Know The Foe: North Texas

Memphis returns to action Wednesday afternoon after a nine-day break, and they’ll kick off conference play against North Texas. The Tigers played 12 non-conference games through the first two months of the season, and they’ll play one more non-conference game in February against Utah State.

The Mean Green will enter Wednesday’s game with a 9-4 record, but they haven’t beaten a team that is ranked higher than No. 192 on KenPom this season. North Texas’ most recent win came against the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, an NAIA school with a 5-8 on the year.

Head coach Daniyal Robinson is in his first season with the Mean Green after spending three years as the head coach at Cleveland State. In those three years, he had a combined 65-42 record with the Vikings, but he never won the conference to earn an NCAA Tournament birth.

Robinson’s team averages 71.5 points per game, and they’re shooting 45 percent from the field, 33.3 percent from three-point range and 69.3 percent from the free-throw line. Like recent seasons, North Texas is much better on the defensive end of the court, and they’re currently a top-50 defense in the country, according to KenPom.

They hold opponents to 63.6 points per game, and opposing teams are shooting 40 percent from the field and 28.2 percent from deep. The Mean Green force 15.5 turnovers per game, and they score 15.6 points off turnovers.

 Three players average more than 10 points per game, and Cleveland State transfer Je’Shawn Stevenson leads the team with 16.1 points and 1.5 steals this year. Guards Will McClendon and David Terrell Jr. also average more than 10 points per game, but McClendon suffered a knee injury against Oregon State and will miss the rest of the season.

The Mean Green have struggled to shoot the ball, and they rank No. 278 in effective field-goal percentage, No. 285 in three-point percentage and No. 265 in two-point percentage. Only two players are shooting better than 40 percent from three-point range, and neither averages more than two three-point attempts per game.

After those two players, EJ Horton and Cahmai Crosby, the three-point percentage takes a major drop off, and the next best three-point percentage is junior forward Buddy Hammer Jr., who is shooting 33.3 percent. 

In the frontcourt, Robinson doesn’t have a lot of size, and the tallest player stands at 6-foot-9. Forwards Dylan Arnett and Reece Robinson have started all 13 games, and Arnett leads the team with 6.2 rebounds per game.

As a team, the Mean Green averages 33.6 rebounds per game, and they have a minus-0.1 rebounding margin this season.

The Tigers will clearly have a size advantage, and they’ve found a lot of success in games where they’re the bigger and longer team. North Texas has shown that it can slow teams down defensively, and it will rely on its defense to try to make this an ugly game.