MBB Places Three On C-USA Honor Roll

DENTON - North Texas men's basketball student-athletes Deng Geu, DJ Draper and JJ Murray placed on the Conference USA Commissioner's Honor Roll, league commissioner Judy MacLeod announced Thursday. Student-athletes named to the Commissioner's Honor Roll must maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better.

In total 197 Mean Green student-athletes were named to the league's honor roll.

DENG GEU
Geu is a fifth-year senior who is earning his master's degree after graduate transferring last summer from North Dakota State. Geu grew up in Uganda in East Africa, after his parents immigrated from Sudan. Geu's older brother came to the U.S. as part of a program for refugees and later joined the military. He helped bring several members of the Geu family over from Africa.

Geu was 6 when he arrived in the U.S.

Moving to the United States helped Geu's family find a more stable life near a few family members who lived in Fargo, North Dakota. He and his family later moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Geu quickly grew as a prep basketball player. He was South Dakota's Gatorade Player of the Year in 2015 and led Washington High School to a 22-3 record and the Class AA state title game.

He signed with North Dakota State and redshirted his first season before developing into a key player.

By 2018, Geu was an important player on a NDSU squad that was building towards a league championship. The Bison went on to claim the 2019 Summit Conference title and reached the NCAA Tournament. At the national tournament, Geu helped guide his team to a first round victory before eventually falling to Duke in the next round.

At UNT, Geu started every game for the C-USA champions. He averaged 7.5 points per game and 5.6 rebounds per game. His two best offensive games this past year came against two of the Mean Green's toughest opponents. He dropped 18 points versus No. 15 Utah State and on the road at Western Kentucky.

Geu plans to continue his basketball career at the professional level.

DJ DRAPER
Redshirt senior DJ Draper became a fan favorite at UNT after walking-on to the Mean Green in 2015 and working his way to becoming an every day key player for UNT.

Draper, a Bedford native, had no DI, D2, D3 or NAIA scholarship or walk-on offers coming out of high school. Through a family friend, Draper landed a spot on the Mean Green in 2015 as a freshman. On his first workout as a college basketball player, the then 5-foot-11 and 155-pound freshman passed out. Many of his teammates early on didn't even know he was on the team.

Draper would redshirt his first year at UNT and slowly get better every day.

Then following the 2017-18 season, head coach Grant McCasland offered Draper a scholarship as he had become a key piece to the Mean Green's College Basketball Invitational championship team.

This past season, Draper was one of the top 3-point shooters in the nation with a field goal percentage north of 50 percent. McCasland often referred to him as the best defender on the team as well.

He leaves UNT as one of the program's all-time best 3-point shooters with 128 career makes at a 44.3 percent clip. He graduates with a bachelor's degree in accounting and a master's degree in business administration. He has already landed a full-time position with a firm in downtown Dallas.

JJ MURRAY
Redshirt junior JJ Murray finished his second season with the Mean Green in 2019-20. A transfer in 2019 from Eastfield College, the Rowlett native has been a leader on the C-USA championship team.

A 2019 NJCAA All-American & two-time NJCAA Academic All-American, Murray is a mechanical engineer major and the president of the American Society of Engineering Management at UNT and is a member of the National Society of Black Engineers.

This past season, Murray played in eight games for UNT and scored a season-high eight points on Dec. 28 versus Texas Wesleyan. After redshirting in 2018-19, Murray still has one year of eligibility remaining and will be back on the defending champion Mean Green.

North Texas claimed the 2020 C-USA regular season title with a 87-82 overtime victory over Western Kentucky on March 1 at the Super Pit. UNT finished with a 14-4 league record. The 14 conference wins are the most in program history and the regular season championship was the program's first in 31 years. Head coach Grant McCasland was named the league's coach of the year and junior guard Javion Hamlet was the league's player of the year.

Including Murray and Hamlet, the Mean Green return nine players from this past season's championship team.

Student-athletes with a cumulative GPA of 3.75 or better will also receive the Commissioner's Academic Medal. Those recipients will be released Friday.

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DJ Draper

Deng Geu

Javion Hamlet

JJ Murray

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