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Blazer Crew Comes To Town; Tristan Dominates: UNT 87- UT-Arlington 83

Blazer Crew

Well the rival school from the UT system came to town, bringing their freshly blazer’d spirit group in tow.

That is them up there.

The game was a North Texas dominated affair for most of the game. It was almost the opposite of the game down in San Marcos, complete with UTA making a nice little run with four minutes to go. There are a lot of ways to interpret this one and I’ll leave the majority of that to you, dear reader:

A) This was an awesome win and UTA always plays us close so we shouldn’t be too down.
B) WE NEED TO STEP ON THEIR THROAT
C) We might have take our foot off the gas a little but our experience won it for us.
D) Some combination of the three above.

I’m feeling level-headed at the moment so I’ll go with ‘D’. I can’t speak intelligently on UT-Arlington but I have watched 4.5/6 North Texas games this year. We didn’t play much differently than we usually do, save for a couple of things: defense and transition.

The Mavericks shot 12 of 37 from three. Most were wide-ass open. I am not kidding at all. Wide open threes. It was ridiculous. For whatever reason we looked lost on defense when we tried some zone, and completely out of sorts when running man. I really can’t explain it. Kendrick Hogans in particular doubled down while his man was launching a three . . . twice. It wasn’t just him (and he played a pretty Kendrick Hogans-type game with 5 points and 9 rebounds), there were a lot of breakdowns. Jordan Reves found himself free for easy lay-ins and a couple of punches (that’d be a dunk to you).

I want to just write this off as an off night. Maybe they were trying something different. Maybe UTA was running some confusing stuff. Maybe we thought they would miss wide-open threes (for the most part – yes).

Given the performances this year, I will say that this is just a weird night. When System-School climbed back, UNT tightened up on the defensive end and got key stops late that won the game even if UTA had some nice desperation-get-back-in-the-game shots a-la Rice’s Jackson.

It is slightly concerning seeing them play so poorly defensively that performance accounted for the lack of transition game which is our best offense. During the Mavericks’ run we became stagnant in the half court again. Teams try to zone us to not allow the drive-and-kick game that White and Tristan initiate so well. For most of the game we handled this well and knocked down the zone-busting shots (12 of 24 from three).

You can look at the stats for yourself, though. You’ll notice that Tristan Thompson kicked a whole lot of ass. In fact, so much so that my buddy says that although Josh White gets the credit, Thompson is the real all-star.

Eh. Maybe. I’m just glad we have both. They take pressure off each other and do some of the same things. TT is money from the line tonight, but that could have easily been Josh knocking down eleven free throws — which would have put him near that career-high 29 points that Tristan put up.

Faces In The Crowd

Dan McCarney makes an appearance

New head football coach Dan McCarney was there, glad handing and such. Apparently there was some rudeness in the meet-and-greet session:

Sorry if someone else already hit on this, but I was embarrased at the Mean Green Club reception for Coach Mac tonight. While trying to do a Q&A session with us, people would not shut up in the back of the room. All the inconsiderate chatter was obviously distracting to Coach Mac as well as to those of us actually trying to listen. He stopped speaking multiple times expecting everyone to be quiet so he could finish answering, but people kept on chattering. He even made comments over the PA, telling the folks in the back that they were welcome to come use the mic if they didn’t want to be quiet (paraphrasing), but that didn’t slow them down.

So there’s that.

The announced attendance was 2600 plus. Some think it was more and that they didn’t count some people. Sounds about right to me. The north side of the Pit was pretty bare, definitely more so than in the Rice game. It is a little disappointing considering UTA is an area team and how good UNT is but not surprising considering that basketball isn’t as popular in general and it was a Tuesday.

Whatever. I don’t feel like bitching about that.

Glad for the win.

Stats

Upcoming:

  • Dammit I want the diving eagle on the helmet!
  • Nike unis?
  • New chants?

Links:

[ESPN Box Score]
[quote via gmg.com]

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