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DENTON -- The North Texas men’s basketball team will host Mississippi Valley State in a non-conference game on Thursday, Dec. 17 at 11:30 a.m. inside the Super Pit. Free admission will be available for all fans, students and faculty during the early morning contest starting at 11:30 a.m. North Texas snapped a seven game losing streak Monday night with an 18 point victory, 78-60, against Nicholls at the Super Pit. Four NT players were in double figures with sophomore Jeremy Combs leading the way with 19 points and eight rebounds. Junior Deckie Johnson set a new career high with 17 points and classmate J-Mychal Reese chipped in with 14 points, scoring in double figures for the eighth straight game. The Mean Green only committed nine turnovers and were stellar at the free throw line shooting 73.3 percent (22-for-30). Reese is leading the team in scoring at 14.7 points per game and Combs is second at 13.5. Johnson is third at 11.7 points per game and leads the team with 17 made three pointers. Freshman Ja’Michael Brown earned his third start of the season against Nicholls and is averaging 6.7 points per game and has dished out 31 assists. As a team, North Texas continues to be in the top 50 in field goal percentage sitting at 47.9 percent, which is 48th in the nation. The Mean Green have attempted 275 free throws on the season, which is 13th in the country amongst division one schools. NT will travel to Omaha, Neb. for a road contest at Creighton on Monday, Dec. 21 at 8 p.m. on Fox Sports One. About the Opponent: Mississippi Valley State •This will be second meeting between the teams after playing last season in the Super Pit. North Texas came away with a 67-52 win on Nov. 26, 2014 with former player Colin Voss scoring 10 points and grabbing eight rebounds. • Mississippi Valley State has lost 12 games in a row to start the season. The Delta Devils have played some quality opponents and lost a one point game at Air Force, 65-64, on Nov. 19. • MVSU has lost to big schools like Nebraska (L, 51-97), New Mexico State (L, 85-46), BYU (75-68) and Northwestern (L, 78-48). The Delta Devils haven’t played a home game yet going 0-11 on the road and 0-1 in neutral site games. • MVSU is led by junior Marcus Romain, a 6-2 guard from Brooklyn, N.Y., who is averaging 17.1 points per game. Romain has scored 137 points in eight games. Classmate Damian Young, a 6-3 guard from Grayson, Ga., is second on the team in scoring at 10.8 points per game. Junior forward Michael Matlock leads the team in rebounding with 5.4 boards per game.

J-Mychal Reese has seen his fair share of players during his college career that started at Texas A&M and will continue this season at North Texas. What he hasn’t seen is anyone quite like Jeremy Combs, UNT’s sophomore forward with the wild, unkempt flattop and a propensity for dominating the paint. “I have never played with anyone who plays as hard every play as Jeremy,” Reese said. “Some of the moves he can make I have never seen before. He can get through little spaces and score.” UNT’s hopes for a breakout season in the fourth year of the Tony Benford era will rest largely with the pairing of Combs and Reese, both from a leadership and production standpoint beginning Friday when the Mean Green host Jarvis Christian in their season-opener. Reese and Combs will give the Mean Green an inside-out duo Benford believes could be among the best in Conference USA. UNT will need them to live up to their billing and guide the way for a team with seven new scholarship players and a lot to prove after a 14-17 finish last season. UNT was picked to finish eighth in Conference USA’s preseason coaches’ poll and is under pressure to break through after failing to crack the .500 mark in three straight seasons. “We need to take a step forward and I think we will,” Benford said. - See more at: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/sports-headlines/20151111-unt-basketball-new-year-looms-for-mean-green.ece#sthash.u6dzAfdq.dpuf

Hey with football season being sort of a downer, any of you guys wanting to talk some UNT hoop?

Hopefully this is no big deal but but I looked at the roster and noticed there were some of our recent signees missing as well as they had Reese listed as a senior? Hopefully just needs to be updated but I thought Reese would be here two years? http://www.meangreensports.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/ntex-m-baskbl-mtt.html

UNT men’s basketball coach Tony Benford recently rounded out his coaching staff with the addition of director of operations Todd Shelton. We touched on Shelton joining the staff briefly earlier today. Here’s a link to the story that will be in tomorrow’s paper, where I had some time/space to delve a little more into Shelton’s background. The interesting aspect of the story is Shelton has some ties to UNT, mostly from Johnny Jones’ tenure with the Mean Green. Shelton drove up to Denton to ask in person if he could work one of Jones’ camps after he finished his playing career at Texas Wesleyan. Shelton also nearly took a grad assistant job at UNT before St. John’s came calling and offered to pay his tuition. Shelton’s brother Terry Shelton played at UNT during the Mean Green’s four-year run run as Sun Belt Conference champions from 2001-04. He didn’t play a lot, but he is in some of the old media guides in my files. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2015/06/benford-sees-shelton-as-a-home-run-hire-hoops-tidbits.html/

The UNT men’s basketball team added a couple of promising post prospects in the last couple of days in Khalil Fuller and Mike Thomas. The Mean Green also announced that they have parted ways with Muhammed Ahmed when they announced the addition of Fuller. It was a case of history repeating itself. UNT added Ahmed to fill the void left by the departure of Cincinnati transfer Kelvin Gaines, who also left the Mean Green with a year of eligibility remaining last summer. UNT has added six recruits since the end of last season, and that doesn’t even count the addition of J-Mychal Reese, who sat out last season after transferring from Texas A&M. Ever-changing rosters are somewhat of an epidemic in college basketball. UNT certainly hasn’t been immune, and that brings us to the “Who’s on first? report” where we attempt to answer the question — Who is on this team, anyway? Here’s the roster as it stands now: Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2015/06/the-unt-basketball-whos-on-first-report.html/

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