outoftown

Deserved. I was not a all that sure he would be good when he onboarded, but the first returns are clearly positive

True, but i would still feels that USAs offense had more drive killer penalties than UNT had drive prolonging ones on defense. And also on offense UNT had less penalties than USA had on offense. Was a big part in winning this game. It does reflect well on how the coaches teach certain things. However you can't bet on your opponents giving you similar false starts etc down the road. It'll happen sometimes, but as the season progresses teams are likely to become cleaner

How i see it: why did UNT win: 1. because it has a great offense that worked continously and kept the shooting in the foot stuff to an absolute minimum 2. Because It got a special teams score 3. Because when USAs offense shot itself in the foot UNTs defense at times didn't let them off the hook (that is the best I can say about the defense) However looking at it from a USA perspective is enlightening I think. Why did USA lose? Most of it was on the coaches, not the talent or players. 1. Because in three consecutive drives early in the second half the playcaller gave up on the run after first down. That is not necessary against UNT. Yes UNT had missed assignments galore against the pass, but passes are always higher variance than running. And against this UNT defense, if you run it twice, chances are you'll get what you need to move the chains. you have two passes drop, your drive will stall. That is BBBBad in a shootout and resulted in them having to chase. 2. Because USAs Offense shot itself in the foot several times with untimely/unnecessary penalties that turned potential TDs into FGs and stopped drives. 3. Because they started chasing 2-point conversions unnecessarily early and kept coming up empty because they tried to pass in those short field situations. 4. Because they lost the only turnover of the game for a TD In summary I think that it was a great win by UNTs offense. Could hardly have done much more and since its never easy to win on the road, it oughta be enjoyed. However I am not so sure it will be all that predictive of the future games in the season. It was still a win that took a bit of luck and where the opponent probably has missgivings on the coaches game management. Take those coaches errors out and the winner becomes a total crapshoot here. I am really worried about what happens when a decent running offense tries to run the clock against this defense and gives the offense less rythm as i think such an offense might score almost every drive. However, I have at least hope that the backfield will be better once 3 DBs come back. one can only hope that this will then also allow to put more attention to defending the box against the run. While its not completely outlandish to think that might happen, I will not be holding my breath.

Currently tied for 8th, 5 shots behind Schauffele, definitely still in contention for a medal.

I was in Paris at the Olympics last week, so had no time to post. Last week was a big week for UNT alumus Thomas Rosenmueller who won the NV5 invitational on the Korn Ferry tour. That is is first win at this level. It not only netted him 180k prize money, but also gave him the points to almost certainly be promoted to the PGA tour next season. He is already on the next tournament, currently tied for 23rd after the first rounds. btw while we are talking olympics, UNT alumnus Carlos Ortiz is playing there. Currently he is tied for 7th while still on hole 13 of the second day, so still in concention to medal.

Who? Tom Pettiti?

I don't like it. But what he says is obviously true. This is not good for college football. Or basketball. Or most any other college sport.

Honestly -even though 5 of the 6 teams ahead of them are in the top 100 - that is pretty disappointing. This team should make the NCAA regionals anyway. I think. Unless this result really costs them more ranking spots than I anticipate. But just to be fully safe, might be prudent to not lose even more ground.

A season of progress. No less, no more.

I do think SMU will find it harder than they imagine to find the right coach. If their fans didn't see that Lanier was progressing, then maybe they don't deserve better.

Maybe. But ESPN turning down that deal after shepparding top schools to another conference it owns will open it up to collusion suits it might have a pretty hard time to defend. The having to open records for fact finding alone might be scary. I have a feeling ESPN might be willing to let them hang out to dry for a bit.

who?

Genuinely surprised UNT got into the NIT, but glad they did. Time to turn all the good play into post-season Ws with a chance to make up for one of those Ws that got away early in the season, i.e. LSU

That game reaallly hurt FAUs metrics. Down to 39th from 33rd in NET. Those metrics were really one of the main argumnets in their favor. (apart from that win over Arizona). Frankly it would have been less dangerous had they lost a round earlier to UNT, as at least that would have been a Q2 rather than a Q4 loss. If the commitee really wants to get rid of them, they now gave them a good excuse with a third loss below Q2. If Temple wins, that really is the worst case for the conference.

I really just want the winner of the tourney to be from the first semifinal. if FAU wins the conference only gets one bid. If Temple wins it probably pushes FAU down to first four and Temple will get bad seeding (a 15 at best). If UAB or USF win, the conference gets a second bid and a team that could make some noise from what will likely be a 12th seed.

This was a disapointing season to me. Maybe they get into the CBI to salvage a bit of it. But to me the injury thing is overblown, because this team also didn't really get any notable wins before. It kept coming up just short, no matter who was on the court. The schedule was tougher and littered with opportunities for quality wins, and this team kept playing efficient until it actually counted and the only thing close to a quality win it got was a home win over an SMU team that had similar problems in terms of not managing to turn its good play into wins. Hodge has many things that a great coach needs (the defensive coaching is clearly still great), but there are also some things that might still be missing. He does not yet appear to have found the same culture for winning that mac had from the moment he arrived in Denton. The team started out like a mac team (that is not a compliment for mac teams usually start slow into the season), but then never turned it around like a mac team usually did and never got into this keeping your foot on the opponents throat once you have him down, nor the "we can come back from any deficit" believe.

Don't know what beverage you are drinking, but please point me to where I can buy some of it.

Honestly, I would have preferred any of the other 5 win teams over Tulane. Tulane has by far the best NET ranking of them, and frankly is tied with them because they had drawn clearly the toughest conference schedule (twice against SMU, UNT, UAB, FAU and Memphis i.e. no double draw against anyone from the bottom half of the conference). Their NET and other power rankings are a lot better than their win number. Which feels familiar.

Yes. It works the same as the mens, except that there are 4 less at larges. The NIT I think is rather likely at this point. However to make the NCAA tournament I really think they need to at least make the final to have any kind of chance.

The athletic had them"on the bubble" in their bubble watch 5 days ago. Might still be a longshot, but if they make it to the tournament final, there is at least a chance they get into the field, even if they lose there.

A decent percentage in the rise is the SMU game, which -sadly- is likely to be a one-off. That said, I do think the AAC opponents draw maybe a bit better than the old C-USA did. I know there is overlap etc, but people might know a bit better who Memphis is than who MTSU is, who USF is rather than FIU (even though FIU is the bigger university) etc.

Rosenmueller plays on the Korn Ferry tour recently with not too much success. Snyman plays on the asian tour and had quite a few top 30 results recently, but no real top 10s. Kristof Ulenaers plays on the pro golf tour (without looing it up i think that is third level in europe), where he seems to be fairly conistently making the cut and often top 15, but hasn't had the big top3 result lately, currently 12th in the order of merrit. Cazaubon just played this week on the PGA tour event in Mexico, but failed to make the cut by a good margin. He sometimes plays on the latinoamerica tour (PGA) There are probably a few more, but those are the ones I found easily

This team ...just isn't clutch

thats optimistic. I feel a 14 team will be 5+9 or in a good case 6+8, while a 16 team playoff will be 6+10 or if lucky 7+9

number of things gotta improve. Tough to win when your turnover to assist ratio is 8-3 and you shoot 35% from the floor. When you add not getting to the line on top of that, it gets real tricky.