BillySee58

Interesting. I missed that. Was it at guard or was he bumped in at guard?

What’s all this Turpin hype based on?

LT - Cole Brown LG - Gabe Blair/Chris Cassady co starters at beginning of season C - Manase Mose RG - Daizion Carroll RT - Jacob Brammer TE - Jake Roberts

I just counted all of our defensive players. That’s what I meant by defensive depth chart.

Yes

This is false. Brune said a new publisher for the site is already lined up. https://247sports.com/college/north-texas/Article/Letter-from-Brune-Meangreen247-isnt-going-anywhere-but-thank-you-168748313/Amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Nice

I went through and ran the numbers on career games started among our defensive players. Heading into the 2020 season our defensive depth chart had combined to start 59 games at the Division 1 level. This season, heading into the 2021 season our defensive depth chart has 215 career starts at the Division 1 level, unofficially by my count. If/when the defense improves this season a lot of the credit will go to Phil Bennett, but this team is just so much better from a roster construction and depth standpoint than they were a year ago. Littrell did a great job of keeping nearly all of our starters while also adding D1 starters from other schools. We now can couple our stellar recruiting with experience and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see this defense take a big step forward. How big of a step is on Bennett and the players executing, but the horses are here.

Officially announced

Jacob Farrell and Erik Williams left the team. Brammer is still the starting Right Tackle and was 2nd team all conference last year.

I haven’t watched the film but I know our tackle depth is not great right now. Jacob Farrell was supposed to be our starting left tackle this season and Erik Williams was looking like a potential heir apparent to Jacob Brammer at right tackle. Both left the team in January. We brought in one high school tackle in Rayvon Crum who looks very promising but it makes sense to bring in someone a little older to provide the immediate depth this season.

Commits! Looks like he will be joining the team for the fall so he’s a 2021 commit rather than 2022.

80 minutes at the 4 and the 5 between Bell, Wright, and Ousmane will be plenty. Similar to Bell, Geu, and Simmons splitting the 80 minutes at the 4 and the 5 in 2019-2020. Wright and Bell will be capable of close to 30 minutes each then Ousmane can handle the other 20 or so.

Re-commits to North Texas

1. I think Gabe Blair is our starting left guard this season. 2. Aune game 1, but I think he’ll be erratic at some point early in the season and open the door for Ruder and he won’t look back. Feel confident both will be above average starting CUSA QBs when they are on the field. 3. Adaway. By a lot. Torrey splitting out to the slot when we are in 11 personnel and the defense is situated accordingly, only to have to put an LB on him when he splits out should help us get more of those short-yardage pass plays instead of so many incompletions like last year. Adaway will be the feature guy and his size/speed combo gives him a chance to be special at this level. 4. No because it sounds like Mccrae is a 3-tech defensive tackle now. Was starting there in the spring and is now almost 280 according to his Twitter. We’ll see if he can hold that spot down next to Novil but I expect him there this season, not at defensive end. 5. Sure, just seems like we have so much talent at receiver I’m not concerned who the number 1 guy is. Tommy Bush had 36 P5 offers out of high school, Bryson Jackson had 20, Caleb Johnson had 10, Detraveon Brown had 3 and Loronzo Thompson had 2 and those guys are our 3rd-7th receivers. There’s just so much talent at receiver we don’t have to rely on any one guy being at a certain level. 6. Adaway or Murphy twins. All 3 showed all CUSA potential and head into the year with experience they lacked heading into last season. Gaddie is another candidate. Lot of talent and he has experience at safety instead of switching there mid season. 7. Yes but mainly because we are just so much better personnel wise than we were heading into last season. A LOT of 1st year players last season who now have a year of starting experience, only one starter lost, plus 5 D1 transfers, 4 of them being full-year starters at their previous school. Just like receiver, we aren’t sunk if a guy underwhelms. We have a lot of options of guys who are experienced and talented.

As discussed in another thread, this kid put himself in position to graduate a year early years before NIL was passed. https://www.texasfootball.com/articles/article/?url=2021/08/02/quinn-ewers-column

It’s always the right amount of each but last year our bench scored only 24 points in 6 postseason games. Entire bench giving us 4 points a game. They gave almost no margin for error for Hamlet and the starters, offensively. Luckily Hamlet didn’t have any off nights and McBride and Bell gave us more offensively than they did during the season when Reese and Simmons were struggling in tournament play. Whoever takes the lead role this year is going to need more support and higher margin for error (bad games) than Hamlet did this past season. Being able to get some points off the bench from guys like Tylor Perry, Rasheed Browne, Bryce Zephir (assuming only 1 of the 3 is starting), Abou Ousmane, Matthew Stone, etc is going to help make what we ask from the starters a little more realistic to achieve. Instead of asking them to replace Hamlet, Reese, and Simmons’ production 1 to 1.

Definitely. Mccasland’s going to allow players to do what they do best on the court and that has worked great. May not have established stars like Hamlet, Gibson, or Woolridge but I’m confident this will be the deepest Mccasland team and think Rubin will step into that go-to role well.

I think either Browne or Perry start. If I had to guess I’d say Perry. McBride, Jones, Bell, and Wright can be penciled in. That 5th guy isn’t going to be Abou. Abou is good but he’s not good enough to change Mccasland’s scheme and move Bell out of position just to fit Abou in the lineup. Bell is gonna play the 4 where he has been the best fit for what Mccasland wants in a 4 and we didn’t bring in a 3-year starter at Washington to come off the bench so that puts Abou on the bench. I think you’re looking through things in the old lens. I noticed this last time you thought it was crazy to consider Rubin Jones a small forward. Those old position classifications are fairly outdated by now, especially with regards to how Mccasland runs things. Mike Miller was 6’3” and started for us at the 4 during the CBI run and the entire next season. Nothing about his game says “Power Forward” but that was technically the position he played, by the old classifications. Which is why it doesn’t really make sense to view things through that lens. Similarly, Mardrez McBride and Rubin Jones are guards. McBride is more of an off-ball guard and Jones is more of a combo guard who can handle the ball and initiate offense or play off the ball effectively. If Browne or Perry start, and McBride and Jones are starting too, none of them are “small forwards.” It’s just a three-guard lineup like Mccasland has always run. Abou was solid but we need to take a step back and look at things without a North Texas perspective. Abou averaged 2.9 points and 2.2 rebounds while Wright is a 3-year High Major starter and former top 100 national recruit who was in the transfer portal looking for a bigger role. I said this when we got Deng Geu and people were thinking he’d come off the bench. You land these type of senior/grad transfers because you can offer them a starting spot. These guys want to make the most of their last season of eligibility, not come off the bench.

Bell has been a 4 in Mccasland’s system the past two seasons and Miah has been a 4 since 2016-2017 under Mccasland at Arkansas State. Can’t imagine them both being moved to the 3 in his system suddenly. It’s a 3 to 4 guard system, and those guys aren’t guards. Otherwise I think that’s pretty close. I think Perry or Browne will start at point guard with Rubin as kind of the secondary point guard taking the ball up the court and initiating offense as well. He was used in a similar secondary ball handler role last year when he was on the court with Hamlet. I think you have Browne a little underrated. I’m expecting him to either start or be 6th man, but also wouldn’t be shocked to see the coaches put Murray ahead of him like you have. They definitely have a lot of trust in Murray that they might not put in newcomers right off the bat.

Recruiting and evaluating are two different things though. This is conflating the two. Hamlet, Reese, and McBride were all fairly highly recruited coming out of JUCO. It didn’t take tremendous evaluation to recognize they were solid CUSA talent. It took strong recruiting ability to land those other guys. Zephir’s the opposite. It didn’t take much recruiting ability to get him but it did take some keen evaluation to identify him as a worthy guy when other schools weren’t. If Zephir works out it’s because they did a good job evaluating and picking out an under-the-radar guy. Hopefully that’s the case and I think the staff has a solid track record there.

Yeah it seems like Mccasland has not really raised his standards in recruiting, both with regards to players he is pursuing and landing. Hoping that changes with the 2022 class but so far the caliber of players we are recruiting is pretty much the same as what it has been in previous classes.

Yes. He’s on the official 21-22 roster. 5th year taking up a scholarship here. Part of why we have been lacking in depth each season.

Story sounds really similar to Jason Preston who was just drafted by the Clippers out of Ohio this year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Preston

Yes, but the problem with our depth has been that we have only had 7 or 8 guys Mccasland could even play in tournament play. This year we have a chance to legitimately go more than 8 deep. And if Mccasland only wants to play 8, the guys beyond that at least should be capable, which hasn’t been the case. Jahmiah Simmons and Chris Morgan are the only players I expect to be non-playable come tournament time. Maybe Zephir, Scott, and Stone won’t all crack the rotation but I expect at least one of them to be playable come tournament time. They all can shoot and have good size, just a matter of how quickly they can get caught up to D1 speed.