GMG_Dallas

Cbs has us as a 12 facing Iowa state. They also have their total bracketology breakdown and we are their second highest ranked 12. Their lowest ranked 11? Miami. Too bad the team couldn't pull out the win. We'd be an 11 and maybe on the way to a 10 seed. https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/bracketology/

I would think he would take some from Abou and get some elsewhere too. I think if he got a bit leaner he could be similar to Bell. Lofton apparently played guard until a growth spurt in high school so I'd imagine he has decent ball handling skills and frankly, at 6 foot 7, he's not much taller than other athletic ball handlers out in the pros. Going back to minutes, we've had several games where our bigs get in foul trouble. Against La Tech, both Bell and Ousmane got to 4 fouls. Either one of them fouls out and the outcome may not be the same. Depth should be welcomed, even if that means a current starter gets less minutes.

We shouldn't ignore top talent if he wants to come here. Lofton was team USA's leading scorer at the most recent U-19 FIBA world cup ahead of other NBA prospects. They won gold, by the way. leading scorer on a gold winning Team USA. I'm sure we could use his ability on offense and the boards and I would hope we wouldn't refuse a player who put up 36 points and 17 rebounds against a P5 because of "fit." Defense comes down to effort. If he buys in, I'd love to have him.

This. I can see G5 needing to move towards being portal heavy to get the guys who aren't getting the playing time they want and/or are being pushed out of their big school to make room for new incoming transfers. I'm fine with it. Get guys with 2 or 3 years left who have already been in a D1 weight room and might be more college ready. Plus, if I'm not mistaken they wouldn't be able to transfer out since they'd already transfered once so it protects us as well. Frankly, it's similar to the Juco route Kansas State somewhat made a living of for 2 decades. SL and this staff have done really well at recruiting the past 2 seasons. I don't think this year is because some high school kids "see the writing that he's on the way out" like some of our fans think. I doubt most even think or know about that until the coach is actually gone. I think SL is just seeing the direction college football is going and adjusting early.

Interesting idea. Maybe make it contractual in the sense that if Team A is paying a player NIL money to transfer from Team B to their school, they have to pay a percentage to Team B for each year the player has left of eligibility. Assume that percentage set in the rules is 10%, if a player has 2 years left and you're paying the kid $100,000 to come over, you have to pay the school he's leaving $10,000 per year left so $20,000 to the school he's leaving. If the kid is coming over on his own with no NIL money, then no money is paid. Or just make it a set yearly fee if there's NIL money involved. Team A wants player from Team B and will pay him to come over. Regardless of how much money the player gets, Team A will pay Team B $100,000 per year of eligibility left. Another idea to simplify things, make it like soccer transfers in Europe where you have to pay the school whatever they want to have them "sell" you the player. The player doesn't lose anything to break their "contract" but the buyer will have to pay to have the contract broken to then "purchase" the player. Where things get dicey is how do you protect players who just want to transfer and aren't looking for the money deals. They just want to play. They have to find a way to protect those kids while also making the big dogs who want to buy success compensate the other schools for their losses. Something has to be done to protect the 99% who can't compete this way.

I ended up getting tickets center court on the other side. Needed 7 and I found some all together. Thanks!

Thanks. I'd never seen this website. When I look up "unt basketball tickets" on Google, I get stubhub or https://meangreensports.com/sports/2018/7/25/mensbkbtickets.aspx Which doesn't bring me to a place to buy tickets. It has season ticket info and then says season tickets will go sale fall 2021. That's it. No link, nothing. I counted and the website you put I'd 7th in my Google search. I'll send the school a message on social media to see if they can work on that. Google search makes it seem like you can only get tickets through a resale website or the ticket office.

Can anybody tell me which side is the UNT bench side?

I'm wondering if both will be starters as well. I'm thinking of many basketball programs where one brother is a star and the other is buried on the bench. Rarely are both getting starter minutes and producing at a high level. If one brother wins a starting job and the other doesn't, will they both be happy? Then what? I hope they're not getting fed promises because at the end of the day, coaches are paid to win and they aren't going to start you and your brother just because they told you they would.

Is there a link to buy the tickets? I don't get these emails.

Thanks

Do you have to buy the all session pass at $125? Is there not an option for single tickets?

No clue. It's not advertised on the tickets website that I could see. Gotcha. Yeah surely there's more they can do. When I was there (2011-2014), I don't remember there being many efforts made to get students to go. Honestly, it was almost like athletics didn't exist unless it was homecoming or if you chose to pay attention.

Now I'm known as a cheap guy so don't fight me on this, but if they want seats filled up, they should lower this to $5 tickets for the rest of the season. Currently the cheapest tickets to the game on 2-24 are $16. Factor in a family of 4 you're looking at $64 plus taxes, fees, gas, and food/drinks. Times are tough and prices everywhere are going up. Budgets are tight for some families. $5 tickets makes it really hard to pass up. Not much out there that can beat $20 family entertainment for a family of 4. Just like pro sporting events, the prices are up because of scalpers but basic ticket prices are actually relatively low. Like I said, don't fight me. My point is make it as difficult as possible to pass up. When I was at UNT, the Cinemark used to do half off on Thursdays and half off for students. We used to go for $3. Hard to pass up no matter what movies are out there.

Also, make it easier to get tickets. I have a family of 7. UNT doesn't sell online unless through Stub Hub. I can't buy 7 tickets at once on their site. The max is 6 or 8. So I either need to drive from nearly Terrell to Denton to go to the box office or call/email and give my payment that way. People don't buy stuff that way, it's all online. Not a great way to get casual fans to buy tickets.

It's great that you could make that drive. For me, coming from Kaufman County, 1 hour will get me to north dallas at that time of day. And after a long day of work, a causal fan or "simply" alumni is not making that 1 hour drive even if just from Plano. The fans who care about the team know how good they are. If they know how good they are and aren't making it, it's because they can't. Those who aren't making it don't care to know how good they are because it's not their thing. This needs to be about building local fans who can consistently make games and the way to do that is to find the people who it would be easy to make the games. Create new fans. Expose people but to people won't budge on something they don't care about if it's inconvenient. That's local fans you need to get. You aren't going to get somebody who doesn't care about UNT athletics to drive 1 hour in traffic after work to watch a game they don't care about, doesn't matter how many hot dogs you give away.

This is all that's needed and frankly, it's all that should be focused on. SMU's website shows an average home attendance of 3,314. Ours shows 3,151. It's tough to draw basketball attendance without being in a major conference and it's not just us. That said, the students alone should be able to fill the Super Pit with ease. Unfortunately, support for UNT athletics is always low amongst students. I went as much as I could when I was at UNT and don't understand why more students don't get their butts in there. You're not going to pull casual people from DFW to get all the way to Denton for a college game mid-Saturday with everything else there is to do and if they wanted to see a college basketball game, SMU or TCU are closer. Judging by SMU's numbers, college basketball is just not a priority event for Dallasites on a Saturday. On Thursdays, that's a heck of a drive in traffic unless you're a die hard fan taking off work. This is me speaking from personal experience. I want to make games but I can't. I work Saturdays and live 65 miles away. I can't make that drive in evening traffic on Thursdays for a 6pm game when my kids have school and get out at 4:15 living 65 miles across DFW. I'm not the only one in this boat. If they want consistent attendance, they have to get it from the students and locals.

My assumption that they know of Lofton is based on him being team USA's leading scorer in the most recent FIBA U-19 world cup and leading team USA to gold. The basketball world knows who he is. Bleacher Report has him in the under the radar draft prospects for 2022. If you're saying NET rankings and other factors are more important then I'll take your word. I'm not too familiar with the at-large process and what they look for.

Sooo my thoughts are this... La Tech is the only team with a chance of an at large bid but they'd probably have to make a run in the conference tourney. I say this because that guy Lofton Jr is an NBA prospect and I wonder if he wouldn't boost them into an at-large bid because of the hype. Thoughts?

What does it take in general? Since 2015, a C-USA team has pulled off an upset in the first round of every March Madness but 1 (not including the Covid off year). It's crazy that despite consistently pulling off upsets of top teams, we don't get better seeding and/or an at-large bid team.

Where to look forward... last season we had the number 1 class in C-USA. Number 2 the year before in 2020, number 4 in 2019. We've had what, 5 or 6 transfer? And we're gaining 6 transfers from other programs. I'm not worried in the recruiting department. I don't like what SL has produced in terms of on-field production because I feel like the results should be better based on our relative recruiting success. To criticize the recruiting classes seems like complaining for the sake of complaining. That's where my issue with your negativity stems from.

Why are you showing a screenshot of a recruiting rank before signing day and that doesn't include our 6 transfers?

Are there 25 projects being recruited?

And how do you know who that kid is when they're still in high school? If you never recruit any projects, you'll never hit on any either. If only it were that easy to just get the "one kid like that" 100% of the time... we've got guys crying on here about losing Brammer who was a 2 star (247) recruit with 5 offers, two of which were UNT and Texas Southern, and none of which were big programs. Then we've got you crying about recruiting Sampson who is *currently* unrated with 6 offers (more than the other guy!) including the same UNT and Texas Southern as Brammer. Make it make sense!

Some of y'all are never happy. When a local under-recruited kid does big things at another school, we cry about how we can't find guys like that. When we go after a project with huge potential but little offers, we cry about how the offer list or whatever else isn't good enough. Can't teach size. He has that. Let the coaches earn their money and develop him.