KoldBeer

Damn. Left radio for a what seemed like a short period and went from blowout to blowing the lead. Need to finish it off here.

I could see Houston to Big East. No way in hell does the Big East want SMU or Tulsa. For North Texas, the key is going to be if the MWC wants to stay in Texas or not. If they want to leave Texas (TCU was only Central Time zone team), they could add Utah St and kill the WAC. This would leave MWC as one of one two western conferences. The Sun Belt might take a couple of WAC scraps and try to take WAC spots on ESPN (midweek games, etc). If the MWC wants to stay in Texas, I think they make a run at Houston and SMU. I'm not sure how interested either of these schools would be in joining the MWC. Without BYU, Utah and TCU there is no way the MWC becomes an AQ conference. If the MWC takes a couple of Texas schools, then there is a chance for UNT to change conferences (either to MWC or CUSA).

One of New York papers is reporting it and Fanhouse reporting it. I'm guessing if true, we'll start getting more confirmation in the next couple hours.

Probably another couple of weeks before these rankings start meaning something but here's the current status of North Texas Kenpom - NT is #125 (best in Belt) and Sun Belt is #18 conference http://kenpom.com/conf.php?c=SB Sagarin - NT is #105 (best in Belt) and Sun Belt is #23 conference http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/bkc1011.htm?loc=interstitialskip RPI (CBS) - NT is #27 http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/rankings/rpi/index1 RPI (Conference) - Sun Belt is #25 http://WarrenNolan.com/basketball/2011/conferencerpi

I would think with all of coach Mac's connections he should be able to put together a solid staff. Hopefully, we have the OC and DC in the next week.

I've actually watched a game involving the Colorado School of the Mines. U of Science and Arts is a new one.

It's going to be a rough season on my blood pressure if all the games are as close as the last couple.

It's always a good day when La Tech loses to a Sun Belt team.

I think North Texas is the closest anybody has been to Kansas year to date. Kansas has just been playing unbelievable right now. If North Texas could have hit a couple of 3's that game wouldn't have been so bad.

I'd take Mac's bio in a second. Even if you ignore that he has head coaching experience, I'd take his assistant coaching background over Chico's. I like Mac's experience with Wisconsin, Iowa and Florida. Chico didn't have a lot of success at Arizona. Now Chico might be the better coach for UNT but from experience standpoint Mac wins.

OU sucks. They almost got beat by North Carolina Central in Norman (looked like 1,000 people were in attendance). I really wish we were playing them this year. Home or road North Texas would win.

We better really win this game now. I was thinking this was thinking this would be 50/50 type game. If they got beat by Our Lady of the Lake, then it's more like 75/25 chance for UNT. They also gave up 91 to Long Island so we should be able to put up some points in this one.

It's still too early to put a lot of weight into these numbers but Kenpom has Rice ranked at #144. The only two teams that North Texas will play the rest of the season ranked higher are LSU and WKU. Rice is the 9th out of 12 teams in CUSA (on Kenpom).

I was at Kansas when Mason was there. I love Mason. But I'm not sure he'd be a great fit for North Texas. He's a Big 10 guy. Even when he was at Kansas he got a lot of recruits from Detroit and Ohio. Also, I'm not sure how into he'd be into greeting donors, etc. But if we did hire Mason, North Texas would be winning multiple Sun Belt titles early in his career.

Lawrence Paper... UNT is dangerous team (Lawrence paper) http://www2.kusports.com/news/2010/nov/19/ku-basketball-notebook-unt-dangerous/ Johnson relishes opportunity (Denton paper) http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/colleges/northtexas/stories/DRC_unt-kansas_advance_1119.243e950f5.html Yahoo Preview http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/preview?gid=201011190287 I'll update as I find more stories.

Jayhawk TV is part of the ESPN Full Court Package. Some sports bars have this package.

This could get interesting because I'm not sure what the WAC does now. Also, I don't know if this means TCU is going to Big East or if this is to help TCU stay.

This is from Pat Knight's press conference today... "We want to get back on the floor right away," Knight said. "But from a fan perspective, they don't know. That's a good team we played and a not a lot of teams - there's no Big 12 team that's going to go up there and play North Texas in their second game. I think we need some credit for having some balls for going up there and doing that. "No one does that and I'm trying to get these guys ready for the Big 12 so it's not like - yeah we lost the game, but it's not a bad loss. That team won the Sun Belt last year, won 24 games, everybody coming back. It's a game as a coach you look on the schedule, it's a 50-50 chance you're going to win it and we got a lot of good out of it." Some pretty good stuff in the rest of the article. http://collegesportsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/11/texas-techs-pat-knight-wants-team-to-get.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Guerrero's travel team coach says WKU is still his leader but he has opened up his recruitment. The teams listed in the article I saw are all over the board. Also, the Big 10 article on the Rivals site is about football.

From a national rival's story (one of their players decommitted)... There has been a change of plans for Cezar Guerrero, and Western Kentucky no longer has a nationally ranked recruiting class.

I like the idea. Even if this doesn't come about, I'd like to see North Texas try to get into a tournament. These games don't count against your total game limit. It'd be a good chance to pick up a little exposure since most the games are on TV somewhere. I don't know what we'd have to do to get in one, but I'd love to see North Texas play in one. When's the last time we were in a preseason tournament? - Nevermind. Forgot we played in Henson Tournament in 07-08.

I was curious the other day on distance between new WAC and Sun Belt. Using Google maps, the average distance between UNT and the other Sun Belt schools is 701 miles. With UNT and the WAC it is 1,338 (if you take out Hawaii it drops to 895). If you take out the two Florida trips the Belt average drops to 546. The WAC does have three schools closer than any Belt team but has several long trips (Moscow, San Jose, Logan, Honolulu). Here's the distance by school from Denton Sun Belt ULAR - Little Rock - 337 miles - 5.5 hours Ark St - Jonesboro - 464 miles - 8 hours FAU - Boca Raton - 1,305 miles - 22 hours FIU - Miami - 1,342 miles - 22.5 hours La-La - Lafayette - 428 miles - 7.5 hrs Monroe - Monroe - 321 miles - 5.5 hrs MTSU - Murfreesboro - 713 miles - 12 hrs USA - Mobile - 627 miles - 11 hrs Troy - Troy - 729 miles - 12.5 hrs WKU - Bowling Green - 746 miles - 12 hrs WAC Hawaii - Honolulu - 4,891 miles - n/a Idaho - Moscow - 1,915 miles - 31 hours La Tech - Ruston - 291 miles - 5 hrs NMSU - Las Cruces - 688 miles - 11.5 hrs San Jose St. - SJ - 1,652 miles - 27 hours Utah St - Logan - 1,286 miles - 22 hours UTSA - SA - 307 miles - 5 hrs TxSt - SM - 257 miles - 4 hrs Denver - Denver - 760 miles - 13 hrs I think travel will still be higher in new WAC. Just one more reason to stay in Belt.

Is anybody going to the game? I got my undergraduate at Kansas and master's at North Texas. I'm sure I'll get a lot of negative marks but my first love is the Jayhawks and I'll be pulling for a KU win on Friday (although I hope it's close). I'm obviously biased but I can't imagine there is a better place to watch a college basketball game. If anybody is going, I can suggest some things to see and do while you are there.

This is from a story from a San Antonio newspaper. I don't know where Benson thinks he can find another football school for the WAC but he says the WAC will let us know around April 1 (I think it's funny that he picked April Fool's Day as the deadline). The story mentions North Texas. It says we haven't been contacted (yeah right). Here's part of the story Benson said the WAC would like to add a ninth football school for 2012, which would give UTSA the option of postponing its first season in the conference until 2013. “By early spring, probably before April 1, we should know whether we’re going to be able to add that ninth football school,” Benson said. North Texas was the only school he mentioned specifically as a potential WAC member. “North Texas is somebody we’ve looked at before and had conversations with, although we haven’t talked to them this time around,” Benson said. Link: http://www.kens5.com/sports/WACs-Benson-gives-high-marks-to-UTSA-Alamodome-city-during-visit--108792839.html

No kidding. I was really hoping for a split (in the four that mattered). Not only did we get 0-4, but two are blowouts (unless Ark St rallies)