North Texas Daily

 Akshay Mirchandani // Staff Writer

The Mean Green men’s basketball team couldn’t get anything going in its first game of a three-game road trip against the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane, losing 94-63.

“I’m just really disappointed in our effort, we’re embarrassed by it,” head coach Tony Benford said. “We just got to rebound and go to compete. I thought we were prepared, I thought we had a good week of practice and just didn’t compete.”

The Mean Green (11-10, 2-5) kept the game close in the beginning, but in the middle of the first half Tulsa (10-11, 5-2) went on a 12-4 run which resulted in a 47-31 halftime lead. The Golden Hurricane out-rebounded the Mean Green 20-11 in the first half and the Mean Green also turned the ball over nine times in the first half.

“We came out on a pretty good start and I feel like we were ready to play and ready to go,” said junior guard Jordan Williams, who had a team-high 21 points. “We were doing very well in our zone but as the game was going along they were getting too many second-chance points. That’s how the game got out of control.”

Things didn’t get any better for the Mean Green when the second half started as Tulsa came out firing and took a 72-40 lead. The team lost control and the closest deficit of the game was 20 points in the middle of the second half.

Tulsa had 55 points in the paint compared to the Mean Green’s 22, and also had 20 second-chance points while UNT had six.

“We got beat pretty bad on giving up second-chance shots and offensive rebounds to get more shots,” junior guard Chris Jones said. “If we would have eliminated those I think it wouldn’t have been as bad it was. It would have given us a chance to get back in the game.”

Tulsa shot at 57.1 percent from the field against the struggling UNT defense, while the Mean Green shot just 38.3 percent. The team was also out-rebounded 43-26 overall and allowed 14 offensive rebounds.

“Our guys have got to take more pride in getting defensive stops,” Benford said. “I can’t go out and play defense for them, the only thing we can do is put them in the right position to defend. We work on defense every day, that’s a high priority for us. Our guys understand that.”

The Mean Green will have a chance at redemption on March 6 when Tulsa comes to the Super Pit in the final game of the regular season. Next up, UNT will play Rice University at 7 p.m. Feb. 6 in Houston and will need a win to avoid three consecutive losses. 

Feature photo: Junior guard Chris Jones jumps and attempts a one-handed shot against Tulsa University on Saturday night. Jones accumulated 11 points during the road game. Photo courtesy of Will Bramlett.