to endure this stuff is amazing, but I know that in my 23 years of following UNT, the payback as a fan has been much less than it has to my friends who have attended any other FBS school in Texas, not including UTSA or Texas State. Sure, I loved the NO Bowls, but with the exception of the three years we had a winning team as a FBS team, as well as falling to the absolute bottom of FBS football under Todd Dodge, has just eroded any extra patience that I had. I love Coach McCarney and I believe in him. I think he will turn it around this year. Even he will tell you that he knows this year is critical to moving forward. He has expectations that I think are higher than a lot of people around the university. I think this is all a moot point, and that I am wasting time ranting about this. But that gets to the reality of my fandom--I want the unviersity to continue to show us all that we want more out of our program. Just because we built a great stadium finally and went out and paid a higher salary for an experienced coach, doesn't mean that is enough. If you are playing FBS football, you have to pay to compete at that level. If you don't, the other programs just pass you by. Part of that is not accepting subpar results on the field, even if it means buying out extra years of a contract, rather than just waiting an extra year so the buyout will be much less. Keeping Dodge that extra year cost the university in on-field results, in recruiting, and in support. Not paying an extra $275k above the buyout he got for leaving with just one year on his contract certainly cost us a lot more in the end. Now, Coach McCarney is dealing with the repercussions of that short-sighted thinking that has haunted this place forever. I'm sorry, but if we see UTSA pass us by in w/l records in the next few years, after starting a football program from scratch just a few years ago, that would tell me that we don't belong in the FBS world. When we lost to startups in Florida, it was bad enough, but we knew that the state of Florida has so much talent that they had room for new schools to grow up quickly. Here in Texas, we have 12 teams as FBS programs now. If the two new ones pass us by, I really have to ask the question of why we can't do what they could do so soon. And the simple answer would seem to be because we just don't want to as a university. If that is the case, and the proof would be in the pudding in that point, IMO, all of us need to ask if we should be playing at this level. But, again, I don't believe this will be the case. I expect that we will beat UTSA like a drum for many years to come and I believe we will see progress this year to get to 5 or more wins and that we will get better over the next few years to the point where we will be competitive at the top of CUSA.

Yes, it would. People in Texas actually know UTSA. No one had heard of FAU or USF before them, so when we lost to them (repeatedly) no Texans even cared. UTSA beating us would be the ultimate insult. If we lose to them, which means we would have a losing season most likely, I know for a fact that changes better happen, either with the head coach and his enitre staff or with all of them plus the AD. No way that should be acceptable to anyone who posts on this board. Hell,it shouldn't be acceptable to any of the casual fans of ours that only show up when we play someone they've heard of. And if it happens and no one loses their job, I am out on giving anymore time, money, or energy to this place. If things are so apathetic around here to not cause any changes if that kind of stupidity occurred, we really should just go back to FCS ball. That is unforgiveable, at least in my eyes. No freakin' way a third year program should be able to even compete with a program like ours at this stage of the game. We aren't in our 5th year of FBS ball, its going to be number 19, for crying out loud!!

I don't know these things, but I am trying to find excuses to how any Louisiana school would be able to get better recruits than us, so my question actually involves academics. Is it harder to gain acceptance to UNT than it is for La Tech, ULL, ULM, or even UTSA, Texas State, or Arkansas State? I honestly don't know.

NMSU is perfect for the SBC--again.

Maybe the problem is just as simple as we haven't been able to get any recruits that are not able to be downgraded below the 3* level under their rankings, unlike the few that FIU, ULM, ASU, or TSSM have gotten. I really don't have a clue, nor care to know how they grade this stuff, but the fact remains that we just don't have any credibility with these recruiting agencies, nor does it appear that we have any pull still with Texas HS coaches and their players. We are still the ultimate place for HS players to settle, not to choose. I would've guessed that Apogee alone would have changed this just because the previous place was such a dump and the university is still located close to the Metroplex. I thought CUSA would help us. I thought Coach McCarney's reputation and energy would've helped us. In the end, playing games at Fouts, in the Sun Belt or Big West, with Simon/Dickey/Dodge as head coach produced recruits from HS that were just as unremarkable as this class is turning out to be. I'll go back to this, but this needs to be a year where we see improvement (bare minimum of 5 wins still makes Coach Mac's seat warm for 2014), because anything else below 5 wins is just proof that we still haven't figured out how to win at this level. And I think we will see that turnaround this upcoming season. But I'll also say this: We've tried to barely fund a program at the FBS level with non-experienced college assistants (Simon and DIckey) while playing at easily the worst stadium in college football. We've tried hiring a Texas HS guru to see if his huge success could translate here while playing in the same dump. Finally, we build a great new stadium and pay for a recognizable head coach with some solid years of experience under his belt. What has it brought us, though, the fans? In the end, all we've seen since 1995 is failure, with the exception of the 2002-2004 seasons. Imagine if a company produced inferior products and service for the better part of 18 years since going public? Here at UNT, we just accept it--the apathy to the product is so overwhelming that nothing ever seems to be able to work to get the company going in the right direction, even though the location of the company is supposedly in a hotbed for its product's materials and there is supposedly a huge clientele that is just looking for a reason to buy it. After all these years, I'm really starting to believe that the product might just be incurably defective to the consumer and that the supposed potential clients have decided long ago to never buy anything from the company again. YEt here we are again, we all get sucked into believeing that we are ridiculously close to turning this operation into the next Apple or Google. In reality, we very well might just be the next Dell, having to lower our company back down from the competition because we just can't, or choose not, to compete at a higher level. And we aren't even talking about the highest level to compete at, just a middle space where profitability and a good reputation can still be created.

We aren't getting rid of Benford, unless you donate the buyout. There's no way this university is going to buy out four years of a contract for a basketball coach when they wouldn't/couldn't buy out an extra year of the worthless Todd Dodge experiment that would have cost > $300k to get rid of him in 2009 instead of 2010.

You know, I remember feeling this way about Vic Trilli back in 1997. Things will get better as he learns how to be a head coach. He has all this talent and the Super Pit is still a great place to play and... By the end of 1998, it was obvious that he was in waaaaaayyyyyy over his head, but there was nothing we could do but accept that he was going to be here for another couple of years. And Trilli's team actually eked out a win over a pesky d-2 team. Let this sink in--Benford, in not quite one year as the head coach, has already made a lot folks believe that Vic Trilli isnt the worst basketball coach they've ever seen. And Trilli, as nice as he was, couldn't outcoach you average YMCA coach. So, Benford has that going for him....which is nice.

I think the appropriate action is to make a change at head basketball coach...