GrandGreen

NT soccer commits per Soccer Buzz website 2008 Recruits By School New College First Name Last Name Pos Hometown St/Ctry HS/Prev College Tr Club # North Texas Kara Brooks F TX D'Feeters # North Texas Hannah Crawford D TX Challenge # North Texas Shannon Gorrie D TX Rowlett HS Dallas Texans # North Texas Julie Lackey D TX Challenge # North Texas Casey Lerond F TX Dallas Texans # North Texas Kelsey Perlman F Allen TX Allen HS Sting # North Texas Jessica Price D TX Legacy Christian Acad Dallas Texans # North Texas Rachel Turpin F/M TX Challenge

In men's games, all home teams win as usual in Belt FIU 74 Troy 49 MTSU 61 FAU 57 NO 65 Denver 49 NT women lose in another lackluster effort ASU 69 NT 55. Women shoot at 31% and have 26 turnovers

The numbers reported for NT are obviously in error. It appears to be the total Denton campus enrollment. Below is NT, Denton Campus enrollment for the Spring. Classification2007 Spring EnrollmentFreshmen 3,817Sophomore5,300Junior 6,415Senior9,320Post-Bach1,291Masters4,010Doctoral1,469Total31,622

I believe that TD is going to get a lot of speed in this class. However, that is based on my confidence in TD's recruiting ability and emphasis on speed. IMO football quoted 40 speeds are totally unreliable. Look at any bowl divison commits and see how many skill players are not listed with 4.5 or better speed. For example, look at NT's 2005 recruits, another class heavy on skill players; two 4.4's ( Kory Washington, Evan Robertson) and 6 4.5's. (Bush, Green, Chatman, Stubblefield, Demario Thomas, Oubre).

Some thoughts on Centenary game. Centenary did tighten up in the second half. The Centenary coach slowed up the game, ditched his three guard lineup and went with a front court going 6'8, 6'9 and 6'11 much of the second half. He was not going to win with this group but it did keep the score down and kept Centenary from being totally embarrassed. NT played lethargically in the second half with JJ being content to set on a big lead and spread the playing time around. I thought it was interesting that Centenary started 3 guards all 6' and under but were not able to keep up with the Green. It was great to see NT jump on a team from the tip off. Thanks in a large part to Dez, who was on fire in the first half. The downsides to the NT's performance was too many turnovers, less than average free throw shooting, and little offense from the front court other than Wooden. Williams was stellar on defense and the boards, but he just has not found an offensive game this year. Stewart actually displayed more offense than usual with his normal high energy game. Hogans and Howerton both played like freshmen. NT big men did have a great number of blocks, many of which our apparently "asleep at the wheel" official scorer did not recognize. If it were not for Josh White's phenomenal start, NT fans would be much more exited about Thompson's play. Could he be the second best freshman in the Belt? Bell continues to excel and I wish Dennis could get more minutes. I think McCoy is trying to impress too much, understandable with his limited minutes; but he has the ability to really help this team without forcing his offensive game. In summary, another good victory for NT; Centenary is not a bad team with victories over La Tech, SMU and Texas Tech. Their only other blow out loss by a similar score was at Baylor. NT should have no problem with Denver, but I am always leary of games played there.

While I agree with the spirit of your post, I'm can't agree with a couple of your comments. The NT softball team has never come close to having a winning year, therefore I don't think they have met the "very good" criteria. Engel is obviously gifted at getting service aces and deserves congratulations but has never made an "All Conference" team much less been considered among the best players in the nation. Personally I enjoy women's sports as much as men's. The competition is just as intent and the athletes just as gifted. In general most fans care little about non-revenue sports no matter the gender. There are only four sports that gather much fan interest; football, men and women's' basketball and baseball.

Slinker played her college ball at Wayland Baptist.

In the last few seasons, there have been a handful including me posting about women's basketball. This year there seems to be even less interest from board posters about Slinker's team. They play a big game tonight against OSU, does anyone care? I have season tickets but have yet to see a game this year other than the great web-casts and will not be going tonight. There are some good players on the team and they deserve support, but frankly I just can't get geared up to make the 2 1/2 hour round trip to see the mediocre basketball being played so far this year.

What point am I missing? I frankly care a lot less about what SMU does than most on this board. But I do think we make easy targets talking smack about almost any program. By the way, SMU has beat us in soccer (it does count), women's basketball and football this year and NT has beat SMU in uh nothing. The fact is that as bad as SMU has been in performance and support, they are still miles ahead of NT in that most critical of factors, money. You can look at the SMU head football coach search in a couple of views. You can ridicule their long coaching search or you can envy the fact that they are going to pay 3 to 5 times what NT is able to fund.

Well lets see, SMU basketball team is 4-5 with a win over TCU. NT was close if not the worst team in Bowl Division football providing the only wins for FIU and SMU as well as having one of the worst defenses in NCAA history. Yes I think they are comparable, although SMU still has 2/3 of the season to improve.

After NT's football season, I would temper any assessment of another school's poor athletic performance.

I think TD was referring to having 18 return of the two deep offense.

I enjoyed Dodge's comments on recruiting but some were confusing. TD stated he currently had 7 wr's on scholarship, have some left or slated for other positions? I count more: Strickler, Fitzgerald, Johnson, Dibrell, Washington, Robertson, Lewis, Fentress, King and Walker. The 7 makes more sense as NT has already committed to four more wr's. He also erroneously identified Drake and Peachy as redshirt freshmen. Both played on DD's green team. He also stated he thinks they will recruit about 22 players, which means pending any defections: NT has only 6 ships available. Dodge's positive approach is great to hear.

Rivals reporting verbal by John Shorter 5'11 177 DB Lake Highlands to NT

I am surprised at the "deer in the headlights" start that NT has had in the last two games. NT played a very good offensive game tonight in the second half, the defense gave up too many easy shots; but UT is going to do that to most teams. White was fantastic, as was Wooden in the second half. Bell had his best game of the year, if only he could start hitting his outside shot. I think NT could do very good against UT in a rematch on a neutral court at the end of the season. There has been talk of White being freshman of year in Belt, he might do a lot better than that. White is definitely a point guard, but I would like to see more Bell at point and White on the wing. UT may be the only team on the schedule that can equal NT's athletes. This should be a fun year, already making plans for Mobile.

Meager had a very good year. while I didn't have a problem with elevating Vizza, I don't think the record would have been any difference with Meager starting the entire season. Vizza was the underclassman, and thus had the edge because of potential benefit to the program; but I don't think that Vizza outplayed Meager this year. I would hate to lose Meager, despite his many IMO unfair critics' view, has always played hard and handled himself well. I hope he is here next year and provides very good insurance if there is an injury to Vizza. I hope Dodge is redshirted.

SMU and TCU want no part of NT now. There have been suggestions for years for the four Division 1 local teams to have a tournament. The problem is I guess that none of the teams really draws a crowd and thus sponsors aren't that interested. There is no reason, however that the four schools couldn't do it without sponsorship and rotate the location of the tournament. Seems to me this would be be financially beneficial to all and could be build into a major event. I wonder if any of the schools has ever proposed this to the others? Maybe the idea just needs someone to initiate the process.

Jamario was a first team freshman AA as well as being third team regular AA.

Can anyone remember a recent better comeback win? I remember that great finish against Texas back in the 80's and a 20+ comeback at Baylor decades ago, but can't recall anything similar in the last twenty years.

What a comeback. Some salvation for the day.

Just look at the Belt stats that will tell you everything you want to know.

I don't believe they have. However, I don't think positive or negative comments on a board are significant in recruiting. Fan boards are negative by nature, even teams that win most of their games have as many negative comments as positive. I like you think that almost everyone on the board wants the best for NT. However, to think that most fans are not going to spew frustration over one if not the worst season in NT history is highly optimistic.

NT has probably the worst team in the nation and you are worried about negative board comments hurting recruiting? I still support TD and think he will turn it around. However, IMO you would have to be totally clueless to not have doubts after this season.

Brian Nelson was a greyshirt and has been on the roster for 5 years. 03-04 Greyshirt (not on ship, does not practice) 04-05 Redshirted 05-06 Redshirt Freshman 06-07 Soph. 07-08 Junior 08-09 Will be senior in eligibility

I don't think the addition of another Bowl Division team in Texas would be a positive for NT. IMO playing even at the lowest tier of the Bowl Division is much better than being in the Championship Division. Therefore I understand the desire for moving up, but that doesn't mean its a good thing for UNT. The fact is that Texas already has 10 BD teams and additional teams does significantly reduce the talent pool, particularly at the lower tier of BD. As far as the Belt, the last thing the conference needs is more start up teams. There is no opening in the conference unless some team leaves, more than 9 football teams makes little sense. By the time any team can move up, the circumstances will be substantial difference. Until then I guess there will be continued attempts by schools to move up and in some cases initiate football programs. Maybe UTSA, Lamar, and UTA will start football programs and the whole Southland conference can move up to Bowl Division status. Then NT fans can celebrate they have 6 more BD teams to recruit and compete against in Texas plus another in Arkansas and three more in Louisiana.