What is the most notable changes with the new coaches?

It appears to me that the biggest difference between Freeze and Roberts involves recruiting and their attitude toward winning.

In recruiting Freeze has said he likes to go after those recruits with “stars” whereas Roberts approach was “don’t waste your time” on the stars, do your homework and get the no stars with the best potential and develop them. Don’t know if Freezes approach will work long term at ASU, just know that Roberts approach did not work. Also noticed the team with a history of signing the most “star” players, Troy, also won more championships, so giving that approach a try seems to be a no brainer.

Another area of difference is their attitudes toward winning. Freeze seems to embrace the bottom line and you get the impression that he wants "wins" to be the measure of the success or failure of his program. Rather risky approach considering ASUs record at the FBS level.

Roberts, on the other hand, shied away from the idea of measuring his program by wins and prefered to focus attention on the “I WILL: program. Wins were simply a byproduct. Over time, concerns by “fans” that wins, at least in any significant numbers, never seemed to come out of the”I WILL” process, were dismissed. Have to say that there is no doubt that Roberts attitude toward winning worked for him, because he was able to turn what should have been a 5-6 year tenure into a nine year stay.

Conditioning and mental toughness. That and a complete overhall of the culture starting at the athletic offices.

I'm sure other UNT fans will weigh in on this, but at North Texas Dan McCarney has brought discipline to our team, both on and off the field. Penalties are not even close to what they were in the Dodge and Dickey eras. Late hits, so far, are a thing of the past. And breaking team rules or discipline appear a thing of the past as evidenced by the removal of our top receiver, Darius Carey, prior to the season starting.

Not sure how we'll end up this season, but McCarney is rebuilding the correct way. We are already seeing better (on paper) recruits and transfers coming to Denton.

As the other Cajun fan implied, the biggest change is the culture has been shattered. The concept that conditioning has a direct correlation to 4th quarter performance is something that Coach Hud has our guys really buying into. He is also shattering the idea that freshmen cannot play and improve a team. He plays the players who work the hardest and give us the best chance to win, period. His recruiting philosophy seems to be to go after the best player regardless of who else wants them (AQ teams). When recruits come and experience Cajun Field on game night, they are all impressed. Some of them will not sign, but many of them will. Luckily, the cupboard was not bare from Coach Bustle’s regime and Coach Hud did a good job in plugging holes with new players. Back to culture change; our player now expect to win, they are not surprised. This coach also insists that fans are part of the overall plan.

First of all let me be clear - I know we are not world beaters and we have a long way to go. We had sunk so low that this is clearly a rebuild - 3 years minimum. We have looked flat awful against some opponents this year but we really beat up on Indiana and FAU with our defense.

During the Dodge era, I would look at a box score and ask myself "how did we lose?". With McCarney I look at the box score and aks myself "how did we win?".

The answer is winning the turnover battle and limiting penalties. McCarney seems to have a good read on what he has to work with and is not trying push a square peg through a round hole.

McCarney has taken a defense with less talent than last year and making them play better. It's night and day. The D is fun to watch now. I even have a little confidence in them where I had zero in the past. McCarney believes is heavy contact practices whereas Dodge did not. This defense plays 10X more physical than last year.

McCarney is playing a good amount of true freshman - and some are showing real promise.

I think we will win 4 games this year with far less talent than we had on the field last year. I know we have a better staff now. If this staff can recruit then we should be a contender in 2014. That is the year he will have his first 3 classes they he worked on for a year.

McCarney seems like he was the right hire for us. Only time will tell.

This week will let us know if we can be cometitive in SBC play or if we can only beat down on their luck programs.

(10-10-2011 12:09 PM)crawfish3 Wrote:  As the other Cajun fan implied, the biggest change is the culture has been shattered. The concept that conditioning has a direct correlation to 4th quarter performance is something that Coach Hud has our guys really buying into. He is also shattering the idea that freshmen cannot play and improve a team. He plays the players who work the hardest and give us the best chance to win, period. His recruiting philosophy seems to be to go after the best player regardless of who else wants them (AQ teams). When recruits come and experience Cajun Field on game night, they are all impressed. Some of them will not sign, but many of them will. Luckily, the cupboard was not bare from Coach Bustle’s regime and Coach Hud did a good job in plugging holes with new players. Back to culture change; our player now expect to win, they are not surprised. This coach also insists that fans are part of the overall plan.

I think ASU players expect to win.......... at home, but that was the case under Roberts. To be quite honest I think the players were shocked they won at WKU and ULM. They simply have not done it enough to expect it.

I think having better coaches on the side line, especially on the D-Side got ASU over the hump in those games, not the player’s attitude. Probably take a few more classes graduating to get all the head-cases who will never recover from the damage caused by all those road losses on their resume.

I said back around January that Arkansas State, Louisiana and North Texas appeared to have all made the right hire. Each school addressed their greatest needs for their program with their hire.

Last year UNT was 3-9 (3-5) and right now is 2-4 (1-1)
Arkansas State was 4-8 (4-4) and halfway in is 4-2 (2-0)
Louisiana was 3-9 (3-5) and at halfway is 5-1 (3-0)

(10-10-2011 01:26 PM)GreenFlag Wrote:  I think we will win 4 games this year with far less talent than we had on the field last year. I know we have a better staff now. If this staff can recruit then we should be a contender in 2014. That is the year he will have his first 3 classes they he worked on for a year.

I think we get to at least 5 wins this year, but to get any above that we will have to steal one against any of three very good teams on the road. Shouldn't take until 2014 to be a contender though, but we will have a better Idea after we get done with the next few games.

As far as Mccarney, I love the discipline. Dodge had no control in addition to having no clue what he was doing.