The Mean Green entered Senior Day, looking to impress ahead of the conference opener. Some, if not most of the good will earned by a valiant three quarters against Indiana in Week 1 was used up against Texas State last week. The defense was gashed and people started comparing Neal Brown to the Littrell and early Morris eras, defensively. Was that fair? Doesn’t matter. Football is entertainment, folks and entertainment doesn’t have to always be rational.
The goals: Demonstrate dominance, get out uninjured.
The result: Yes, and yes. . . with some weirdness.
Houston Baptist Christian has a good offensive coach and he schemed up some beauties to get NT’s defense off guard. It hurt the morale of the fanbase, which is typically only watching a quarter or two, getting a sense of the game, and then forming an opinion based on that. NT ended the first quarter up 14-7, and was briefly tied 14-14. After that? It was all North Texas.
Houston Baptist had one first down in the second half, after converting 11 in the first. The Huskies managed just 222 yards of total offense, 208 came in the first half and 124 in the first quarter. HCU managed just 3 yards in the third quarter.
1. Jahiem White Was Dominant
11 carries 133 rushing yards, 4 rushing touchdowns, 3 catches 17 receiving yards.
We wanted to have him show his stuff, but keep him fresh for the rest of the season. He was basically untouchable in this game. He had only two carries of less than 5 yards, one of which was a 2nd down play and one was a 3-yard TD. He had scores of 24 yards (2nd carry of the game), 47, 3, and 7. He was done after the first half and sat comfortably as the team handled business. He entered the game as the 7th leading rusher (yards per game) in the league. That is only a small part of his value. NT doesn’t need him to rack up yards, but important yards, and scores. This was just his second 100+ yard rushing game of the year, but he’s scored in every game (9 total touchdowns) and is averaging 100+ yards from scrimmage per game. He is our Rams-era Marshall Faulk.
2. Pass Game On Point
Tayven Jackson put in a shift, 16-18 270 yards 1 TD. This is relatively unimpressive in modern offense, but it was exactly as needed. He came in averaging 71% completion rate and improved that tonight to 74%.
All told, however, the three QBs combined for 25/28 400 yards and 3 TDs. Chaston Ditta took over for most of the 3rd quarter but the game also saw the debut of Chris Jimmerson: Thrower. We’ve seen him primarily be the run package, but he also mixed in a long toss for a touchdown tonight.
All told NT put up 648 yards of offense, averaged 9.8 yards per play, including 6.5 yard per rush.
3. Defense Shut Things Down Late
As we mentioned, the defense had the focus of everyone interested in North Texas football after last week’s performance. Texas State is good (scored 63 tonight also) but there was plenty to dislike by the Mean Green in the game.
After a poor 1st quarter, missing tackles and getting eyes wrong, NT turned up the heat, forced fumbles, grabbed interceptions (including a pick-six) and was more like the team we saw through three quarters vs Indiana, and all game vs UNLV.
North Texas is 2-2 on the season, and initial impressions of the American conference are that this league is certainly winnable by a flawed team. North Texas’ defense looks like it has potential to be solid, but has real weaknesses. Fortunately, the offense looks like it is the kind of 500+ ypg, 35+ ppg kind of monster we have seen in Denton for the last decade.
Against an FCS opponent you want to see the defensive line dominate, and they did. You want to see guys taking advantage of QB mistakes and we saw that.
It was not great seeing HCU get push on short yardage early, however, nor was it good to see the defense looking discombobulated early. There are things to work on.
4. Overall A Good Effort … But
Coaches are never satisfied, and there will be plenty to dissect in the short week. The special teams look like they just cannot kick for a touchback, get any field goal, nor field a punt. The lone bright spot was Latiolais’ one nice punt return. Of course his muff earlier probably colored your view of him for a while. He’s a freshman and I respect his ability to keep playing and continue fielding punts.
Next Up:
Thursday October 1st: American Conference Foe Tulsa. They lost on the road to Arkansas 34-6. Remember last week when UNT was coming off a big win and Texas State was coming off their rivalry loss? Well it certainly feels like we are walking into a similar situation again.
GMG