GrandGreen

Great finish by NT to end up fifth. I believe that with out the first round jitters, they could have been second. Apparently, Denver is in a league by themselves but I do believe that NT is definitely on an upward swing with the recruits they have coming in.

We did play Indiana both home and away. Alabama apparently only away. The OSU announced crowd was in the 7000 range I think, but at least 3000 were wearing orange. I did not say that tNT didn't have bigger crowds for name opponents, only that these games did not draw as many NT fans as one would hope.

Keeping expectations low does not help, but how does expanded expectations from a fan base help if it is not reflected in attendance or support? Frankly, I marvel at how well Jones has done when I look at the average Superpit crowd of maybe 1800 actual fans including a few hundred students. Things are definitely better, there were maybe 25 NT fans who saw Jones win his first tournament championship excluding the band in Lafayette and there were not 100 students at the NT games in the Belt tournament in Denton; but there is far to go. As far as Morgan, you seem to take the position that he was a failure at UCLA; therefore NT should definitely be in the chase in his recruitment. The fault in that logic is, that if NT still sees a lot of promise in Morgan so do a multitude of other teams, many higher up in the pecking order than NT. Your factors for increased attendance: consistent winning including games over the big six conference members and an improved home schedule. Maybe you should throw in a national championship or two. The facts are that almost every team these days plays a number of patsies in the non-conference. JJ has had home games against Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma State and other brand name teams to see little rise in NT fans attendance. Note, I stated NT fans not opponent fans who come to the game. Yes, attendance was up for those games especially from students but still far from a satisfactory level. Fan support is building and I expect it to be significantly better next year, however it still tough for Jones to recruit against MVC, CUSA or Western Kentucky programs that have more support and resources.

Your math is correct, in essence JJ is replacing his loses in kind, two wings, one post. The problem I have though is that I would rate every guard on the squad higher than the second front court player. The guard position is loaded with experience, potential and talent. After Odufuwa, there is potential in the front court; but little more than that. Hogans has shown great hustle but as a sophomore was not close to starter quality. Spencer is a good rebounder and did slim down and improve his quickness, but has little offensive game. Holmen is loaded with potential but played behind Spencer last year because of poor shoot selection and below average rebounding and defense. Edwards is an unknown coming off a questionable juco year. Knox has upside because of his height but is a work in progress and didn't show anything last year.

Only problem there is not one bit of evidence that Babb ever had NT on his radar. Just because a player is from the area does not mean that NT has a prayer of signing them. A lot of wishful thinking abundant on this board, but as far as I know there has been no interest at all from Babb, Morgan, or the player from Utah in NT. Carmouche is a good player and NT could do a lot worse than sign him. He is a proven upper Belt level player with two years to play. I think if he signs he will be instantly the favorite to start at the wing with Thompson. JJ has done a great job, moving this program forward; but NT is not going to get too many highly ranked recruits with the support that he has gotten at NT. A Belt school with a very generously counted average attendance of 2,600 for a program that has two NCAA tournament appearances and four 20+ seasons is not going to excite many four star recruits.

NT finished first round in tenth place out of eleven teams in Belt tournmant. NT was 25 strokes over par and is 32 behind leader Denver. Very disappointing, I thought they were getting better.

meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/ Kind of anti-climatic if true.

BB is not like football, the majority of teams are from non-power conferences. Why won't the second tier unite and oppose any new tournament configuration that would result in even more uneven representation? Promote a rule that would prohibit any team that does not win their tournament or have a winning conference record from going to the tournament. As noted above, if there is no limit on the number of teams from a conference; for the power leagues; the conference race and tournament become meaningless. My guess, is there will be some kind of limitation put on the participants as there are in Bowl games to curtail teams with losing records from going to the tournament.

rivals.yahoo.com/basketballrecruiting/basketball/recruiting/player-Shavon-Coleman I wonder if this would open up the recruiting for this guy.

Is there any sports that NT plays were there is not an incredible amount of talent in the Metroplex?

I think most of us second guessers would be very happy with a great player. Obviously, JJ sees something in Edwards that has not been evident in his play for the last three years. I think he has been doing a very good job getting people who fit in his structure and it is hard to argue with his success. However, he or any other coach don't hit on every recruit. It's not so much that Edwards is not a good prospect, it is just strange to me that with a winning program and only one ship to give at the time; NT would use it on someone that had a very average year on a mediocre juco team. There has to be a big upside with Alonzo that JJ is betting on and I would not be too surprised to see him prosper at NT, but I do wish NT had got a big man with less question marks. Just out of idle curiosity I would like to know what player has JJ recruited that deserves the "great" tag that the majority of fans questioned his recruitment?

Still don't understand this signing, but that aside Lon Morris was about 16-15 last year gettting beat in the first round of play-offs. I don't know were they got their team data.

In the official Sun Belt site, there is a section call Championships. To date, ignoring regular season and using post season results, WKU has 5 and MTSU 3 team championships. The only other schools are Denver and UNT (basketball) with one each. I think NT is making up ground but still seems far behing WKU and MTSU.

I don't know a lot about tennis, but I wonder how 6-12 TCU passed NT in the rankings.

I guess I want to confrontational today. There is no way in heck that our QB situation is deep. NT has a journeyman senior in Tune who has started two games and a sophomore who has played about a minute. Their backup is a 170 lb true freshman and several non-scholarship players. No matter what your thoughts on Riley's ability was, his being out of the QB position has made the depth at QB go from adequate to very questionable. An injury to Tune or Thompson or both would be a disaster. I would caution people not to rely on spring performances being very useful in projecting a team or unit's success. I also wouldn't discount Riley's ability running the option for a significant part of Dunbar's success last year. His speed at QB will be missed as will his ability to read defenses. The new QB will likely have better passing range, but NT lost a great weapon in Dodge's running ability.

Wonder if Brady is back in the hunt for Morgan?

IMO, it was a bad decision even if a miracle had happened and NT won the game. Do you really think that a season ending win that would get NT to two conference wins is worth losing a good QB for a year? If that QB had been Maher, Scott Hall, Scott Davis or Steve Ramsy do you believe that one win would offset the loss of those QB's for a year. The reality was with a never used QB that NT's odds runing the wildcat were close to as good as Thompson's great series for a td.

Go ahead take your survey, you may be surprised at the results. You may also want to quiz other head coaches, if they would give up a year of eligibility of a promising athlete's career for a less than 5% chance of winning the last game of the season with a 2-9 record with approximately 3 minutes left in the game. The objective of coaching is obviously to win but sometimes you have to take a longer term approach, that decision could cost you several much more important future wins. Why redshirt anyone if you subscribe to a win now at all cost philosophy? I think Dodge panicked and made a poor decision. Some agree, some don't; but it is far from the automatic decision you seem to think it was.

We had tons of discussion on this topic. And your assertion that you don't deserve to be a coach if you don't waste a year of eligibility for a chance to win is absurd with the circumstances of that game. Outside of the odds that you could win being very low, a win would have made NT a 3-9 instead of 2-10. If Thompson turns out to be the QB, NT has been searching for, his loss of a year of play for one drive will go down as one of the worst coaching decisions in the history of NT football.

Thompson, White and Odufawa will definitely be starters unless injured. The other two positions will be wide open. Shorter was a starter but I see him getting a lot of competition from Williams and McGhee. Also I predict that while JJ won't start Johnson and White together, they will be on the court together a lot next season. I wouldn't be surprised at least early that the second big will by a committee until someone rises above the others. I give Holmen a slight edge because I believe he has greater potential than the others. Even though Spencer was the first frontcourt player off the bench and Edwards was recruited to repace Tramiel, I don't see either getting big minutes. PG - Josh White ( 15), Johnson (20), Williams (5) W - Tristan Thompson (30), White (10) W - McGhee (15), Williams (10), Shorter (10), White (5) F - Holmen (15), Hogans (15), Shorter (5), Edwards (5) p- Odufawa (30), Spencer (5), Knox (5)

Some of your reasons are opinions, others seem to indicate you have special incite into the team. I think that Knox could develop into a good player, obviously you don't. I do wonder what kind of fan feels it necessary to so blast any NT player.

Collin will be missed, the team just lost a very good player.

Just a thought, home and home series don't usually rely on guarantees.

Cinderella comes to an abrupt end. Hope for Butler win but see them blown out.