Dec. 29, 2008
UTA-North Texas Box Score 
DENTON, Tx. - While UTA's game at North Texas was not a home game, it was as close to home as the Mavericks were going to be for six weeks and they responded with an 80-75 victory over the Mean Green Monday.
The victory was UTA's first in a calendar month since winning at Houston Baptist on Nov. 29 and broke the team's five-game losing streak.
After last week's loss at Tulsa, Mavericks head coach Scott Cross preached defense to his team and after three days of practice it paid dividends as the Mavs held UNT to just 40% shooting from the field.
"UNT is a good offensive team and we did a solid job on defense tonight," said Cross. This was by far our best defensive performance of the season.
"It's hard to say you can be better after only a few days of practice but we were much better tonight," added Cross. "We did give up some transition baskets but when we got into our half court defense we locked them down."
The Mavericks began to take control of the game in the middle of the second half when they started to play a 1-2-2 zone press.
Trailing by four at 47-43, the Mavs went on 17-6 run over the span of seven minutes to take a 60-53 lead. UTA increased that lead to 11 at 70-59 with 4:07 to play and then the game got really interesting.
UNT got back into the game where they cut the lead to three at 75-72 with 45 seconds to play. The lead was five at 77-72 with 24 seconds to go when Marquez Haynes fouled Kedrick Hogans as both players went for a loose ball. Hogans suffered an eye injury on the play and UNT substituted Tristan Thompson into the game for him to shoot the free throws.
Thompson a much better free thrower shooter than the 46% Hogans, made one of two. After the second free throw missed, Josh White grabbed the loose ball and made a layup to make it a two-point game with 20 seconds to play.
Roge'r Guignard made one of two free throws after being fouled to increase the lead to three. Dominique Johnson missed a 3-pointer and Tommy Moffitt gathered the rebound and then made both free throws to seal the victory.
Moffitt finished with a career-high 17 points off the bench and a team-high seven rebounds.
"We got the stops tonight we needed," said Moffitt. "We made the plays tonight that changed the game."
Anthony Vereen led the Mavs once again in scoring with 19 and saw what they had done in practice the last few days translate to the team's play tonight. "We really focused on our defense the last few days and it showed tonight," said Vereen. "We know we can score points but we needed to be better on defense to win games, especially on the road, and we were tonight."
North Texas held a four-point advantage at the half - 40-36 - on the strength of their free throw shooting as they made 12-of-13 from the stripe.
The first half featured five ties and six lead changes with UTA's largest lead at two and UNT's at eight.
UTA returns to action this Saturday at Utah Valley (8 p.m. CT). The victory improves the Mavs record to 5-6 while North Texas drops to 8-4.
