CurveItAround

Maybe he just has a big bag of suck? Gotta bring it on every possession, and on both ends of the court. Chris needs to take a lesson from the Lehigh BACKUP guards tonight.

Chris Jones is down. Stay down Chris. Stay down.

Chris Jones needs to quit basketball. #iamnotkidding

We could have at least 2 legitimate D1 scholarship worthy players competing for each spot on the OLine? That can't be a bad thing. Now, do the same at all the other positions.

According to TicketMaster, there are still lower bowl tickets available in sideline reserved. I am guessing the secret santa lower bowl is 'sold' out. Either way, looking for a decent crowd for this time of year and hopefully a good game.

Unfortunately, here is the mean green Benford bandwagon at the moment.

If you look at the various versions of the predicted schedules, we know we have Georgia and probably Tulsa. Until we prove otherwise, those are likely losses. Depending on which CUSA eastern team we pick up (possibly ECU if we get SMU's old schedule), then you could add a 3rd game to the list where we will likely be double digit underdogs. Given those assumptions, we should have around 9 games where we may be small favorites or small (<7pts) underdogs. If we go about .500 in those games it should give a pretty decent predictor based on today's information. However, that can always change if some of our unknowns prove that they can make us better. For now, I am with MGT and looking at 4/5 wins until I see something to make me think differently.

Addition through subtraction? Question. No info.

I am predicting 0-16 so that I can have an enjoyable season next year no matter what.

Take it FWIW, when I picked up tickets at 1, they were sold out of the lower bowl. Not sure if that means sold out of the promotional tickets, which seems to be in the baseline reserved areas, or sold out of everything, but people there picking up tickets were being given upper bowl tickets. People still have to actually show up, but it would be cool to have a nice crowd, and even cooler to see some good basketball out of the good guys.

I too, hope everything gets moving in the right direction. I just don't want to give the players any ammunition to quit on this coach this early because we all know that things that get posted on here have a way of making it back to the team. I am confident Benford and RV have received the message loud and clear that the results so far have gone over like a fart in church. The natural reaction is to question the leadership and their techniques as they should. However, I am just trying to keep it real and point out the role the players have in all of this. Feel free to skip the rest of this post goes way beyond the acceptable post length, but I felt like venting. The following are all just my observations I don't claim to be an expert by any means and I don't pretend to have any inside information: I can't believe that TM has a complete lack of low post game and has received all the pub that he has. What on earth could they have evaluated at the Stoudamire/James camps and pronounced him the best of the camp at? Dunking ability? He is unquestionably one of the absolute most physically gifted athletes to ever bless UNT, but I have watched every game this season and without many exceptions, he refuses to establish himself in the low post IN FRONT OF his defender. I do not blame Benford for asking TM to provide a low post presence for this team. He should be a beast against the competition we play, but he has so far refused from what I can tell. He seems to pout badly at times when things don't come easy. TM needs to show the type of player he can be, even if someone is asking him to do something that seems different to him. In the end, Benford may be doing him a huge favor by asking him to develop a low post game. I have seen TM shoot. What the hell else is he going to do when he isn't dunking in the pros? Instead, we get 6' 5" Roger Franklin providing the majority of the effective work in the low block. Benford seems to have tried to also get TM involved at the high post, but again, TM rarely agressively establishes a presence at the elbow so he can receive the ball and create or pass. Instead he gets too far from the basket and a lot of times has to go all the way outside of the 3 point line, where he is no threat. If and when he does get the ball out there, he frequently passes the ball without adding any value. Benford has also asked TM to set picks out of the high post for the guards. Instead of TM rolling to the basket after setting the pick and looking for a lob dunk, he instead slowly drifts away from the play toward the 3 point line and is a non factor all too many times. On the rare occasion that TM has been able to get the ball in the low post, he is immediately doubled. Instead of keeping the ball high and looking for an open spot up shooter or weak side dive cutter, he frequently brings the ball down too low and gets in a fight over the ball with a guy much smaller than him and has to make a meaningless pass to a close by teammate. He is not using his size and vision to pass out of the double/triple team to create a positive situation we can attack from. Not that our shooters would actually knock down the shot. The 3 out 2 in BASIC motion/flow offense we mostly seem to run provides ample opportunity for our guards to touch the ball (as most Big East guard oriented offenses tend to do) and create. The responsibility to create is on the player in this type of system, as most high level guards want. It is up to them to find opportunities within the flow to penetrate and break the defense down. Our inability to consistently knock down an outside shot is a killer because the defense just sits back and clogs the lane, daring us to shoot. CJ has been very inconsistent this year. He was absolutely shut down against SELA. That is sad. He should feast on teams like that. He has the ball in his hand on every possession and this type of offense is built for a strong guard. He seems to be struggling with the responsibility. JW is athletic and may be best suited coming off the bench as someone on GMG pointed out early on. He can be electric, but his shooting has been terrible in the first part of the season. Maybe he can work his way back in to more minutes. With all this said, we are still averaging 68 points a game even after the nightmare the other day. If our defensive effort would have been decent, we could have easily won the UAH and ULL games, and the panic would probably not be so severe, but there would still be understandable disappointment. I am frustrated, but not as frustrated as many of you on here. I am also not to the point where I am ready to lay so much blame at the coach's feet even though we all know the coach has ultimate responsibility for his team's results. Again, I did not see this team play a lot last year and don't have the emotional tie to the year over year improvement that was hoped for. It is too bad that LSU came calling at the time they did.

Based on our small time donor base, we might be more like the 30,000 millionaire. We have borrowed the money to buy the flashy new car (apogee) and clawed our way into a new conference (even though the existing memebers seem to not want us) and now expect everyone to tell us how great we are and put us on the A list.

I am guessing that Mac did not want to sign many jucos his first couple of years because they would be gone by years 3 and 4. He is now willing to add some so they can help be an impact in years 3 and 4, plus provide someone to fill a hole in the first couple of recruiting classes that are still not ready. I don't see it as a panic move at all, and is consistent with what he said he would do at the end of the season. Is signing a few, what appear to be quality, juco players really a negative?

I didn't get to see a lot of the games last season so I wanted to go back and see the big difference that everyone is talking about between JJ and Benford coached teams. I didn't want to pick the UTA game because TM didn't play, plus it was such a huge blowout to a mediocre team, I didn't figure it would be fun to watch. I ended up picking the UALR game at home since it was the 5th game that TM, CJ, and JW played together so I figured they had a decent amount of time to get comfortable. What a joke. I saw UNT score 19 points in the 1st half against UALR (they had 23), just like we did against SELA. I also watched them finally start hitting shots in the 2nd half and build a 7 point lead late in the game, only to let a 3-10 team (at the time) come back and beat our star studded team on our home court. I saw more similarities between that game and the effort so far this year than differences. CJ was missing everything, TM was in foul trouble and refused to post down low (thank goodness for Kedrick Hogans), JW was streaky and missed a WIDE open 3 pointer with a couple of seconds left to tie the game. Yuck. I hope we were calling for Jones' head after that game.

You sure it isn't Gaius Vaenuku from Trinity that is walking on?

GMG...slowly....draining....life....force...............must.....reach.....utility.....belt....

Has anyone else noticed the amount of glare coming off of the video board when trying to re-watch games on MG Premium? It is darn near impossible to see score/time due to the glare off of the green background. Maybe a darker background would provide a better contrast and less glare.

I just hope it lasts long enough for UNT to get established with a few of the current CUSA West teams to see what type of impact that might have on the program. Four years of playing teams like UTEP, Tulsa, Rice, UTSA, La Tech would be a nice start. My fear is that if nBE is able to pry a team from MWC, the MWC may decide to respond by going to 12 or 14. There are several scenarios where I could see UNT getting left out of a MWC-12/14, so I would prefer CUSA to stay put for a few years if possible.

Hell. Damn. Crap.

Did anybody find out exactly what happened to that dude? I saw him laying on the floor. The way he was acting, I am guessing he got clocked with an elbow to the nose/mouth area? He looked like he may have been knocked out briefly and they were wiping up blood from the floor. He was holding an ice pack on the front of his face, but couldn't tell exactly where.

The positive outlook feature seems to be broken beyond repair in the basketball forum.

The coach will get the blame. That's fine and he certainly has a role in the team's performance. But good grief, how many shots from 4 feet and in did they miss? Alzee had to miss 3 or 4 gimmes in the first half himself. They are getting shots, but can't hit anything. They could have easily had 30+ points in the first half, but kept missing point blank shots. Same in the 2nd half. We have guys wide open from 15-18 feet, that are afraid to shoot. Tony has no idea how to get open in the low post. He stands behind his defender and calls for the lob. There seemed to be a lot fewer substitutions today. Maybe that was the problem...guys were having to play extended minutes (/sarcasm) Jordan sat the entire 1st half for violating team rules. Had 8 points in the 2nd half.

OOC schedule is set if you look in a few different places. 8/31 Idaho (home) 9/7 Ohio (away) 9/14 Ball State (home) 9/21 Georgia (away) The official conference schedules don't normally come out with dates/locations until the Feb/Mar timeframes. Everything about conference schedules has been speculation up to this point although there seems to be a list of opponents in the athletic offices that was posted the other day without dates/locations.

Not surprisingly, it is the same tired conversations on most of the fanboards. Somebody is always doing it much better, passing us by, coaches/admin not supporting, community not behind program, old guard complaining if anyone tries to bring up positives, etc... one example fanbase of many: http://bobcatfans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23137 http://bobcatfans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23128 http://bobcatfans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23114 http://bobcatfans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23132 http://bobcatfans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=23066

...and the Grinch's small heart grew 3 sizes that day.