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The Mean Green men's basketball team will open the 2023-24 season at home against Northern Iowa on Nov. 7 and will begin conference play on Jan. 4, as North Texas will take on the Paul Mills-led Wichita State Shockers on the road.

The recent success of the Mean Green men's basketball team has been highlighted since they had an upset win over Purdue in the 2021 NCAA Tournament and two Conference-USA championships in 2020 and 2022. The team most recently cinched a 2023 National Invitation Tournament victory, where they defeated the University of Alabama at Birmingham 68-61 to win the championship.

UAB Head Coach Andy Kennedy spoke on the rivalry against North Texas at the American Athletic Conference Media Day, as well as the excitement of continuing the matchup as both schools head to the AAC for the 2023-24 season.

"Great respect for North Texas," Kennedy said. "Obviously, Grant McCasland moves on to Texas Tech based on the success that he had, a great run while he was there. Then Ross Hodge, who was integral in building that success, is now in the big chair, and I'm sure he's excited about that opportunity. We have a great rivalry with them — last year, they got the best of us, and we're looking forward to the two games we get against the Mean Green this year."

After leading North Texas to the 2023 NIT title and a maintaining a 135-65 record during his tenure with the team, former head coach Grant McCasland was hired by Texas Tech. After vacating the head coaching position, current head coach Ross Hodge stepped in. Hodge was previously the associate head coach and commander of the dominant Mean Green defense for McCasland before attaining the head coach position this year. Hodge said his team will always focus on defense, but playing faster on offense compared to years past could benefit the team this season.

"For us, it is always going to start on the defensive end of the floor," Hodge said during the media day. "We don't want to lose that identity. [...] So, we have definitely been spending a lot of time in practice working on and talking about converting off our defense when we do get opportunities, deflections, and steals to play with a little more pace and tempo while still trying to minimize mistakes."

North Texas ended the 2022-23 season with a 16-4 record in conference games and an overall record of 31-7. Between the likes of Hodge's defensive coaching capabilities and the team's core players, the Mean Green defense was the best in the nation in 2022-23, allowing only 55.8 points per game.

However, after being in C-USA since 2013, North Texas and five other programs announced in 2021 that they would join the American Athletic Conference. The AAC in 2023 will consist of North Texas, Charlotte, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Memphis, Rice, South Florida, SMU, Temple, UAB, UTSA, Tulane, Tulsa and Wichita State.

Returning senior guard Rubin Jones spoke on the culture around the Mean Green basketball team and how it influences their performance on the court.

"Regardless of who is playing and who's not playing, off the court, we are all a family," Jones said at the media day. "We don't really go our separate ways. We stay together on and off the court."

After a triumphant 2022-23 season and the introduction into the AAC, North Texas had to make some additions to its roster to replace players who left for the transfer portal or ran out of eligibility. Hodge and the Mean Green men's basketball team added many talented players for the approaching 2023-24 season. This roster includes Robert Allen, redshirt senior forward from Ole Miss, John Buggs III, redshirt junior guard from UTSA, CJ Noland, junior guard from Oklahoma, Rondel Walker, junior guard from Texas Christian University, Jason Edwards sophomore guard from Dodge City Community College, Terrance Dixon Jr., sophomore forward from Kilgore College and Alex Cotton, freshman guard from Hebron High School.

With the addition of the new team members heading to The Super Pit, North Texas also has some returning players for the upcoming season. Those returning include senior Rubin Jones, junior Aaron Scott, redshirt junior Moulaye Sissoko, junior Matthew Stone, sophomore Christian Moore, redshirt sophomore Grayson Allo and redshirt sophomore Chris Morgan returning for the 2023-24 season.

The team also added new faces to the coaching staff, including assistant coaches Johnny Estelle, Phil Forte and Jase Herl, who will enter their first season with the Mean Green.

Returning junior forward Aaron Scott said during the AAC Media Day that having a new head coach who has worked with the team in the past and understands the team's play style made the coaching transition smooth.

"Defense wins championships," Scott said during the media day. "We won a championship last year, so it is good to have the same mentality this year. Also, we are playing faster, and I think playing faster fits our roster."

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Denton County foster children have a big day coming up: Adoption Day. On Friday, Nov. 3, hundreds of families will come to the county’s family court building to make their new families official.

Texas Woman’s University social work students plan to make the day even more memorable for the children getting adopted. The students plan to fill the courtroom with stuffed animals for the children to adopt. The students are also raising money to replace and add games and a family photo booth for more fun while families wait for their adoptions or mingle with newly minted families after their adoptions.

The Denton County Lawyers Foundation co-sponsors and runs the local Adoption Day. Social work students from TWU and the University of North Texas have partnered with the foundation over the years.

TWU senior Jianna Covarelli, a social work and political science major, went to Denton County Adoption Day in 2021 as a social work student. The students, all of whom are part of the TWU Social Work Macro Practice Course, partnered with Denton County Adoption Day 13 years ago. Covarelli said the event is a day when social work students apply their micro, meso and macro practice studies, which is a fancy way of saying that Adoption Day pulls together all the contexts social workers practice — individual, community and institutional.

“Seeing the courtroom quite literally stuffed with a plethora of stuffed animals as child after child was adopted, and the joy that filled the luncheon/game room was truly a sight to see,” Covarelli said, thinking back to the 2021 Adoption Day, when she volunteered as a first-semester social work student.

UNT social work students have also partnered with the event, and Covarelli said the students are in charge of bringing a spirit of celebration and fun to an environment that can feel formal and overwhelming for children. Covarelli said most of the adoptees are very young, and a courtroom can feel scary for them. Children are accompanied by their foster families and social workers from Child Protective Services and the Department of Family and Protective Services.

“I remember from the last Adoption Day I worked on, there’s a lot of noises. It’s a very big room. There’s a lot of weird things going on, and attorneys are loud talking, so the kids being able to hold a stuffed animal, it’s very comforting,” Covarelli said. “And it’s very sweet to see. I have this one image in my head. It’s like engraved. A little kid picked out which stuffed animal they wanted and ran over to his now-dad, and the couple who had been fostering them together, I believe. And just seeing the dad bear-hug the kid who was bear-hugging their stuffed animal, it was just very sweet.

“So that’s the comfort and environment that we’re hoping to foster and constantly create, so that it makes a very important day.”

Covarelli said Adoption Day, which is a national initiative to highlight the adoption of children in foster care, is a rare bright spot in the public profile of foster care. More than 100,000 children are in foster care across the country.

“So much of what people see doesn’t make you feel a lot of hope, but there is,” Covarelli said. “In our program, one of our key phrases is that our goal is that our clients eventually don’t need us anymore. And I think Adoption Day is a really great example of that. Because the kids who are getting adopted are there because [social workers] have found either a kinship or a family placement that meets the needs of the child, and is bringing them into a harmonious situation to what potentially was tragic before.

“I mean, that’s a very good example of what we want to see across the board in all fields and aspects of social work. That eventually our client is better than when we found them, and they can sustain that.”

Donate at www.gofundme.com/f/TWU-Adoption-Day-Fundraiser-2023 to help the students raise $500 to shop for stuffed animals and games, or buy something from the group’s Amazon wish list.

When dogs and cats (and the occasional hedgehog, guinea pig or iguana) leave the Linda McNatt Animal Care & Adoption Center with their forever family, they’ll pass under a very special new work of art.

Welcome Home is a sort of mosaic. About 1,600 small works of art — paintings made by Denton ISD students, Northwest ISD students, volunteers and members of the Art Room — are pieced together to show a cat and a dog lounging in the sun.

The tiny paintings depict everything from animals to objects. Put together, they create a large, framed work of art that celebrates the joy companion animals bring to people.

The piece was presented during a reception at the shelter on Wednesday morning. Local dignitaries attended, and the presentations were punctuated by barks and yips from the shelter’s residents.

The piece is the latest of the Art Room’s annual community art projects, which are made in association with North Texas Giving Day. The Art Room is a Denton nonprofit that manages a studio and hosts art therapy programs and support for people dealing with mental health challenges. Members of the Art Room have access to open studio time, materials, support and guidance from volunteer mental health professionals and artists. And they get all that at no cost, although the nonprofit does accept donations.

Maryam Flory, a licensed professional counselor who serves as the vice president and secretary of the Art Room, came up with the idea of giving small art kits to local students, artists and volunteers and turning them into a larger work of a dog and cat cuddled together.

“The idea was born out of being introduced to artist trading cards, which are some of the cards that are 2.5 by 3.5 [inches],” Flory said. “The idea was introduced to me by one of our previous art educators, and I just fell in love with it, because it felt so accessible and personal. I just loved it and thought, ‘Why not put like a thousand of them into a big piece?’”

Eighty percent of the artists’ small works would use the assigned color, but the texture, style and media were the artists’ choice.

Dorothy Pennington, the Art Room program manager and a former art teacher, took the lead on the community project. She assembled the kits and the instructions and distributed them to Art Room members, local schools and artists.

Three hundred artists made pieces for the project, Pennington said. Students from W.S. Ryan Elementary School, Strickland Middle School and Fred Moore High School created pieces from the kits Pennington and volunteers made.

“When I was an art educator, we always did some kind of community art project, and they were always the best,” Pennington said. “The students always really liked it and loved to see how they came together.”

Marlys Lamar, the founder and president of the Art Room, said the community art project is always done in conjunction with the North Texas Giving Day fundraiser.

“Each year, we do some fundraising to keep the doors open,” Lamar said. “In 2019, that’s when we first started making a community art project. We’ve done one every year. This year, we were so excited to present the project to Linda McNatt [animal shelter] because we want to honor what our animal friends meant to us.”

The Art Room has produced a large mural for Our Daily Bread’s soup kitchen and community shelter as well as another project for Cumberland Presbyterian Children’s Home.

Mayor Gerard Hudspeth congratulated the Art Room and said the city will soon begin regular exhibitions in City Hall. He said he appreciated the new piece and often praises the animal shelter.

“There are cities around us, like Frisco, that don’t have a facility like this and that are volunteer-run,” Hudspeth said. “I think this is an important investment.”

Hudspeth joked about the difference between the response to the Art Room’s project and those for the city of Denton projects.

“You got back more than a thousand pieces of art,” he said. “I do want to understand how you send out information and get it back. as far as feedback. I want to know your secret sauce. Maybe we need some artwork on the back of the city’s work we send out. Maybe we could work together on that."

Seth Henigan knows a thing or two about winning big games in Denton.

These days the quarterback is racking up yards and touchdowns for Memphis.

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Turn back the clock a few years, and he was doing exactly that for Ryan. Henigan guided the Raiders to the Class 5A Division I state title in 2020 and finished with 7,234 passing yards to go along with 79 touchdowns in his high school career.

The junior will be back in town Saturday when UNT hosts Memphis. It seems appropriate that it’s homecoming for the Mean Green.

The game will mark a homecoming as well for Henigan, who downplayed what it’ll mean to play back in Denton despite his roots in the city. His father, Dave Henigan, is still the coach at Ryan.

“It’s the biggest game of the year because it’s the next one,” Seth Henigan said. “That being said, I’m looking forward to going back to Denton and playing in front of family and friends. I should have about 20 people in the stands who don’t normally get to see me play in person. I’m looking forward to it.”

How Henigan fares will go a long way toward determining if UNT can take a key step in its pursuit of a bowl berth in Eric Morris’ first season as the Mean Green’s coach.

UNT (3-4) is 1-2 in the American Athletic Conference and needs three more wins to become bowl eligible. Those wins will be tough to pick up during a stretch of four games that began last week against the teams that were picked to finish at the top of the American in the league’s preseason poll.

UNT’s game against Memphis might be the most winnable in that stretch, at least if one judges by the poll. The Tigers were picked to finish fourth.

Memphis (5-2, 2-1 American) has certainly looked the part of a contender for the conference title. The Tigers’ losses have come against Missouri and Tulane.

Memphis beat Boise State and a Navy team that edged UNT earlier in the season in conference play.

Henigan has been a key reason for the Tigers’ success.

“They’ve got a quarterback who’s experienced,” Morris said. “He’s a coach’s kid who’s savvy, knows how to move the ball and takes care of it. He does all the little things that end up winning you football games.”

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Henigan has thrown for at least 300 yards in three games this season, but it was his performance last week in a win over UAB that stood out to Memphis offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey. Henigan threw for 159 yards and two touchdowns on 19-of-28 passing with no interceptions. He has 1,856 passing yards and 18 touchdowns on the season.

“He played very efficiently last week and did things you don’t see with some checks and getting us into the right situations,” Cramsey said.

Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield suspected that Henigan would have the football smarts he showed last week when the Tigers were recruiting him.

“You love guys that come from football families,” Silverfield said. “His dad is a successful high school coach in Texas? And he’s a winner?

“That checked a lot of boxes.”

Containing Henigan and the Tigers will be a challenge for a UNT defense that has shown signs of growth in a few stretches over the last few weeks.

The Mean Green held Temple in check in a 45-14 win two weeks ago. UNT struggled at times against Tulane last week but made enough plays for the Mean Green to be in the game in the closing seconds.

UNT needed to make a few more big plays defensively after it tied the game up at 28-28 late in the fourth quarter but surrendered a game-winning touchdown drive.

Tulane converted four third downs on a 13-play, 75-yard drive. Quarterback Michael Pratt converted the last of those third downs when he pulled the ball down and scrambled for a 19-yard touchdown that gave the Green Wave the win.

“We have to go out and play great assignment football,” Morris said. “The consistency level of it is what has to pick up. We can be good for a series and get on rolls.”

Those rolls haven’t lasted long enough. UNT hopes to change that in its game against Memphis, which could be easier said than done against Henigan and the Tigers.

Henigan threw for 316 yards and three touchdowns against Missouri and went for 321 yards and three touchdowns against Tulane.

Henigan wasn’t as prolific last week in Memphis’ win over UAB, but he steered the Tigers to another win.

That performance gave the Tigers momentum heading into Henigan’s homecoming game on UNT’s homecoming.

“He’s a veteran guy with a lot of snaps under his belt,” defensive end Mazin Richards said. “They really trust and believe in him. He’s commanding their offense.”