KoldBeer

Up 18 at under 12 timeout.

UNT up by 7 at half. Both teams shooting 50%.

LSU isn't good. UTA w/in 8 at half at Kansas

Rice up early 17-9. Tonight lots of UNT opponents on TV since KU vs UTA is on ESPNU. I wish North Texas could have been on TV against these teams.

I'll take MTSU. No way ULM wins. They are on the road.

I don't know if bad bench is right term, but it's short bench. According to Kenpom stats, North Texas is #312 in nation in percentage of minute played by bench players. They only make up 24% of the minutes compared with 32%. http://www.kenpom.com/team.php?team=North%20Texas Tonight's bench scoring was really helped out by Hall hitting those two 3 pointers. Looking over box score, the biggest issue I saw was defensive FG%. OPSU shot 45% overall and 53% from 3pt range (on 17 attempts). The goal should be 40% and 35%. OPSU did turn the ball over 22 times but we were only credited with 8 steals. North Texas FT percentage is unusually low for us but that was result of Knox going 1 for 6. Take him out and we were 24-33. So ready for Thursday so we can get conference play started. Here's to back to back Sun Belt titles.

Utah Valley was 291 going into tonight. I guess at least they were Div 1. Bottom half of Belt is brutal.

It would have been nice to get the sweep. Seems like the Belt can't get any momentum going this season (sure seems like we've lost most of these 50/50 type games this year). I guess FIU spent too much time celebrating the bowl game.

I didn't get to see the game tonight but it doesn't sound like I missed much. I'm not going to worry too much about this game but we should have won by 40 points. I hope this is the last regular season game ever against a Div II school.

Lots of chatter last couple of days on twitter and message boards that the Big East will go with 12/20 model (12 for football and 20 other sports). The reports say they will add Houston and UCF. If two teams did leave CUSA, then I could see SMU and UTEP going to the MWC. I'm not sure what CUSA would do to replace UH and UCF, but I could see some negative shake out for that conference. If the Big East does expand, then we'll have some interesting movement that will impact both SMU and UNT.

OPSU is a bad Div II team. They are 2-9 and just got pasted by NMSU. I'm looking for 30 point win with lots of time for guys at the end of the bench.

Not much in weekly columns, but a couple of mentions: From Mid Major Report... Under who's hot: North Texas: North Texas is 10-2 with big man George Odufuwa averaging a double-double (11.5 points per game and 10.0 rebounds per game). http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5959225 From Andy Katz week that was report... 4. The gap has closed between power-six conference teams and lower-level teams. The elite teams such as Duke, Ohio State and Kansas still take care of business, regardless of competition. But it’s hard to argue that the gap hasn’t closed for average to mediocre teams that are struggling. Furman, Jacksonville, Seattle, Siena, Maine, Presbyterian and North Texas all won against power six teams this past week. http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/20224/observations-from-the-week-that-was-4

Decent write-up on new DC Clint Bowen. Below is a link to the full story but I figure most people will like this part “They’ve built a little football village there,” Bowen said. “They’re making a commitment to turning that program into conference champion and a winning program.” Asked if such lofty goals could become a reality, Bowen answered with confidence. “It’s a place that I know we can win at,” he said. “And win in a hurry and win big.” http://www2.kusports.com/news/2010/dec/25/clint-bowen-new-d-coordinator-north-texas/

I'd be very, very happy if that was our record at the end of the season. Kenpom.com has us at #131 with a projected record of 23-6 (12-4) http://www.kenpom.com/team.php?team=North%20Texas

Great defensive effort. I like these two stats. Stat US Them FG% 54% 38% Reb 34 23

Agreed. We've looked really good since SHSU disaster.

At the half: Florida Atl 32 LA-Monroe 26 FAU looking to go 2-0 in Belt.

CMJ - Thanks. ESPN has a good one too. Yahoo just has score.

Stupid question - is there a site with live stats. Watching the game on MeanGreen Premium (finally broke down and purchased - nice video so far). But is there somewhere that has live stats. I like to check stats of games during timeouts.

Good first half. I'd love to see North Texas come out and dominate the second half. We've had a tendency to let teams back into games.

Drexel won so we'll drop two spots since both teams were behind us in the rankings. At least I assume we'll drop two spots.

This is from the San Diego paper. It's a quote from the San Diego AD. “The really interesting questions are going to be what we start thinking about in January,” Weber said. “The first question would be: would we like to add more programs? If so, the question is whether it’s one or two (programs in addition to Hawaii). Beyond that, a question is where those programs would be. Do we want to stay in Texas, or do we want to look elsewhere?” .... Weber said he doesn’t expect the questions to be resolved in January. If the board is “serious about looking at a couple of teams, we’d probably do that through the rest of spring and make a decision in June,” he said. ..... “Let’s be clear: the market in Utah is pretty small; that’s not a big marketplace,” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/dec/10/mountain-west-still-may-grow-beyond-hawaii/ I think people are wrong to assume UTEP and Utah St are 100% getting invites. It was mentioned in article by guy who writes for St. Lake City paper, but he never said they were 100% getting invites. He just said they are two potential expansion candidates. The MWC needs to decide if they want to stay in Texas or just stay in Mountain Time Zone. I don't think they know right now.

We will drop a spot next week. Oakland (#12) beat Tennessee tonight. Oakland almost beat Michigan St last week. They have a nice team. Drexel is ahead of Louisville right now so we may drop two spots.

Good news for North Texas is that we have FAU at home this year.

If FAU could average 2,200 I don't think people (at least people in Sun Belt) would think that is bad attendance (especially with small capacity). I do think FAU will always look bad because I think most people assume arenas hold at least 5,000 people. So even at 100% capacity FAU will seem bad at first glance. To me why it seems bad right now is that FAU might be best team but the attendance is last.