UNT was cruising right along a few weeks ago, rolling up wins, seemingly headed toward a pretty remarkable season.
What the heck happened?
UNT lost again on Saturday. Falling at Denver isn’t bad by itself. It’s a tough place to win. But UNT also lost at Middle Tennessee and at Troy and at Louisiana-Lafayette.
UNT isn’t a good defensive team, but we knew it wasn’t going to be to start the season. UNT has way too many guys who are blow average defenders to expect anything different.
UNT won anyway early in the year.
This team seems to be lacking something else of late, and it isn’t firepower, not with Tristan Thompson, Josh White and George Odufuwa out there.
I am starting to wonder if it isn’t chemistry and having an emotional leader that gets everyone’s rears in gear. Eric Tramiel was that guy last year. A couple of years ago, it was Calvin Watson and Quincy Williams.
If there is a guy out there filling that role now, it’s tough to see. There’s seems to be a little bickering going on. That’s where someone needs to step in from the players’ end. That guy has yet to emerge and UNT is running out of time to find him. Defense has been UNT’s biggest problem lately. Head coach Johnny Jones says it’s about toughness and want-to. He’s right, but there is only so much he can do to bring that out in his guys.
It should be interesting to see if someone steps forward to demand that of the rest of the team and get things going in the right direction again.