Recap of the Week

One of the problems with being an unprofessional pseudo-blogger is that you fall off the face of the internet for a while when real life stuff pops up. Work makes you work and school makes you school and after that you try to squeeze in time with friends and family so you don’t get accused of being a hermit.

I opened up my Internet machine and found that…

1) We lost to FIU in spectacular fashion. Losing while Tony Mitchell scored ZERO points is sadly unsurprising. It has been coming to this point for a while. Some nights he’ll have a handful on only a couple shots. It was only luck that he didn’t get the one or two shots on a bad night to fall. I am similarly unimpressed with Tony Benford’s fix for the problem: imploring his best player to shoot more. Why? Well it is a simple solution that fans yell out. “SCORE MORE BRO.” As if this were simply a matter of effort or trying. FIU conspired to stop our best guy. Roger benefited. Seems to me I remember something like that happening to Stephon Curry in college. . . Oh yeah. I can’t criticize much past shaking my head at yet another loss and the subsequent player-blaming from Benford because I didn’t get a chance to see the game or hear it live. I was sadly, learning in class (#sadface). Still, we could always chalk this season to bad luck. . .

2) BAD LUCK IS KILLING US. The snarky ones among you will likely call North Texas being founded the start of it all. I really can’t help but chuckle at that. Given that we hired the worst coach in the history of the school (go look at the history of this school’s coaches, that’s doing something) during our big push to get into CUSA in the middle of the decade. That killed any and all momentum from the Dickey era and sucked the life out of the football program. It has yet to fully recover. Meanwhile, the crown jewel of NT athletics, Johnny Jones’ basketball team reached the brink of breaking through the curse. A team stacked with talent, a fan base ready to climb on the bandwagon, a sport that allows any team to win a national title? Well we went and hired a bust, by all evidence. Also, whatever voodoo that took hold of the football team two years ago and the QB position in particular is now effecting the basketball team. That once mighty squad is now down to eight players and the NBA prospect can’t find a shot in this offense. Even the most hopeful among us don’t think a conference tournament run will be likely. Still, this could all be a set up for the greatest story in college basketball in the last decade. Injury-plagued team with a terrible start that didn’t believe in its coach turns it around with a glorious run to the Final Four with just eight players hobbling around? Oh god. It would be greater than that Boston Red Sox comeback in 2004. If this point in our season isn’t getting shellacked in game three 19-8 then I don’t know my terrible analogies.

3) We have some decent recruits coming in. I say this in one out of every three posts: I don’t get too excited about recruiting. It can get kind of creepy measuring and judging 17-year-olds, and I don’t want to be that guy. Outside of that a couple of Hudl film clips and Rivals numbers don’t tell us much. Sure, it helps fill the space between December and September. Practically it doesn’t tell us much of anything. I generally agree with Vito in that while an individual player may be overrated an overall highly rated class is better than the opposite. It seems to me like we are trying to fill our weak spots. This is a good thing. That said, we got in a bunch of DBs last offseason and like none of them did anything.

4) Dan McCarney is moving around the coaching staff. I didn’t think much of Mike Canales when he was brought in under Dodge but I came to respect the guy. He does a decent enough job calling plays and getting the playmakers the ball. The offense did suck last season though. I don’t have the numbers in front of me (nor do I want to look them up right now, for fear of depression) but this was the worst offense since like 2006, scoring-wise. Now, that is what this whole unit is out there for. Yardage is fun but points win games. Whether you agree with Vito that Derek Thompson just didn’t have weapons around him, or with me, who thinks there was plenty of guys that could do some nice things it doesn’t really matter. BROCK is seemingly a better, more talented option. I wonder if we’ll go back to seeing more shotgun out there next season. It is Canales’ preferred look which makes me think he didn’t have too much faith in DT or Danny Mac wasn’t too fond of it. Given the increased duties of Quartaro next season I wonder if Mike Canales isn’t in the dog house.