Quick(ish) Reaction: NTMBB 64 USF 57

A win is a win

The Mean Green men went to South Florida and kicked some behind for a long stretch of basketball. Then they got cold, and USF closed the 16-point gap to a 2-point one, Twitter/X panicked, and then NT started scoring again and closed out the game with fervor. I have watched a lot of ball in my time on this planet and I thankfully do not get too high or low. It used to be that it felt like a personal affront to my family that my favorite players would not make an easy shot. Now? I understand it all and so I don’t feel like my world is collapsing. A lot of things change in the time from when a person is 10-years old to where they have a mortgage, children, and a blog on the internet.

Eventually this will just be a statistic. “The last time these two met, North Texas won 64-57”, the details long forgotten. As it was, North Texas controlled this game for a big portion. USF made up 14 points but that’s the thing about being down 16 — you ain’t done yet. North Texas got punched a little bit, but mostly they couldn’t put the ball in the hoop. The story of this season and especially the last two games is that it is very difficult for North Texas to score sometimes. Jason Edwards could get buckets wherever, whenever. We don’t have that guy (anymore) nor any approximation of him.

UNT money-balled the approach and got all the pieces of last year’s team in aggregate. Basketball isn’t piecemeal like that, though, and sometimes it is better to just have a DUDE out there that can get buckets. You can pass it over there, and clear the floor. It is a tried-and-true strategy. Hoopers know. Statisticians may argue over Hot Hand Theory but the USMNT put it into real world scenarios. Kevin Durant passed the ball back to Steph Curry instead of moving the ball to LeBron. Why? Well sometimes you know a guy won’t miss no matter how many French dudes they throw at him.

Does North Texas have that guy? No.

That said, let’s give some praise to Brenan Lorient hitting a clutch one-handed jumper in the paint to kill the USF run. Let’s give Jasper Floyd his flowers for getting a put-back bucket, and later a three-ball to extend the lead.

We know the kind of team we have and instead of complaining about something that cannot change, we can enjoy them overcoming their limitations. No one is coming to save them. They play on. You have to play smarter, harder, more together to overcome some talent deficit. This coach and this team and this program do about as much as they can given all the limitations. I mean the Pit isn’t full. The donors are not flush. The city is not energized. And yet there is another 20-win season up on the board. There are five games to go and one Memphis slip-up to maybe steal the regular season title.

This was a good win, even if it got close there for a second.

Next up: Thursday at FAU (playing Memphis today)