Jason Burton was a home run hire for the University of North Texas women's basketball program. It was clear from the moment the Mean Green hired Burton away from Texas A&M Commerce that he was the right person to lead the team into the American Athletic Conference.

Even knowing that, it's likely that no one expected North Texas to be as good as the team has been so far this season.

The Mean Green sit at 16-3 on the season and 6-1 in conference play. The only losses have been to Texas A&M, Montana State and Charlotte in the first game of AAC play. The team's won six in a row since, including victories over SMU and South Florida.

And those two wins are notable because the teams were expected to be the cream of the crop in the conference. USF was selected to win the AAC in the preseason poll, while SMU was picked to finish fourth. UNT? 12th out of the 14 teams, ahead of only UAB and FAU.

This UNT team has been strong all season, which begs the question—is this the best UNT team ever?

How the Mean Green stack up with previous Mean Green squads

At 16-3, North Texas has won 84.2 percent of its games so far. There's still plenty of time for that number to go up or down, but if it stayed right at that level over the remainder of the season, the Mean Green would soar past their previous best mark in winning percentage, a 71.4 percent mark back in the 1998-99 season. That was one of just three times in program history that UNT has won 20 games. To hit the 20-win mark this year, the Mean Green just need to go 4-7 over the rest of the regular season. So if we're going by winning percentage, this does indeed look like UNT's best team.

Unfortunately, we don't have advanced stats that stretch back to that 98-99 season to compare to this year, but we do have some basic numbers to compare that team to this one, and the current Mean Green...

This year's team is shooting 47.1 percent from the floor, which is on track for the best mark in program history. That 98-99 team shot 40.6 percent. The team is averaging 75.1 points per game, another mark that leads all Mean Green teams ever. The defense is allowing 60.2 points per game, which wouldn't be the best mark, but it would be the fifth-best number that UNT's ever allowed.

There's still a lot of basketball to go, but the numbers are clear—if UNT continues to play like this, we're looking at the best season this program has ever had.

What the 2023-24 Mean Green have done well

After the Mean Green moved on from program legend Jalie Mitchell following last season, the team saw its best player over the past few seasons, Quincy Noble, depart for Oklahoma State. The fifth-year senior has done well with the Cowgirls, averaging 12.3 points, 1.9 assists and 1.6 steals per game in Stillwater.

Her departure introduced more uncertainty into UNT's situation. Not only was the team changing coaches, but it also had to replace its best player. Plus, the player who was best equiped to replace Noble on paper—former Lone Star Conference Player of the Year Dyani Robinson, who followed Burton from Commerce—was coming off a torn ACL. She was a huge part of Commerce making a run at the Southland title early last season in the program's first year in Division I, with the team going 5-0 in conference play before she was injured. With Robinson out, the Lions struggled the rest of the way, going 7-9 in her absence.

When Robinson transfered to UNT, it wasn't clear when she'd be back on the floor, but she put a lot of work into her recovery from the ACL tear. The Mean Green have played 18 games; Robinson has appeared in all of them and is averaging 21.6 minutes per game.

But it's been a different transfer from Commerce who has made the biggest impact for Burton and the Mean Green: DesiRay Kernal.

Last season, Kernal stepped up at TAMUC after Robinson's injury, averaging 14.6 points per game in conference play. She had multiple 20-point games durn the Southland tournament.

Kernal has been a versatile force for the Mean Green this season, scoring in a variety of ways. Per CBB Analytics, Kernal is in the 98th percentile in fast break points per ame and 92nd percentile in paint points per game, but she's also shooting 44.4 percent from three on 1.6 attempts per contest. She's adding 6.8 free throw attempts per contest as well—essentially, any way a basketball player can score, Kernal's scoring. She's done a great job making up for Noble's loss.

Meanwhile, UNT has a great group around her. Guard Jaaucklyn Moore was the prize addition last offseason for North Texas after a great 21-22 campaign at UIW, but she never found her groove in her first season in Denton. This year, she's upped her field goal percentage from 34.6 percent to 45.8 percent, with a lot of that coming down to her ability to finish at the basket. Moore's shooting 79.3 percent at the rim, a number that ranks in the 96th percentile among guards.

Tommisha Lampkin has taken the next step forward as well. The former Mansfield Summit star is shooting 71.4 percent at the rim on 6.2 attempts per game and averages 11.8 points in the paint per game. She's played well on the defensive end as well, blocking 1.2 shots per game.

As for Robinson, she isn't putting up the eye-popping numbers she did at Commerce, but she's taken a step forward since conference play's begun, averaging 11.2 points on 44.8 percent shooting. She's had to do less in Denton than she did in Commerce, which has helped her increase her efficiency. 

Can UNT win the AAC?

Alright, here's the big question: can the Mean Green keep this going and win the conference?

Probably! The AAC isn't quite as good as it's been in past seasons, though it's still been the best conference outside of the top six, with the AAC leading all mid-major conferences in net rating at +4.1, which is just slightly down from the +4.7 net rating the conference as a whole had last season. 

Since conference play's started, UNT has been the conference's top team by a pretty wide margin, though. The team has a +13.7 net rating through six conference games, the best mark in the AAC. Rice is second at +9.4. The 4.3 points per 100 possession gap from UNT down to Rice is greater than the gap from Rice to fifth-place Charlotte.

UNT's the only team with a triple-digit offensive rating in AAC play. Sure, a six-game sample size is small, but if we expand to all games against Division I teams this year, UNT still has the top net rating by a good margin—+15.6, with UAB second at +11.4. Any way you slice it, this has been the American's best team.

Looking forward, the team only plays Rice once. Of the other three teams with a net rating of +7.6 or better in conference play, UNT already played (and beat) Temple and won't face them again. They only play Tulsa once. And Charlotte, the only team to beat UNT so far in AAC play, comes to Denton for the rematch on Feb. 21. As of now, UNT is a perfect 7-0 at the Super Pit this year.

So, uhh...yeah, this Mean Green team is definitely ahead of schedule. Something could still trip them up, but a team that was picked to finish near the bottom of the American this year looks to have a great chance to actually shock the world and win it.