Cinderella Search Committee: The North Texas Mean Green bid-stealing machine

If Wicked taught us anything, (other than the fact that 2:40 is far too long for Part 1 of a musical) it’s that if you’re mean and you’re green, you usually don’t get invited to the Big Dance. Still, the North Texas Mean Green might just tear up that fairy tale, put on their dancing shoes, and write their own Cinderella story this March. 

In his second year since landing the job in Denton, first-time head coach Ross Hodge has his team off to a 16-4 start with a 7-1 record in American Athletic Conference play after Wednesday night’s 58-54 win over Wichita State. With a suffocating defense and a deliberately efficient offensive attack, UNT jumped the Shockers, a former March Madness darling, taking an 18-6 lead before the game found its rhythm, and the Mean Green were forced to hang on for a close win. 

Hodge, who was elevated from his associate head coach after Grant McCasland left for Texas Tech, is looking to take North Texas back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021 when they were the Conference USA champions. Though a 68-64 loss to nationally ranked Memphis, the AAC favorite, and an 0-3 record in Quad 1 games has kept them off most “bracketology” projections, the Mean Green are 45th in the Net Rankings and 51st in Kenpom (just 11 spots behind Penny Hardaway’s Tigers). 

Hodge’s group of scrappy veteran transfers won’t be a fun draw in the first round of the tournament, but to pull an upset, they have to get there first, and that will likely mean winning the AAC Tournament in what has become a one-bid league. 

Can North Texas punch its ticket to March Madness?

Everybody loves a bid stealer, except, of course, the teams that the bids are being stolen from. Luckily for the AAC, Memphis shouldn’t find itself on the bubble, so if North Texas does pull off the perfect heist, they won’t be stealing their ticket out of Penny Hardaway’s hands. 

The last time Memphis and North Texas met, the Mean Green fell just four points shy of knocking off the team that is now ranked No. 19 in the country and doing it on the road. That matchup came back at the start of January and there’s plenty of reason to believe that North Texas will fare even better next time around. 

Continuity is lauded as the great differentiator in the transfer portal era, but this year Hodge has proven that if you pull the right talent out of the portal, continuity is far from a necessity. Of the eight players in Hodge’s interchangeable regular rotation, only senior guard Rondel Walker and senior center Moulaye Sissoka are not in their first season at North Texas. Talent, though, isn’t the only antidote for the program’s lack of continuity, there’s also experience. Of those eight regulars, only junior Brenen Lorient is not in his senior season. 

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Hodge went that route to build his roster because it has to be a lot easier to get seniors to buy into a system that limits the team to just 62.8 possessions per game, the third-fewest in the entire country, and remain engaged on the defense end of the floor. Ranking 362nd in adjusted tempo by Kenpom, North Texas allowed the third-fewest points per game and is 37th by Kenpom defensive efficiency. 

The Mean Green don’t just limit possessions, which is a great recipe to take down an opponent with superior talent in a single-elimination tournament, they limit their opponent's effectiveness on those possessions. With scrappy perimeter defenders who regularly disrupt the point of attack, UNT forces a turnover on 18.5% of their opponent's possessions and they punch well above their weight class on the boards. 

That’s not to say a team with only three bigs in the rotation, all just 6-foot-9, won’t get squashed by a blue-blood powerhouse, but they’ve yet to be punished for their lack of size in the AAC. 

Sissoko is sixth in the conference in rebounding percentage, Lorient, a lengthy oversized wing from FAU has become a defensive anchor, ranking second in the conference (to North Texas guard Jonathan Massie) in defensive win shares per 40 minutes, and third in Hakeem percentage (a sum of the player’s block and steal percentage named for Hakeem Olajuwon). Still, even Lorient averages just one block a game, and yet, the Mean Green allows the lowest percentage of points in the paint in the AAC (38%). 

With a defense like that, North Texas will remain at the top of the confernece for the rest of the regular season and have a great chance to win the conference tournament. But if it doesn’t happen and this potential Cinderella never finds its Prince Charming, it’ll be because of the struggles on the other end of the floor. 

Why the slipper may not fit the Mean Green

In some ways, this North Texas team appears to have been built to test the hypothesis, “What if you built the entire thing out of 3-and-D?” Not every player on the roster fits that popular play style, but as a team, the Mean Green are shooting 37% from behind the arc, and they’re shooting even better than that in conference play (over 40%). That efficiency pairs incredibly well with their lock-down defense. 

With a very analytically charged style, North Texas doesn’t turn the ball over which allows the Mean Green to hunt mismatches deep into the shot clock while maintaining their spacing for isolations and pick-and-rolls on the backside. When they aren’t hunting threes, they’re looking to get to the foul line where they shoot nearly 80%. Still, over 20% of their points come off turnovers, the third most in the conference, so they rely heavily on their defensive prowess to beget offensive success. 

With such an interchangeable lineup where no player averages over 30 minutes a game, Hodge doesn’t have a go-to scorer to rely on in close games. Leading scorer Atin Wright is a lethal shooter, but at 6-foot-1 he can struggle to create his own shot. Lorient has a funky face-up, mid-post game with an effective baby hook, but his production is streaky at best. Sissoko’s recent emergence, scoring in double figures in each of the last five games could give a post-threat down low and a clean-up crew in the dunker spot, but I fear it won’t be enough. 

North Texas has a 44% assist rate on offense and only three players who average over one assist per game with Jasper Floyd leading the way at 3.9. Such an isolation-heavy offense may work against AAC competition and could even land UNT with a tournament bid, but it could be a struggle against a power conference opponent with superior athleticism in the Round of 64. 

Against Wichita State on Wednesday, the Mean Green scored just six points in the final 5:24 going 1-7 from the field. If this team is going to pull off a bid heist in March, it may need a better wheel-man in the getaway car because even with a great defense, they barely escaped the Shockers.

Cinderella Search Committee Watchlist:

• George Mason (Jan 22)
• North Texas (Jan 30)