2011 North Texas Mean Green Football Preview

The year 2011 will be one that North Texas Mean Green fans will remember, at least for one good reason. The school is set to open a brand-new, state-of-the-art 30,000-seat stadium in week two as in-state rival Houston comes to town. Beyond that, the program might also have reason to hope for good things on the field. New head coach Dan McCarney has brought with him 30 years of coaching experience. The man who rebuilt Iowa State and then served as one of Urban Meyer’s foremost lieutenants at Florida is a fantastic hire for UNT. Armed with a quality football mind and an energetic recruiter, North Texas can now dare to dream big after the unfulfilled tenure of former coach Todd Dodge.

With seven starters returning on both sides of the ball, the stage is set for the Mean Green to have a memorable season, and perhaps awaken the echoes of 2001-2004, when North Texas went to a bowl game in four consecutive seasons under then-coach Darrell Dickey.

Running back Lance Dunbar returns to lead the formidable Mean Green rushing attack. North Texas ranked in the top 20 in rushing yards last season, compiling over 200 yards per game. Dunbar became the second back in North Texas history to amass back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. The UNT defense will be led by seniors Brandon Akpunku and Royce Hill. The Mean Green are hoping to improve their scoring defense, which ranked in the bottom third of college football, giving up just under 30 points per game. That’s the phase of the sport in which McCarney is likely to provide the biggest degree of ballast. McCarney is a former line coach who sees the game differently from Dodge, a former quarterback at Texas whose pass-happy offenses rewrote the Texas high school record books. Dodge tried to be a Sun Belt version of Mike Leach or Hal Mumme, a coach whose passing offense would be impossible to defend because of the ways in which it could spread the field. However, North Texas never did devote enough attention to line play or defense during his tenure, and that’s why UNT stumbled. McCarney is going to change that equation, and while he certainly deserves a year to figure things out and match personnel with scheme, there’s a chance that the new sheriff in Denton, Texas, will be able to make pieces fit from the get-go.

The Mean Green will travel to Tuscaloosa to take on Alabama in week three. They will then host Indiana and travel to Tulsa in the weeks that follow. Non-conference games notwithstanding, North Texas should be more competitive in the Sun Belt this season; the extent of that competitiveness is the real question mark for the denizens of Denton.

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