Hans8891

We have had better fan support this year, as would be expected with a better team. We have a long way to go though. The Betty is a 3200 seat arena that is never close to full. The Betty would not even fit the people that attended NCC conference games at Hyslop. Other than Bubba rallying the football players, student support is almost non-existent. Would love to see that change as well. I was always concerned that we were undershooting our potential with the Betty. Unfortunately, that has not been a problem. I would love to get to the point where it is a completely full house again, which should not be that hard with the small venue that the Betty is…. This team is fun to watch and should be drawing more fan interest than it has….

UND had a hospitality room before the women’s semifinal game last year. It was a smaller room, but decently done. You have to remember this is a two way street. It is hard to demand a large hospitality suite if only 12 of us show up. Last year, there were a handful of faithful fans, some UND administration, and parents present. Until we show up in force in Sioux Falls, there is very little reason to have a large hospitality room. I would like nothing better than to have enough of a presence that a large scale production is required. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. SDSU has a massive room with all of the bells and whistles which is very impressive, but they own that tournament. 3/4 of the people there will be bunny fans with the Yotes taking most of the rest. USD had a nice room as well. I don’t recall seeing what NDSU did. Sioux Falls does a nice job with the tournament. However, The downside to this tournament is with the semis on Monday and Tuesday, it is a short evening drive for the SD schools and days off work for everyone else…. It is a huge advantage.

Kansas City is a team that worries me, depending upon the officials. They play brutally physical and handsy. We are a finesse team and didn’t handle that well in the blowout at home. The next game when they played NDSU they had everybody in foul trouble. Really depends whether the officials swallow their whistle at not. If they let them play, they are a handful due to their physicality as ORU is finding out right now.. ORU may not get 45 against them. Definitely do not want to slow down and get into a bruising game with them.

Bruns is a very good shooter who can get to the rack and would have fit nicely into our rotation. With our backcourt skill this year, likely would have been role player off the bench. We are not long on pure outside shooters and it would have been great to have him. We all hate when one of our good players transfer out. On the other hand, I couldn’t be happier getting Tyree back from the portal, Eli from Iowa State, and bringing Amer in. In fairness to Bruns, he got to play with his brother near his home. And he left our program when it was a dumpster fire that was hard to watch. He was one of very few bright spots that year. Sather has done a very nice job of turning it around, but what we are now is not what Bruns left…

Watched the stats during a flight and watched the replay when I got home. Tyree was awesome today. When Tyree and Eli get out in transition, they are almost impossible to contain. And they find others with open looks off that transition. We looked great. Play that style of game with pace in Sioux Falls and we have a great shot at taking it all. The pieces are there.

Great win to finish up regular season! It has been a fun ride at the Betty this year. Time to keep it rolling in Sioux Falls. We can play with anyone in the Summit. Just need to string 3 together…

Sure. I agree he was one of the defensive players who couldn’t get out on his guy on 2 of their 3s. If you think he was the only one, you are delusional. He was also the one that got tie ups and knocked the ball out on a couple of those doubles on the bigs. You won’t find those in the stats but it is what we asked our guys to do. SDSU moves the ball well and we had to address some mismatches down low. We don’t match up well with their bigs. We were cheating down by design which I will agree Brady has less speed to get back out on. But he was not the only one. What you ignore is the end of the half and the first 4 minutes of the second half when we had an 8 to 10 point turnaround and where Brady was not on the floor. Tyree, who I personally think is awesome, made a mistake. He underthrew the inbound pass which BJ couldn’t seal off. They got a steal, layup, and a foul for 3. It happens, but it was not all Brady’s fault. In the beginning of the second half, we came out flat like we did with the Bison. No ball movement and poor shot selection. Brady was not on the floor until we were down. He was on the floor when they extended their lead and failure to cover 3 s was a part of that. I will give you that. But it was also clear that our strategy was to double down on the post, which does give up an outside look. Besides personnel, it was also a part of our defensive scheme. That is the tradeoff.

Pemberton is going to be a very good player. She developed nicely this year as a true freshman. Ibrahim came along reasonably well but was forced to take a bigger role than she should have if we had better options, I continue to believe Beal has real potential if used right. She has serious athleticism both on offense and defense. Hurst has definite offensive skills but is an absolute liability on d. If she can be convinced to want to play d, she could be ok. Beal and Hurst were highly rated prospects but obviously have things to work on. After that, we need length, speed, and shooting. That is a huge issue throughout the lineup. I don’t have a problem taking a chance on Vanderwal. She is clearly needing to gain some some speed and skill but you can’t teach 6’7…. My bigger concern is the lack of improvement in players and an in a complete lack of defensive and offensive cohesiveness. Imagine just how much worse our offense would have been without Kacie, who has the skill to create and score on her own without any assistance of an offense at all - and usually doing it while double or triple teamed. That raises issues of ball distribution as well but our offense was literally whatever she or Hurst could create on their own. Our offense without her would average 20-30 points per game. That to me is a coaching issue along with the personnel deficiencies. They don’t know how to play in a defensive scheme - resulting in 100 point games for the other side. They don’t run an offense with movement which explains our abysmal shooting percentage. Personnel needs improvement but it is certainly not the only thing…..

I know it’s easy for some to continually look just at Brady. While I agree there are times I question whether he is who we should have out there as well. Then there are times when he makes hustle plays and gets hustle rebounds that are game changing. Regardless of his athleticism, there are times he brings an intangible that far far exceeds his talent level. In an offensive scheme that has damn little movement in the half court, Brady is probably our best option of off ball back door layups when he sees it open. Again, I’m not arguing with you completely but it is not that black and white. Sometimes coaches know a team plays better when someone is on the court regardless of that persons talent. The one thing you can’t argue is that Brady plays with heart. He busts his butt when he is on the floor and that is often contagious to other players. As for the SDSU game, the beginning of the end was the end of the first half when we had a lead, momentum, and the ball with 7 seconds left in the half. We threw away the ball, gave up an 3 point play, and went into the half with a 3 point lead instead of 8. We followed that with no movement for the first 4 minutes of the second half and dug ourselves into a deficit we never recovered from. Contrary to your assertion, Brady was not on the floor during that time frame. I would like to see Mara see some time as well, as I think he has a lot of potential, but the constant berating of Brady is misplaced. Sorry the game didn’t fit your narrative but we the reason we lost was inopportune turnovers, failure of pace, and faure of ball movement - not Brady Danielson…

South Dakota State is a very good team. They have good perimeter players that are all good shooters. They have strong inside game with Kyle and Appel, plus Appel shoots 40% from the 3. We did a better job containing their bigs than I thought we would. Mayo just did what Mayo does. He was good down the stretch. We looked good the first half. When they stepped up their d in the second half, we resorted to settling for 3s and no-passing possessions where we watch Tyree and BJ dribble through their legs until they drive and everyone else stands around and watches - but not with enough spacing to get a decent look at a 3. Our half court offense is god awful against good defense. We absolutely need to play with pace and take advantage of breaking pressure when it happens. Don’t stop and slow it down. Nobody stops Tyree, BJ, or Eli in an open court game. Whole lot easier to do so when Tyree and BJ are playing slow down and going one on 4. Did the same thing against the Bison. Let them dictate the game, rather than us. I was hoping we would learn after the Bison game, but apparently not there yet. The good news is that we know we can play with them. Now we just have to do what we are good at and that no passing half court offense is definitely not it.

Pemberton is the real deal. She will only get better. Schiller from Red River may be an immediate impact player next year. Ibriaham showed some real improvement. Hurst has real offensive skills but she is going to have to decide she wants to play defense. Her matador style defense will continue to put her on the bench with foul trouble, not to mention giving up way too many easy buckets. Beal is very athletic if we can figure out how to use her. She can raise havoc on defense with her length and speed. Davis is just too small and absolutely not a shooter. Aumer seems okay, but we really need to go find more length and speed, plus add a couple of good outside shooters, if we want to take the next step. Our outside shooting has been atrocious for years. On the other hand, shooting may improve if we find an offense that gets us better looks. Before we can take the next step, however, it is more than just the talent. Mal has to figure out how to get her players to play team offense and team defense. Our offense is almost entirely whatever Kacie and Hurst can create. There is no movement whatsoever. The lack of movement leads to a ridiculous number of turnovers. On Defense, nobody seems to know where to be. We don’t cut off drives and when we do help out after a defender gets beat, there is no rotation leaving wide open shooters- i.e. giving up 100 plus way too many times. Once may be a fluke. Giving up more than 100 points that many times is a systemic problem. Breaking a press has to improve. What I wouldn’t give to have Roebuck back to mentor Mallory for a few years. If Mallory is going to find success, she is going to have to figure out how to make a team a team. So far, that is just not happening.

Congrats to Kacie. Hanging 40 on your arch rival is a nice way to finish out her final series with the bison.

6 total fast break points for us and 2 for the bison. Exactly what they want to do and not the pace we should be playing at. Hats off to Richman. He got us to play their game instead of the other way around. When we see them again, get it up the floor and use our athleticism. Slow half court offense on the outside settling for 3s is not our game. Way too much dribbling going nowhere instead of movement with the ball. When we move with purpose we look like the best team in the summit. When we don’t attack and don’t play with pace, we are middle of the pack. Need to use our strengths and we will be fine.

We are making it respectable. Kacie is on fire scoring. If we could stop anyone on the drive we might make a run at this yet…. Either give up the layup - or double and leave someone wide open for an easy look. Had it down to 10 but can’t close the gap further.

Same lack of any team d whatsoever. No talk on switches and picks and someone is wide open. Hence 56 for the bison at half. On the brighter side, we have scored on the bison putting up 43 ourselves. Last game at home we didn’t break 20 until 12 seconds left in the half and had 18 turnovers at that point so this is a definite improvement for what that is worth.

Ouch. Scored 18 in the first quarter against the bison but gave up 34. At that pace, we will give up 135 for the game…

Unless both UND and ndsu knock off sdsu, we will likely see the bison in the summit semis. Need to learn from this game and not let them dictate how the game is played. Half court offense with 50 percent of shots being 3s is not in our favor.

He is when he can be a brute and nothing gets called. We don’t have the size and strength to match if they don’t call anything - and they didn’t…

Need to play through it. We are not going to get any calls. I just hope they don’t let Morgan lower his shoulder repeatedly down the stretch and call us for it.,.

And the officiating fun starts up in earnest. Only about 8 bad calls out of 9 - all one direction. Welcome to bison land. UND 61 - bison 50 plus the bison stripes add of 12 for 62

Keep attacking the rim. We have the height mismatches in the backcourt and Morgan has 3 fouls. Wheeler Thomas gives up 4 to 6 inches on our guards…

Officiating is interesting. Some touch fouls on the drive but letting everything go down low.

Need pace and penetration this half. Playing at a snails pace plays right into what they want to do. Good start to the half. Going to the rack before the d settles and 4 points as a result…

Our shooting will improve when we move the ball. Too much holding the ball on the perimeter and settling for shots rather than creating them so far.

First 13 shots for UND 9 have been 3s and only a few have been good 3s. Need to Get back to penetration and movement.