BillySee58

I asked myself the same question. About this one and the A&M game. Hopefully the former. 22-72 is pitiful though, even if we did have a lot to do with it. We should do the same to MUTS though. Especially if Coleman and Gaines can contain Shawn Jones. That guy is a monster. Kind of a poor man's Tony Mitchell, w/o the ball handling skills and 3-point shooting ability.

Yes Harry, can't say I've been here as long as you guys (been loosely following the team for a while) but it sure does look like we could be headed into the golden era. Especially for football. The beauty about the walkons on your team that earn scholarship are just that. They earned it and proved to be worth it. Some high school signees end up being busts, unfortunately. But the walkons you have on scholarship are the furthest thing from a bust. X and Chumley would be huge. We're starting to win recruiting battles and hopefully we can continue to win more.

I'm not one for delaying the inevitable

So here's the situation. We currently have, at most, 63 current scholarship players on campus. This includes 4 guys from this signing class: an early enrollee/early high school grad (QB Connor Means), a grayshirt (OL Avery Fortenberry), and the two JUCO transfers (LB AJ Smith and QB Josh Greer). You are allowed to sign 25 players per signing class. This includes: high school signees, JUCO signees, FBS scholarship transfers, and walkons put on scholarship before playing two seasons on the team as a walkon. So if a walkon plays just one season for a team, or none (we'll get to that later) as a walkon before being put on scholarship, then that former walkon counts toward the 25 man signing class that upcoming signing day. You can sign more than 25 if you did not use all 25 scholarships in the previous class. For example, if you signed 23 kids (2 under 25) then you could sign 27 (2 over 25) the next year as long as at least 2 of those 27 enroll at mid-term/the spring semester, when their signing day occurs (like Connor Means and our JUCO guys). I thought we would be able to do that because I thought we only signed 23 kids last year, but we actually signed 25 counting Darnell Smith and Lynrick Pleasant, 2 walkons put on scholarship after just spending one season at UNT as walkons. So just 25 for this class. According to Vito, we only have one spot left. By my count we should have two but I trust Vito. I just don't know where one of the spots went. We have 16 high school kids, 2 JUCOs, 1 grayshirt, and 1 FBS transfer if everyone committed signs. To my knowledge we only put 3 walkons who played less than 2 years at UNT on scholarship (Kenny Buyers, Blake Macek, Kaydon Kirby). Tanner Smith was put on scholarship as well, but he played his first two seasons plus his redshirt year as a walkon, so he shouldn't count. I must be missing a walkon or some grayshirt I don't know about, because that still leaves us with 23 guys in our class right now. So I don't know why we only have 1 spot left. If we do in fact have just 1 spot left then we have two options to sign more than 1 more guy. We can A) Grayshirt a member of this signing class and have him enroll next spring or Blueshirt a kid. What blueshirting is, is where you get a commit to walkon at the beginning of fall camp, then you put him on scholarship before school actually starts. He doesn't end up paying any tuition, and he doesn't count towards his original signing class. He would count towards the next year's signing class (2015 class in this case). The catch is that the player cannot have been recruited which means he cannot have had an in-home visit with the coach and he cannot have gone on an official visit to the school where he is blueshirting. The only commits who have not taken an official to UNT are, to my knowledge receivers Fonzale Davis and Jalen Adams and kicker Trevor Moore. So these guys could be blueshirt eligible. I could see a player with no other listed offers like Johnavahn Graham (also coming off broken leg surgery) being asked to grayshirt. Grayshirts are more likely IMO, but Blueshirts are far more intriguing. Anyways, according to Vito we just have 1 spot left, so we would sign 16 high school kids on signing day that will enroll in the fall, (since Means, Fortenberry, and the two JUCOs are already enrolled). Add those 16 to the 63 players on campus right now and we have just 79 players on scholarship for next fall if no one else transfers out or quits, which is very unlikely. My point is that 79 is 6 players shy of the 85 scholarship max, so we have the open scholarships to blueshirt guys. Sorry for the post length

You're allowed a max of 85 players on your roster on scholarship. It opens up a spot there. You're allowed 25 signees per class, that's our concern as far as how many we can sign and Berglund's departure does nothing to that number.

He wasn't on the raiders the last few years, forgot why (maybe cut), but he did start for them for a whole. Yeah he was a good player, unfortunately he tragically passed away a couple months ago.

A home and home would give us either 5 home games this year, if we were slated to be the away team this year and the home team next year, or just 4 home games next year, if we were slated to be the home team this year and the away team next year. I'd prefer a weak FBS school as well, and I'm sure we tried, but we can't afford home and homes as long as Tennessee and Iowa still want to play us in 2015.

We just have 1, but we could make room. What that means is we could ask a kid or two to grayshirt, or we could blueshirt a signee. It's complicated, but we'd make room more than likely.

No. Coaches let players hold trophies all the time. Like when Orson Charles was visiting Florida and they let him hold the crystal ball. Thennnn he dropped it and shattered it.

Big time swing game. We win and we pass them. Never too early to start looking at seeding. This conference is very vulnerable and if this game is a sign on things to come, maybe we start closing these games out and get a good seed. I can't see this team doing any worse than .500 in conference.

No one is playing consistent enough to really stand out. You guys looked like you were going to, then you lost to USM w/o Appleby. Not a bad loss, but if you guys would've won you could've distanced yourselves from the pack. After UTEP, USM, and you guys it's going to be a cluster of head-scratching games and inconsistency. We fit into that perfectly.

That's what I got out of it. Obviously revamped Amon Carter as well.

Yup.https://twitter.com/gabrieldbrooks/status/426525658911485952

They're quickly becoming what Baylor was in the Big 12, pre Art Briles.

Agreed. Really like TJ's game.

The Vito article says Tauaalo will visit this weekend as well.http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2014/01/t-j-tauaalo-talks-about-decision-to-commit-to-unt.html/

Tip of the cap to you Plumm. Thank you!

Yeah, like 93-98 said, Tee Goree and Trevor Moore are the most likely. We are pretty set at slot receiver with Carlos Harris, so I wouldn't expect Fonzale Davis or Jalen Adams to have much of a chance to start. Rutherford would be best set to redshirt but we lost both our starting outside receivers so that will depend on if we can depend on Terrell, Kidsy, and Goree to be the guys we need on the outside. Maybe even Turner Smiley after his redshirt could help redshirt Rutherford, but Smiley might play slot as well. After that I could see Davis or Willy Ivery being one or both of our return men. Maybe Tauaalo could be a starter at nose tackle, but that's a situation we shouldn't want to happen unless Tauaalo is out of this world. I think he projects better at a 3-technique but we need size and nose and we don't have much. Just my two cents.

Not to mention new commit TJ Tauaalo. Him and X could be playing next to each other so hopefully they hit it off.

Read the last sentence of the article for lolz.http://bit.ly/1ibjQ6q

Semi-Milestone watch: Jordan Williams needs 27 points to get to 900 on his career. Reasonable to think he'll get it sometime in the next two games.

This. Plus that's the most important thing, especially in a traditional 1-big league Yeah he wasn't basketball Jesus, but he had just netted us essentially a top-25 recruiting class if you count Tony Mitchell. Not to mention Jordan Williams and 14 point/game scorer freshman Chris Jones were going to be added back to a team that returned all 5 starters from a Sun Belt conference championship game appearance. Really hard to see us not doing better had we had continuity but we'll never truly know. Maybe we go 12-20 still and Chris Jones and Tony Mitchell have that sophomore slump naturally. I think that'd be far from what actually would've happened but that's just opinion. I didn't follow the JJ era as close as a lot of you guys did, but it really looked like the team he left was going to be his best.

DJ Williams, Lufkin DT, commits to Kansas.

I agree with CBL but I wouldn't mind a civilized rebuttal, and subsequent discussion, by Cooley. Players have skills in high school that lead them to be successful and get D1 scholarships in these particular cases. They also have weaknesses in their games. Their college coach and the player work on cultivating these skills as well as making the weaknesses non-liabilities. Maybe a player doesn't grow new found abilities that he never had in high school, but he can learn to become a college basketball player and not just a talented player who was good in high school. John Odoh was a good shot blocker and rebounder in JUCO. This conversation started because I wondered if Benford could develop those raw skills into consistency on a D1 level, because I've seen players much more developed that he has inherited either regress or not progress enough if at all. We wouldn't have asked Odoh to do anything different than what he did in junior college. Protect the paint, rebound, and block shots. We would not have tried to develop him into an outside shooter or even much of a mid-range game. But the coaches would've had to develop him into a player who could translate his skills that he already had into being a successful D1 rebounder, rim protector, and shot blocker.

Awesome! Glad to see that continuity!