Get to know the Conference USA champs the North Texas Mean Green who will face Purdue in round one.
North Texas will be the No.13 seed and face No.4 Purdue in the opening round of the NCAA tournament.
The Mean Green are the Conference-USA champs after beating Western Kentucky 61-57 in OT on Saturday.
They went 17-9 during the regular season and this is their first ever Conference USA Championship. They are just the fifth program in C-USA tournament history and first since 2010 to win four games in four days en route to the title.
North Texas won the regular season title in 2020 but never got a chance to compete for an NCAA tournament bid due to the cancelation of the postseason.
North Texas currently ranks No.10 in the nation in scoring defence (61.2 points allowed) and held opponents to just 54 points throughout the C-USA tournament. They also own the country’s 28th-best 3-point field goal percentage (37.6).
They are led by senior guard Javion Hamlet who was named the CUSA tourney Most Valuable Player after he averaged 18.5 points and 6.5 rebounds and set a new league tournament record with 29 assists (7.3 per game).
Hamlet is from Memphis, TN. He averaged 15 points per game this season and last year was named Conference USA Male Athlete of the Year, Conference USA Player of the Year and First Team All-Conference.
The North Texas head coach is Grant McCasland who is in his fourth season.
Prior to North Texas, he was the head coach at Arkansas State for 2016-17 and before that was an assistant at Baylor from 2011 to 16.
