

However, he's leaning toward returning to school, spending much more time talking about the Mean Green's potential next season than the NBA. Mitchell, a first-team All-Sun Belt selection and the league's freshman of the year after averaging 15.3 points, 10.9 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game, hasn't made a decision about the draft. Realistically, the hope is that Mitchell spends one more year at North Texas. "That's ridiculous," Mitchell's mother, Angie, said in a rather serious tone. The Vote4Tony campaign, a shtick-filled push by the Mean Green marketing folks, complete with stickers worn by fans, kiddingly attempts to persuade Mitchell to stay in school for all four seasons.

However, Mitchell feels like he's found a home at North Texas, which was his fallback plan when he committed to Missouri as a high school senior at Dallas Pinkston. That journey included spending his junior year at Center of Life Academy in Florida, a charter school where he took five unaccredited classes that caused his issues with the NCAA. Mitchell was a consensus top-20 recruit after attending four high schools in three states.

It was the consensus opinion of several scouts surveyed about Mitchell, who has played only one semester of college basketball, paying his own way for a year at North Texas after he couldn't enroll at Missouri because the NCAA ruled him an academic nonqualifier. That's not just the spin of a coach who wants his most talented player to stick around at least another season. "He has the potential to be a high lottery pick in the right time." "There's no limit to how good he can be," Jones said. If Mitchell wants, he can make a one-and-done leap to the league, where he projects as a fringe first-round pick if he declares for this year's draft. It's all but certain that Mitchell, a 6-foot-8, 235-pound forward with a 41-inch vertical leap and 7-foot-4 wingspan, will become the first North Texas product to play in the NBA since the 1970s. That's because North Texas has never had a talent like freshman phenom Tony Mitchell. There's never been more buzz about North Texas basketball than now, even though this is somewhat of a rebuilding season for the 16-13 Mean Green, who open the Sun Belt tournament Sunday against Louisiana-Lafayette in Hot Springs, Ark. He inherited a program that won a total of 20 games in the previous four seasons the Mean Green have at least 20 wins in each of the last five seasons, which include a couple of NCAA tournament appearances. North Texas has made amazing progress in coach Johnny Jones' 11 seasons. Under the previous coaching regime, that would have passed as a pretty good crowd for a Mean Green basketball game. Men's College Basketball, North Texas Mean GreenĭENTON, Texas - Twenty-one NBA scouts and front office men packed the press row at the Super Pit for North Texas' home game against Sun Belt-leading Middle Tennessee.
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