In My Own Words: The Schedule Made Us Better

Each week, North Texas men's basketball student-athletes, coaches and/or administrators looks back on the 2019-20 Mean Green championship season. They'll share their perspective on the season and specific moments that helped make this one of the greatest in the program's 102-year history. In this week's edition of "In My Own Words", forward Zachary Simmons recalls playing one of the toughest non-conference schedules in recent memory, specifically outscoring Obi Toppin and holding the John R. Wooden award winner to a season-low 11 points and how coming back after a tough first half at No. 13 Dayton on Dec. 17 fueled the eventual championship run.

"I'll start by saying we left Dayton frustrated. Disappointed. Mad that we didn't win. Upset we started extremely slow and couldn't get much going on offense early on. But I was also proud with how we bounced back in the second half. We outscored them and outplayed them late in the game and were within a few possessions of tying the game up late. We just started too slow against a veteran team that was one of the best in the nation.

We won 10 of our next 11 games after Dayton, including our eight-game winning streak in conference. It eats me up we couldn't get that one but it showed us a lot and reinforced the belief in the locker room that we could compete with anyone and we were going to cut down nets in March.

In the locker room we came together more as a team.

December was a real turning point for our team. With so many newcomers, a lot of November was spent getting everyone to gel together. But in December we won convincingly at UT Arlington, played really well against Oklahoma, made a program-record 19 3-pointers versus a Little Rock team that won the Sun Belt Conference and then faced one of the best opponents we've matched up against in my three years I've been here at one of the toughest road gyms we've played at.

The game plan going in was to be patient and work within our offense, try not to force any bad shots up. We knew they wanted to get out and run in transition and we knew if Obi Toppin had any big fastbreak dunks it could lead to an avalanche. I think we executed that part well. We held Dayton to 71 points. It was the fewest they scored all non-conference and was one point shy of scoring the fewest points they scored at home all year.

Going into the game I knew Obi was a really athletic shot blocker but our coaches made it an emphasis that he would go for shot fakes so I tried to implement that into my own personal game plan. We knew he was a really efficient scorer, capable of scoring at all three levels and also a good passer out of double teams. He was averaging 21 points per game going into our game and making right around 70 percent of all his shot attempts.

Before the game, I as well as everyone else on the team knew that this was a big opportunity for us and could be a major statement win for us this season. We knew our team could compete with anyone it was just a matter of time. I never had any doubt that we could play with them and if we played our game we would have the opportunity to win it.

The slow start really was tough. We had a few turnovers in a row during a offensive drought but it never felt like we had let Dayton get too far ahead.

Going up against Obi, you could tell that he was a really good player and had a good feel for the game. He knew how to help his team win and was also able to make plays for his teammates and wasn't consumed by scoring which was something you wouldn't have expected going into it. His passing is definitely what stood out the most to me though. I don't know if I thought he was going to be the national player of the year after that game but I knew he was going to be amongst the elite of college basketball this year.

Even though we held him to one of his lowest scoring outputs on the year he was able to help his team.

The second half was huge for us. We showed the fight and played the game I knew we could play to beat this team.

I knew we had a lot to play for and felt the game was right there for the taking. I was proud of our team's competitiveness and specifically how I was able to anchor the defense down low. I felt I took advantage of opportunities on offense to score and was able to come through.

But the slow start was tough. We knew that we could've won. We let ourselves get into too deep of a hole to begin the game but we played them tough the rest of the way through, which is what made it so disappointing.

But we left knowing maybe even more so than before the game that we could play with anyone. It fueled more of our competitiveness and showed us if we keep fighting and working hard we'd be in position to cut down nets. We took our game to another level after Dayton."

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