BillySee58

That’s understandable but to me the recruiting has been a bigger issue. Aune was a walkon who fell into our lap, these HS QB recruits we signed while we had Fine on the roster just weren’t good QB recruits and turned out they weren’t good FBS QBs. Even Ruder, as highly touted as he was, struggled to complete 50% of his passes in High School. I mentioned the concern there last year and was mainly met with “there were a lot of drops though.” Earle has displayed legit D1 accuracy. That’s where things start and end. I don’t what the defined threshold to claim he “worked out” here is, but it would take a colossal step backwards from his Freshman to Sophomore year for him to be on par with what we had last year.

Whether he works out or not is one thing. But from an excitement standpoint, I’m excited to get a player who was a really solid FCS QB as a freshman and watch him develop over the next 3 years. Even if the development is mainly the product of in-game reps. As for Smallwood, I’m a little torn. He looks the part but he’s also already 19. So he was older than his competition in addition to being much larger. Smallwood looks like a player, and there have been plenty of linemen we have signed in years past who were head scratchers, then came here and never played. Smallwood is not that, but personally I’m more excited about Samora Ezekiel. Really impressive combination of size, flexibility, and tenacity.

Same. He beat out an Iowa transfer who is 3 years older, then proceeded to complete 65.8% of his passes before getting hurt. I don’t think people are acknowledging the legit skins on the wall that he has coming in.

According to this, transfers who have already signed an LOI and enrolled at a 4-year school previously do not sign LOIs at subsequent schools. In essence, transfer portal signees don’t sign LOIs at their new school, so a school bringing in a portal transfer would not be on the hook for their scholarship until they enroll. They do count towards the class as an “initial counter” but don’t take up a spot on the class limit until they enroll. http://www.nationalletter.org/documentLibrary/administrativeGuidelines.pdf

Your standard and order are no match for Lifer’s ego

They give me the vibes of some of the early Littrell recruits back when we went more JUCO heavy. Guys like Josh Wheeler, EJ Ejiya, Kemon Hall, Sosaia Mose, etc. who did not have big offer lists out of their JUCO but had good production at the JUCO level. I mentioned some who did work out, but there were also plenty who didn’t. Some didn’t play impactful minutes and some never actually made it. Good offer lists are great, but sometimes you just have to trust your eyes and bring in players you know can help you, regardless of which other schools agree.

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Pretty nice pickup. Looks like a late bloomer who flew under the radar until late. We are down to I believe just two scholarship tackles so this was an important battle to win against Tulsa.

Notice the players we offered get tweets referencing their commitment from Walerius and Littrell, while the walkons don’t. Also, the players we offered who commit use the same commitment graphic made by our staff while the walkons have their own custom graphics.

Definitely, if/once that actually is voted on and passes.

So does this mean Andrew will be at the council meeting instead of the game too?

This works as good as any other week since next week we play our travel partner Rice on Saturday so we have a bye on Thursday.

Here’s an example. We currently have 27 players who will have Sophomore eligibility next year. Let’s say next class we go transfer heavy and sign 10 more players with the same eligibility, then 5 more with the same eligibility the year after that. Now that’s 42 scholarship players set to leave at once. Say 10 or so transfer out so by the time they are all actually seniors there are 32 left. You go into the 2024 season with 85 scholarship players, with 32 scholarship seniors. After the season ends you lose those 32 players to graduation, plus another 12 scholarship players to the portal or quitting college football (pretty standard). Now you only have 41 returning scholarship players, and your signing class is capped at 25 spots to fill the rest of your roster. Now, even with a full class, you’re sitting at 66 scholarship players for the next season.

I’m talking about being a G5 school signing P5 transfers who haven’t actually played D1 football. P5 players who have never gotten off the bench have the same experience as High School recruits so I reject the idea that they are more of a sure thing. Now if you’re Ole Miss and you’re signing players in the portal who actually have FBS starting experience, I definitely agree those players are more of a sure thing than high school recruits. The players we are North Texas are signing from P5s (Ruder, Rucker, John Davis, Tommy Bush, etc.) are not exactly more of a sure thing than HS recruits because they haven’t proven it at the D1 level either.

And yet we seem to have steered course away from high school players in favor of these types. The frustrating thing you hear from coaches is that they feel like the portal is more of a sure thing. That’s only true if you’re getting a player who has legit experience. When you’re getting backups who have spent 2-3 years playing almost no snaps I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be more of a sure thing than a high school recruit. And the issue seems to be compounding with the high school recruiting we are doing having fallen a step below where it was in previous years.

A little interesting tidbit for this game is that, as long as it gets played, it will be Souley Boum’s 6th game at The Super Pit as an opponent. I’m curious when the last time an opponent would have played that many games in The Super Pit. It’s very circumstantial. Played us 2X in Denton during the CBI Championship for San Francisco, played at Denton in the 19-20 season for UTEP, and played at Denton 2X last year for UTEP due to the COVID scheduling.

The Murphy twins’ departure makes me feel far less confident in this. Those were huge losses. That being said, offensively we lose Torrey, Brammer, and Pirtle but get back Adaway, Shorter, and Bush. Our running game will be just fine and our passing game should be much improved. The main reason I feel like our passing game will be improved is that we are swapping two QBs who struggled to complete 50% of their passes with a QB who completed 65.8% of his passes as a freshman at the FCS level. Even if you concede that his completion percentage takes a dip with a move up in competition, it can take a dip and still be substantially better than what we had. Stone Earle had a higher completion percentage as a freshman last season than Zappe ever had at the FCS level. Obviously not saying he’s Zappe, but the point is he is on a really high trajectory and seemingly already playing at a step above what we had on the field last year. Defense I am much more concerned with the loss of the Murphy twins. But you still have some really good players on that side of the ball and a second year in the system, I don’t think it’s that outrageous to imagine us holding teams to 27.5 points/game like we did last year. Definitely could benefit from adding some solid pass rusher between now and the season starting but Rod Brown looks like a young star. I am expecting 7-5 next year at the moment. Which is not catastrophic in and of itself. My whole point is that the bigger concerns, IMO, are down the road beyond 2022. Which you could argue would be amplified by Littrell doing just good enough to hang onto his job as we head into the AAC.

Gonna guess by Bloesch’s post that it’s Sampson and Ezekiel, the two high school tackles.

You think Mccasland led to this?

I had no idea how hard it would be to rebuild the momentum we lost during the Benford years. We had 6 straight seasons of at least 18 wins before he got here, we are headed for our 5th straight season of at least 18 wins since he left, and somehow his 5 years of stink seem to overpower the 11 adjacent seasons of winning basketball. So many people stopped coming to games and have still never come back. Two CUSA titles and an NCAA tournament win later. It does seem strange to me that we had such great student turnout back in the Jones era and seemingly how few of them are interested in attending games now. I would think more of these people who had such great memories of games back then just have no desire to attend games again in their early 30s.

I probably will. What’s weird is I actually think we will be decent next year. Down the road is what I am more concerned about.

https://bracketville.wordpress.com/bracketology/ This guy Dave on the site above has generally been regarded as the most accurate bracketologist over the recent years. With us overtaking UAB he currently shows us as a 12 seed.

If we don’t complain about Littrell’s shortcomings on here then the recruits will never know 🤫

Something I hope people realize is how good this team is regardless of how far they advance in March. The chances of making it to the round of 32 are extremely slim. Once you make it to the round of 64, as a 12 or 13 seed you have about a 25% chance of winning that game. Between this La Tech team, this UAB team, and the rest of the CUSA field you also have say a 30% chance of winning the CUSA tournament. Our odds of both happening are probably around 10%. Failing to get back to the round of 32 does not mean we didn’t take a step forward this season. Let’s not forget last year’s team was just 13-9 at the end of the regular season. We are currently 15-4. Enjoy the team because they are for real.

What a win. These teams continue to be as evenly matched as two basketball teams can be.