Coach Dan Spika gives instructions to Creston Whitaker and Joe Hamilton during a time out. Whitaker and Hamilton wrote their name into the North Texas State record book in single season scoring. Both men averaged 20 points per game.

Speed, power, combination bring NT into new era in MVC basketball

For coach Dan Spika and his 1968-69 Eagles there was only one direction in which to go, out of the Missouri Valley Conference shadows and into the front ranks. However prospects were not that bright. Things had picked up at NT through returning lettermen and some choice junior college transfers, but the Eagles lacked height, the one thing that most all Valley teams had in abundance.

But when the wraps were pulled off the new edition of Eagle basketball the lack of height had been countered. Speed was the word and the Eagles spoke it well. Using a devastating press, the Mean Green cagers opened a season that had seen few equals in North Texas' history.

Eagle fans, hungry for a winning season, flocked to the Men's Gym in sellout numbers. And the Eagles did not let them down. THey won their first seven games, breaking the century mark in scoring in three of them.

But then came conference play and NT dropped its first two games on the road. However, unlike past seasons, the Eagles came back to win three straight on their home court and established a pattern that was to end in only one defeat in Denton, and that one by only three points. The big quest was to win one on the road, something NT never found the combination for doing. The season ended with a 15-10 record (12-1 at home and 3-9 on the road). But that record included an 8-8 MVC tally, good for fourth place in a conference that had never allowed NT to reach higher than one step out of the Cellar.

The Eagles finished out the season by knocking off Tulsa, and keeping them out of the title share. They also established well the fact that football is not the only green that is 'mean.'

The Yucca, 1969
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