Tag: North Texas Mean Green

Texas Tech is on North Texas watch as NIT resumes Tuesday

Tech could inch closer to hiring their head coach with a UNT loss on Tuesday.

The [autotag]Texas Tech Red Raiders[/autotag] are among three Power programs that have yet to make a hire for their men’s basketball program. The California Golden Bears and Penn State Nittany Lions are the other two.

Penn State became available when the Notre Dame Fighting Irish hired Micah Shrewsberry away after two seasons in Happy Valley. It could be that both Texas Tech and Cal are looking at head coaches currently competing in the annual NIT Tournament. The Golden Bears could have Mark Madsen of Utah Valley on their shortlist.

For the Red Raiders, we put together a list of notable names they could target with one clear No. 1 target in mind. That name is Grant McCasland of the [autotag]North Texas Mean Green[/autotag].

McCasland and North Texas are set to take on the Wisconsin Badgers at 6:00 p.m. CT from Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. Should the Badgers knock off the Mean Green in the NIT Semifinals, then the Red Raiders and athletic director Kirby Hocutt could make their move.

Recently Jeff Goodman of Stadium reported that McCasland was the top target for the job. As we previously noted, he has experience in Lubbock as the director of basketball operations with the Red Raiders under James Dickey from 1999 to 2001.

He spent most of collegiate coaching career with the Baylor Bears under head coach Scott Drew. He also played for the Bears from 1995 to 1999. He led Midwestern State to two Division II Elite Eight finishes in his first shot as a head coach from 2009 to 2011.

McCasland led North Texas to the CBI title in his first season and upset Purdue in the 2021 NCAA Tournament. He has led UNT to the NIT in each of the last two season. Last year they were knocked out in the second round and this year they are among the final four teams still alive. In both seasons they have won 25 or more games.

McCasland knows the Big 12 landscape and basketball in the state of Texas. A win tonight would only seem to prolong the inevitable. The longer that UNT remains in the tournament the further that Tech will get behind on recruiting players and working on landing top prospects currently in the transfer portal.

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USC associate director of sports performance leaves for North Texas Mean Green

Bryan Kegans worked with Lincoln Riley for the past several seasons. Like Riley, he briefly played for Mike Leach at Texas Tech.

North Texas and new head coach Eric Morris are set to hire Bryan Kegans as their new head strength coach, per Brett Vito of the Denton Record-Chronicle in Texas.

Kegans served this season as the associate director of football sports performance at USC. He previously spent time at Guyer High School in Denton.

Bryan Kegans came to USC in January of 2022 as associate director of football sports performance.

He spent the previous four seasons (2018-21) at Oklahoma, where he was assistant director of sports performance/director of sport science.  The Sooners won the Big 12 title in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and made a pair of College Football Playoff semifinal appearances in 2018 and 2019.

Kegans was an offensive lineman and special teams player for four years (2002-05) at Texas Tech, starting at guard as a 2005 senior.

In those years at Texas Tech he played with Kliff Kingsbury, B.J Symons and Lincoln Riley. He played under Spike Dykes — an assistant coach at the time — and head coach Mike Leach.

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North Texas QB Austin Aune is 29 and has thrown for more than 2,000 yards

North Texas QB Austin Aune graduated high school in 2012 and is now 29

Austin Aune is quarterbacking the Mean Green of North Texas.

In a 40-13 win Saturday over Western Kentucky, he was 19-of-28 for 317 yards and 3 TD passes.

Nothing out of the ordinary until you realize Aune is far older than a significant number of NFL starting quarterbacks.

Aune graduated high school in 2012 and was drafted by the New York Yankees in the second round of that year’s MLB draft.

Aune spent six seasons in the Yankees farm system.

He had 20 home runs and 148 RBIs but floated between High-A and Class-A teams. Aune had a career batting average of .226 and was released by the Tampa Yankees following the 2017 season.

“Couple lockers down from me was Aaron Judge,” Aune told WFAA in September. “Some of the guys that are on the big league roster now, I knew back then,” he told WFAA in September.

He went to Arkansas for a spell in 2018 before switching to North Texas.

Now, at 29 — his birth date is Sept. 6, 1993 — he is a redshirt junior with a wife and nearly-year-old daughter

Aune has started all 9 games for the Mean Green in 2022, throwing for 2,334 yards and 23 touchdowns.

UNT believes Aune is the oldest quarterback to play Division I college football in the modern era.

He would love to find a spot in the NFL eventually, according to WFAA, and finds inspiration in Tom Brady.

“Yeah, I’m throwing to guys 10 years younger than me,” Aune said. “But Brady is throwing to guys 20 years younger than him.”

 

North Texas Mean Green Preview 2022: Season Prediction, Breakdown, Key Games, Players

North Texas College Football Preview 2022: Team breakdown, season prediction, keys to the campaign, and what you need to know

North Texas Mean Green Preview 2022: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the North Texas season with what you need to know and keys to the season.

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

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North Texas Mean Green Preview
Seth Littrell: 37-38, 7th year at North Texas,
2021 Preview: Overall: 6-7, Conference: 5-3
Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
North Texas Top 10 Players | North Texas Schedule

North Texas Mean Green Preview 2022

Is Seth Littrell ready to take North Texas into a new era?

He’s a young head coach who was a hot name in the overall mix after two straight nine win seasons in 2017 and 2018, but three straight losing seasons and a 14-21 record since then changed the perception.

His teams can crank up the offense, improved a bit on defense, and at least got to bowl games in five of his six seasons at the helm. Granted, the Mean Green lost all five of the bowls, but he got there.

Now North Texas is gearing up for live in the American Athletic Conference next year. The league might be a shadow of its former self with the stars taking off, but it’s still a big step for the program and the university.

This year, with a few schools taking off early for the Sun Belt, and with a loaded offense coming back, this is when the team and program should rise back up again.

The tough schedule might have something to say about that, but in Year Seven, this is when North Texas needs to be the team everyone else fears. And it will be because of the …

North Texas Mean Green Preview 2022: Offense

The scoring punch might have been hit or miss, but it geared it back up after a tough start to win five straight games to close out the regular season, it finished with the fifth-best rushing game in the country, and the passing game was consistent as the season went on.

With eight starters expected to be back, and help on the way from the transfer portal, the attack should be even better.

The quarterback situation just got more interesting. Austin Aune wasn’t all that accurate, but he ran well and turned up the downfield passing game over the second half of the campaign.

Former North Carolina transfer Jace Ruder got his chances, but now he and Aune have try holding off former Arizona Wildcat and Memphis Tiger Grant Gunnell.

The quarterbacks have a loaded receiving corps to throw to. Roderic Burns, Damon Ward, and the return of deep threat Jyaire Shorter from missing most of last year will crank things up.

The great running game has to replace 1,215-yard, 13 TD star DeAndre Toney. However, Ikaika Ragsdale and the next three top backs return, and Aune is a good runner – if he grabs the gig as the starter.

The offensive line loses tackle Jacob Brammer to Vanderbilt, but the other four starters are back including all-star center Manase Mose.

North Texas Mean Green Preview 2022: Defense

The defense was a hot mess in 2020. It closed out allowing 500 rushing yards to Appalachian State, gave up close to seven yards per play, and it finished the season dead last in college football allowing 522 yards per game.

The 2021 defense improved by leaps and bounds, allowing 382 yards per game and just 5.7 yards per play.

There’s a lot of turnover and the depth is lacking, but at least North Texas knows it can play some D.

Step One is replacing the Murphys. Grayson and Gabriel Murphy combined for 15.5 sacks and 26.5 tackles for loss, and now they’re living the life out a UCLA.

The Mean Green don’t have the star defensive ends to replace those two. That’s going to be a fall camp work in progress, and finding two new tackles to replace Dion Novel and Caleb Colvin won’t be easy either. There’s not a ton of size, but 6-0, 288-pound Enoch Johnson has the upside to be a factor.

The linebackers should take over. KD Nixon was an all-around star, earning First Team All-C-USA honors with a team-high 121 yards – and he got into the backfield – and Larry Nixon, Sean-Thomas Faulkner, and Kevin Wood are all veteran tacklers.

The defensive backs have to make more big plays after coming up with just three of the team’s six interceptions, but three of the four starters are expected back – DeShawn Gaddie will once again be one of the team’s top tacklers and big on breaking up passes.

Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
North Texas Top 10 Players | North Texas Schedule

North Texas Mean Green: Keys To The Season, Top Game, Top Transfer, Fun Stats NEXT

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Sooners pitcher Hope Trautwein signs with Women’s Professional Fastpitch league

Oklahoma pitcher Hope Trautwein will be taking her talents to the WPF’s USSSA Pride.

The softball journey isn’t over yet for national champion Hope Trautwein. The former North Texas and Oklahoma star signed with the USSSA Pride of Women’s Professional Fastpitch, a professional women’s softball league.

Although her time was short at OU, Trautwein anchored the best pitching rotation in the country with a 22-1 record with a 0.77 ERA. She also just had the seventh most strikeouts in college softball.

While she was at North Texas, Trautwein became the first pitcher to strikeout all 21 batters in a perfect game.

The WPF just began its inaugural season after being announced last year. Trautwein will end up playing against her former teammate Jocelyn Alo, who signed with the Smash It Sports Vipers, the other team in the newly founded league. Alo was taken first overall in the WPF’s inaugural collegiate draft earlier this year.

The WPF, ran by another Sooners legend, Lauren Chamberlain, has plans to expand to six or eight teams down the road. With college softball getting more and more attention on the national stage, perhaps they will end up doing just that.

ESPN’s Women’s College World Series coverage averaged one million viewers per game for the third consecutive year, so there is definitely a market for what the WPF offers.

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North Texas Mean Green Top 10 Players: College Football Preview 2022

Who are the top 10 North Texas players going into the 2022 college football season?

North Texas Mean Green Preview 2022: Who are the top 10 players going into the season?

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

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North Texas Mean Green Preview 
Offense, Defense Breakdown | Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
North Texas Top 10 Players | North Texas Schedule 

Nebraska learns opening round opponent in NCAA Softball Tournament

Nebraska’s journey to the Softball College World Series begins with a trip to Stillwater, Oklahoma.

On Sunday evening, the Nebraska Softball team learned their destination for the NCAA Tournament. The Huskers will participate in the Oklahoma State Regional in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to begin their journey to the College World Series. Nebraska will share its quad with Oklahoma State, Fordham, and North Texas. The Huskers (40-14) will take on the winner of the Conference USA tournament winner the North Texas Mean Green (40-14). Seventh-ranked Oklahoma State will play Fordham in the other regional pairing.

Regional play will occur on 16 collegiate campuses from May 20-22. Regional play is a four-team, double-elimination tournament with the 16 winners advancing to the Super regionals. The super regionals will occur from May 26-29, in which the 16 teams will play eight separate best of three series. The super-regional winners will advance to the NCAA College World Series from June 2-10 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The Huskers last made the College World Series in 2013.

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College golf facilities: North Texas Mean Green

Check out the Mean Green’s new practice facility.

Earlier this fall before the North Texas vs. UAB football game, Bruzzy’s UNT Golf Facility opened after nearly two years of planning and construction.

North Texas president Neal J. Smatresk, Vice President and Director of Athletics Wren Baker, members of the UNT System Board of Regents and the facility’s namesake and lead donor Jerome “Bruzzy” Westheimer were all present for the opening of the $3 million on-campus practice facility.

Bruzzy’s is 5,047 square feet and features two hitting bays with the latest swing analysis and technology, a virtual putting green, locker rooms, a study space, coaches offices, and a lounge and kitchen area.

More: Check out our list of college golf practice facilities

North Texas golf facility

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Conference realignment: The American adds six from Conference USA

There were some major conference realignment changes made, but the Big Ten still has no reason to make more moves.

The American Athletic Conference is certainly no stranger to conference realignment changes. After all, this is essentially a re-branded Big East football conference that is the product of seismic shifts in prior rounds of massive conference realignment changes around the country. After losing some key members to the Big 12, the AAC has officially added a half dozen teams from Conference USA.

It was truly a milestone day for The American as they formally welcomed their six newest members; UAB, Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, and UTSA. The expansion move by the AAC brings the conference’s total projected membership up to 15 members in total, and 14 participating members in football and basketball. Navy is a football-only member of the AAC and Wichita State is a basketball-only member.

The American recently learned it was about to lose three key members to the Big 12 with Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF opting to leave the conference and join the Big 12, along with BYU. The Big 12, of course, is going to be losing Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC.

The timing of all of these conference realignment changes remains to be determined, and the timeline of these changes may be influenced by just how quickly Oklahoma and Texas can bolt and get playing in the SEC.

Naturally, these moves is a devastating blow to the status of Conference USA, and the hits may continue to come for Conference USA. In a stunning show of how much the times have changed, the Sun Belt Conference could be poaching a few other Conference USA members in due time. Southern Miss, Marshall, and Old Dominion are on the Sun Belt’s radar, as is FCS powerhouse James Madison.

As for the Big Ten, there are still no rumblings that would suggest the conference is looking to expand its current membership. The idea the Big Ten could add a team or two from the Pac-12 always felt out of place, so unless Notre Dame calls up Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and says they want in, all should remain calm on the Big Ten expansion front.

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Oklahoma softball adds North Texas transfer pitcher Hope Trautwein

Oklahoma softball made a splash transfer pickup on Friday with the addition dominant North Texas pitcher Hope Trautwein.

Fresh off claiming the 2021 national title a week ago, Oklahoma softball has already made a big splash this offseason by adding North Texas transfer pitcher Hope Trautwein into the fold for next season. Continue reading “Oklahoma softball adds North Texas transfer pitcher Hope Trautwein”