Story on men's win over UNO

[SUMG]

NEW ORLEANS, La. (1/27/05) – The North Texas men’s basketball team (10-7, 3-3) shot 55 percent in the second half to overcome a slow start and pull out a 66-60 win over New Orleans (8-11, 3-3) at Lakefront Arena on Thursday in a Sun Belt Conference West Division game.

The Mean Green trailed by as many as 12 points in the first half and 29-25 at the break, but went on a 6-1run to start the second half and retake the lead for the first time since the 17:39 mark of the first half.

Leading 31-30 with 17:59 left in the game, North Texas never looked back. The Mean Green never lost the lead and extended it to 54-46 with 6:35 remaining. UNO cut its deficit to 56-54 with almost four minutes left to play, but NT responded with a 5-0 run over the next minute and didn’t let the Privateers get closer than five points the rest of the way.

After shooting 33 percent in the first half, North Texas hit an impressive 55 percent of its field goal attempts in the second half to finish the game at .453. NT also outrebounded UNO 24-15 in the second half and 40-32 for the entire game.

North Texas was led by three players scoring in double figures, including junior forward Ty Thomas with a team-high 13 points in his first start of the season. Leonard Hopkins and Jeffrey Simpson both scored 12 points to follow Thomas.

Simpson was also a force defensively, blocking six shots for the second time this season and pulling down nine rebounds for the second consecutive game.

The Privateers hit 6-of-10 three’s in the first half, leading to its advantage at the intermission period. However, UNO hit just 1-of-10 shots beyond the arc in the second half. NT converted 17 UNO turnovers into 20 points, while UNO scored 11 points off 21 Mean Green turnovers.

UNO held its largest lead of the game, 12 points, twice in the first half. Trailing 28-16 with 4:31 remaining before halftime, North Texas went on a 9-1 run to finish the first 20 minutes strong.

The Privateers were led by Bo McCalebb with a game-high 25 points, the only UNO player scoring in double digits.

North Texas, which is 5-4 away from the Super Pit, remains on the road for its final game this week, playing at South Alabama on Saturday at 7 p.m. The game can be heard live on KWRD 100.7 FM in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

[risinggreen]

Just gotta love Simpson's D. He's seems to be emerging as a force on the inside.

[Coach]

Just gotta love Simpson's D. He's seems to be emerging as a force on the inside.

He has improved a ton since the first of the season.

I enjoyed listening to the game, but they need to have someone to travel with Hank. That has to be very hard on him and it would sound a lot better with another voice.

Here are the two reasons we won, keep up this and the wins will start piling up:

...North Texas hit an impressive 55 percent of its field goal attempts in the second half to finish the game at .453. NT also outrebounded UNO 24-15 in the second half and 40-32 for the entire game.

[ntsumgspe]

Great comeback win ! Good shooting = WINS

[CMJ]

I enjoyed listening to the game, but they need to have someone to travel with Hank.  That has to be very hard on him and it would sound a lot better with another voice.

Agree. Can the MG Radio Network not afford to send him a partner? It seems rather bizarre.

[Guest e-bone]

It sounded like we did a much better job rebounding and blocking out, but after looking at the box score I am really impressed. Having a 36-31 rebound advantage doesn't sound like a lot, but the key is that we held UNO to 9 offensive rebounds. Holding the opposing team to single digits in offensive rebounds is a good benchmark on how well your team is blocking out, which is something that we had done very poorly in the previous two games.

Also, does anyone know why the NT official website's boxscore is different from Yahoo's and ESPN's boxscore? I assume that the one that Yahoo and ESPN uses are the official stats, but it is kind of odd that they are different. It makes one wonder what stats we actually use for our records and the like.