Mean Green

UNT can take another huge step toward wrapping up the Sun Belt Conference West Division title and earning at least a share of the overall league title tonight when it hosts Louisiana-Lafayette at the Super Pit. UNT has a one-game lead over ULL and Arkansas State in the West division standings and is in a three-way tie with East Division leaders Troy and Middle Tennessee.

There is no understating just how big this game is for UNT.

A win keeps UNT on top of the division heading into a game it should win at Louisiana-Monroe on Saturday. It would also extend UNT's winning streak to seven games, the longest since the 1991-92 season.

UNT has never won a division title in the Sun Belt.

There isn't a reason UNT shouldn't have a huge turnout for this game. The Mean Green has been playing really well lately and is the best thing going in the athletic department at the moment when it comes to the big three of football and the two basketball programs.

It isn't even close.

Quite frankly, if UNT can win this game, it deserves a huge sendoff to the conference tournament in its last home game.

The good news is that is looking more and more like a good possibility.

Josh, an old friend from my days in Abilene who covers ULL, has reported that the Ragin' Cajuns' second leading scorer Chris Gradnigo is out for tonight's game with a bad back. Gradnigo is the Cajuns' second-leading scorer at 14.0 points a game.

The 6-7 forward is also one of the few guys ULL has who can match up with UNT's post guys Eric Tramiel and George Odufuwa. Tramiel didn't play when ULL pulled out a two-point win over UNT at the Cajundome ealrier this season.

ULL is only going to have eight players available tonight.

Here's a link: Gradnigo out

UNT seems like a team on a mission the last few weeks. A win tonight would help the Mean Green take a big step closer to completing it.

I wrote a feature for today's paper on UNT's starting five. These guys like be the best and most balanced group starting for anyone in the league. Josh White, Tristan Thompson, Eric Tramiel and George Odufuwa are all ranked in the top 25 in the Sun Belt in scoring, Odufuwa leads the league in rebounds and Shorter might be the best glue guy in the conference.

Here's a link: UNT's Fab Five

It was nice to see Brittney James go out in style tonight in the last home game of the year for the UNT women. The Mean Green played a terrible Louisiana-Lafayette team and won by its largest margin of the season.

James played well and finished in double figures.

It's easy to forget that James ranks among the top 10 scorers in school history because she has played for UNT during a time when the program has really struggled. What says a lot about her is that she has always stood up and represented the program well no matter how things were going.

James visited UNT while she was in the area following her family being evacuated from their home in advance of a hurricane.

To say that she has gone through some tough times might be a bit of an understatement.

James has been a great player for UNT, which has a chance heading into its last game of the season at Louisiana-Monroe to do what it hasn't since late November -- win consecutive games. UNT should get it done. ULM might be the worst team in the Sun Belt.

I will be back later

UNT is cruising in the second half of its game against Louisiana-Lafayette at the Super Pit.

Jasmine Godbolt has 16 points for UNT.

UNT is pulling away in the second half of its game against ULL.

The Mean Green lost to the Ragin Cajuns by two earlier in the year.

Jasmine Godbolt has 12 points for UNT.

UNT opened the second half on a 10-0 run and is up 12 at the first media timeout.

Brittney James has six points in the second half and Denetra Kellum has 11 points for the game.

UNT is up four on ULL at halftime at the Super Pit.

UNT had an 11-point lead late in the half, but gave up a 7-0 run heading into the locker room.

Denetra Kellum had a nice first half with nine points.

Alexis Green has a whopping 18 points for ULL. She is averaging 13.8 points a game, but is an unconventional player. She is 5-8 and isn't the quickest player out there. She just knows how to play.

UNT has a 27-18 edge in rebounds.

UNT is on a 7-2 run and has opened up an eight-point lead at the Super Pit on ULL.

Denetra Kellum has six points for UNT.

The Mean Green is a ton more athletic than ULL.

ULL is on a 4-0 run and has cut its deficit to three points at the 7:48 mark of the first half.

Torrian Timms has four points for UNT. ULL is shooting 25 percent from the field. UNT is shooting 30 percent.

UNT has pushed its lead to seven points in the early going. Jasmine Godbolt has six rebounds already.

Torrian Timms has four points.

ULL is shooting 23.5 percent from the field.

UNT is off to a good start here at the Super Pit and is up four at the first media timeout. Torrian Timms has four points already in her final outing on the Mean Green's home floor.

UNT is shooting 50 percent from the field.

UNT is about to tip off its game against Louisiana-Lafayette at the Super Pit on senior night.

The Mean Green could really use a win here to help it out when it comes to the Sun Belt standings heading into the conference tournament. UNT is one of four teams in the league with just four conference win. Louisiana-Monroe has three.

A win or two would help UNT avoid one of the top teams in the league in the first round of the tournament.

This is the last home game for Brittney James, one of the better players in the history of the program. It would be nice to see her have a big night.

North Texas made a couple of appearances on national Web sites in the last day or so. I had to design the paper tonight and didn't get a chance to blog about it until now.

Graham Watson, who I know a little from her days at the Morning News, wrote a story about Todd Dodge being down to his last chance.

It will be the big story heading into the season, just like Riley Dodge was last year.

UNT is heading into a new stadium in 2011 and has a lot riding on this season.

In other news, Johnny Jones is on the front page of collegeinsider.com. The Web site put out a Mid-Major Top 25 Poll. UNT is in the poll ranks teams from 23 conferences across the country this week at No. 24.

It's a pretty big accomplishment to be ranked. Butler, Gonzaga and St. Mary's are in there.

Here's a link: Johnny smiling on the collegeinsider.com

I had to design the paper tonight, which ranks right up there with cleaning the litter box in my book, but since you see everything on the wire sometimes you run across something interesting.

That was the case tonight.

Van Malone is headed to Tulsa to coach its secondary.

For those of you who have not been around long, Malone played in the NFL and pretty much launched his coaching career at UNT in 2005 under Darrell Dickey. Malone eventually left for A&M and will now be the main secondary coach at Tulsa.

Malone did a nice job at UNT, and I am pretty sure he recruited Kelvin Drake.

As for the mailbag, you guys are way too sensitive about what players have to say about UNT these days. City College of San Francisco defensive end Frank Gaines said he was taking a calculated risk by waiting to see if anything else came along before signing with UNT.

That's what he had to say, straight up.

The situation is one UNT is going to have to deal with until it can start having some success on the field. I have talked to plenty of recruits this year who were really enthusiastic about signing with UNT. Others, not so much.

That's the case just about anywhere, especially at places where teams are not winning. UNT hasn't won more than three games in a season since 2004.

There was a question posted on the blog today about what we will see from John Weber this spring.

I am interested to see what we see from him as well. He looked like an athlete along the lines of Adrian Awasom early in practice last year, but was injured and disappeared for the rest of the season. He would be an interesting option at defensive end.

Todd Dodge is supposed to start interviewing candidates for a wide receivers coach early this week. We should hear something by Friday or so.

I talked with City College of San Francisco defensive end Frank Gaines for a few minutes today about his plans.

UNT is sitting on one last scholarship, and all indications are Gaines is the guy the Mean Green is targeting. He visited campus over the weekend. He is a Rivals three-star guy.

Wyoming offered at one point, but pulled its scholarship after landing another player. Hawaii was also interested until it signed a guy higher up its board.

The bottom line is Gaines says he has just one offer from UNT.

Gaines said that he is going to wait a few weeks to see if something better comes along. There is always a chance a team might lose a player in spring practice to injury or someone won't qualify.

Gaines said that if nothing works out, he will sign with the Mean Green, which really needs help on its defensive front. The idea last year was that UNT could rotate in a series of players and generate a pass rush that way. It didn't work out. UNT finished in a tie with Florida Atlantic on the official NCAA leaders list with 12 sacks, a total that ranked No. 116 out of 120 teams nationally.

Only Western Kentucky, Akron and Fresno State had few sacks than UNT.

UNT appears as if it will try the more conventional route with more conventional looking defensive ends next season. The Mean Green signed strong side end Michael Miller on national signing day from the California JC ranks. Gaines is a weak side end that would provide a nice complement.

Gaines said he will decide within the next two weeks if he will sign with UNT.

I stopped by basketball practice today to work on some stories for later in the week and got into a discussion with some UNT guys about the Sun Belt's tiebreaker system.

They made another good point about formula that will be used if UNT ends up in a three-way tie with Middle Tennessee at Troy at the end of the season. The point is UNT would end up as the West Division champion, while Troy would win a tiebreaker with MTSU for the East title.

I don't see a problem with that, but UNT would be the second seed behind Troy, which it beat head-to-head due to a round-robin tiebreaker between the three teams based on the games played between them in the regular season.

Troy would be 2-1, UNT 1-1 and MTSU 1-2.

The point is the No. 1 rule about seeing for the Sun Belt Conference tournament (outside of not talking about seeding for the conference tournament) is that the division winners earn the top two seeds.

If this plays out to where the three-way tie comes into play, the conference is going to throw out rule No. 1 and break the tie on the basis of entry "e" in the Sun Belt tiebreaking rules.

Really? Tiebreaker subsection "e" is going to supersede the basic rules for seeding for the conference tournament when the league went to this format?

That seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

The standings in the Sun Belt Conference are pretty much a mess at this point in the season, so I put in a call to the league office to see for sure how the tiebreaker scenario sets up.

I traded messages with John McElwain, the associate commissioner/communications.

The way things look right now, it is possible for UNT, Troy and Middle Tennessee to finish in a three-way tie for the overall league title at 13-5 if all three win out.

UNT would win the West Division, while Troy and Middle would tie for the East Division title.

There would be a couple of ways to break the tie, but this is how the Sun Belt would approach that scenario -- all three teams would be involved in a three-way tiebreaker based on head-to-head meetings.

Troy would be 2-1 and would come out on top, UNT would be second at 1-1 and MTSU would be third at 1-2.

To me it would make a lot more sense to determine the division winners first because the division winners are supposed to get the top two seeds.

If everyone wins out, UNT would be the No. 2 seed behind Troy, even though UNT won the only head-to-head meeting, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

What makes even less sense is that the teams didn't play an equal number of games against each other. UNT played just two games against the other two teams, while Troy and MTSU both played three because they are in the same division.

UNT would essentially be penalized for playing fewer games against the other two teams. UNT won at Troy and lost at MTSU. UNT didn't play a single home game against either team.

The way this sets up essentially also completely discounts the divisions when it comes to seeding in this particular scenario.

Basically, it is possible for UNT to win the West outright, Troy to technically win the East after sweeping MTSU and the Mean Green to not win the conference title through the tiebreaker, despite winning the head-to-head matchup with the Trojans.

There is no good way to break a tie in a situation like that. Anyway you do it someone gets the short end of the stick. It looks like a distinct possibility that UNT could end up that team.

The UNT women continued to struggle today and lost to Aransas-Little Rock, which is on that same tier with Middle Tennessee among the top teams in the league.

UNT hung in there pretty well early, but the Trojans are just too much for the Mean Green to handle.

The big question right now in men's hoops is how the tiebreaker scenarios will play out if UNT ends up in a three-way tie for the overall conference title.

I am going to have to make some calls tomorrow, but at first glance it comes down to whether the conference would break the ties atop each division first and then determine the overall conference winner or throw three teams tied atop two divisions in one hat and determine the winner that way.

The bottom line is if UNT takes care of business, it will win the Sun Belt's West Division. From there I don't see any way the Mean Green wouldn't at least be the No. 2 seed.

I will be back later.

This is turning into the blowout everyone expected it to be. UNT is down 22. Chastity Reed has 18 points for UALR, twice what any individual player has for UNT, and she has hardly played because of foul trouble.