North Texas Mean Green
Sunday, December 21, 1:00pm
Denton, TX
Last Season: The Mean Green finished 16-16 a year ago, but went just 6-10 in Conference USA and advanced to the second round of the conference tourney. They closed the year with four straight road wins, and won as many as 16 games for just the 18th time in program history.
Last Meeting/All-Time Series: Creighton holds a 5-4 edge in nine all-time meetings, including a 71-51 win in Omaha two years ago. The Jays are 0-2 in Denton, however, and dropped their last trip in February of 1977, 108-105.
Head Coach: Tony Benford, a former associate head coach at Marquette under Buzz Williams, recruited six All-Big East players according to his official bio, including 2012 conference Player of the Year Jae Crowder. He’s compiled a 28-36 record in two seasons at North Texas, but might be close to turning the corner as he’s finally began succeeding in convincing top-tier talent to come play for him in Denton.
Top Returners: Leading scorer Jordan Williams, a 6’6″ guard who averaged 12.0 points a year ago and also led them in rebounding with 6.3 boards a game, returns for his senior year. Williams isn’t a terribly efficient scorer, shooting 40% overall from the floor (127-316) and 30% from long-range (33-109), and is a turnover machine, giving it away 60 times (nearly twice a game). He had five double-doubles, including a nice 11 point/14 rebound performance against Rice in the CUSA tourney.
Fellow senior Colin Voss also returns, after a nice junior campaign where he averaged 7.3 points and 5.8 rebounds a game. He shot 49% from the floor, 14th best in CUSA, and tallied three double-doubles and 10 double-digit scoring games.
T.J. Taylor, who began his career at Oklahoma, suffered a season-ending injury his freshman year, transferred to Paris JC for his sophomore year and then transferred to Marquette where he took summer classes before opting to follow Coach Benford to North Texas. He sat out 2012-13, and in his return to D1 ball last year ranked second on the team with a 44% shooting percentage and scored in double-digits seven times. He averaged 7.0 points and 2.9 rebounds for the season.
Key Losses: Alzee Williams, who was second on the team in scoring at 11.1 points per game and second in assists at 1.5 a game, is gone. So is Chris Jones, who led the team in assists with nearly 4 per game and had a stellar 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Vertrail Vaughns (7.3 points/1.4 rebounds) and Brandan Walton (7.2 points/2.1 rebounds) have also departed.
Key Additions: J’Mychal Reese, the top point guard in Texas and the No. 7 point guard in the country coming out of Bryan in 2012, played 39 games for Texas A&M over the last two seasons but was dismissed from the team due to violation of athletic department rules. He joins North Texas with two years of eligibility remaining, though it’s up in the air whether he’ll take the court this year or next as the school applied for a waiver to allow him to forgo the usual transfer redshirt year.
Five other newcomers are eligible to play immediately: Jeremy Combs (6’7″, F, Dallas Carter HS), DeAndre Harris (6’3″, G, Tyler JC), Carrington Ward (6’2″, G, San Jacinto College), Todd Eaglin (5’10”, PG, Tyler JC), and Muhammed Ahmed (6’7″, F, Gillette CC).