ND-fan

I hear there are a lot of openings for coaches with Northern Iowa, Drake, North Dakota, Idaho, Fresno and Sac State so there a lot of coaching shuffles as schools have coaches moving for better opportunities. I believe this all slows down process of getting coaches signed or committed to coming here. We may also be finding are pay levels might be problem getting people to come here. Plus there are openings for coaches at FBS is at much higher pay scales than at FCS level. We experienced this last year with offensive coordinators before you have someone signed other schools are coming in making better offer to where they are looking at those offers as well natur. Society.

Yes, there is talent on this team. Pemberton has talent and has even gotten better without coaching . Schiller can become very good point guard. Ibrahim is rough but with some work on fundamentals should have been redshirted last year but we needed some length. Piekny looks to be long and quick and has nice shot. Horne, Demers, and Volmer (if she gets healthy) can play minutes in various rolls. Couple of other freshmen to early to tell what there future. The players I have mentioned are quick enough to be effective at Division I and with proper coaching we would see the talent come through. The rest on team I don’t think should be playing division I basketball they have some skills to play at this level but not enough to succeed .This how I see it now with this team. The elite team in Summit is South Dakota State they could end up being top 25 team this year but will be hard to get to with rest of the Summit. North Dakota state and Oral Roberts will battle for number two in conference. St Thomas will round out top four. The rest of Summit will be question who has most home wins to come in fifth. Should be year of playing your players who have most talent and see if can develop beginnings of competitive team. We need to still find players with length and speed priority in next years recruiting class and again and again.

I have heard there were reasons for him being buried and it wasn’t going to change. This is to bad he has raw talent there are other things players need to do to also to get to playing role on the team.

I thought that Bernhard could turn the corner as coach and she has recruited better talent here in last two years but what I see is we get players here and if anything I see regression in their fundamental basketball as their careers move along. The program right now should be playing better basketball with the talent we have here now. Chaves needs to address this by end of the season and probably they need to move Mallory into another roll at UND. If Mallory is ever going to coach at this level she needs to be assistant with another coach learn how they develop players and teach fundamentals to their players. I have feeling she has couple of assistant coaches that could help her now but she is falling back into her style of coaching as she played basketball not trusting or wanting to change.

They are quicker than we are they great first step and their match up zone with tree quickness is taking away our size. Even Schiller is quick but Hughes is as quick and better first step. We are not hitting anything from outside and without that with there zone is taking away the inside game. Our quickness and poor shooting is what they are taking advantage of against us.

I agree that we should win by these margins but I think there are things they can do offset size. I wouldn’t be surprised we see zone defense to take away the middle or form of match up man to man. Second we need to shoot well from outside if we don’t do that the game will be not be blow out. Last year they were quicker than us and we didn’t play as team. They are smaller but they are quick as team. Still I don’t think the game will be close by end of the game and if it is we have played one poor game.

UND has two prevalent type of turn overs that are creating number of turn overs this year the one is we are getting turnovers from the guards either by traveling or making poor passes on the drive or bringing the ball up the court. This is result of either trying to go to fast or we are not as quick as our opponent. Second is guard dribbling the ball off their legs or feet again we’re trying to gain advantage over opponent. All these can be corrected either by mentally slowing down getting your body under control and if we’re not quick enough to beat them one on one then you need to beat them passing and screening working as team to get open. This cuts down on individual play and scoring something not easy to players at this level to do. The second area is our post players sliding pivot foot or changing pivot foots here I believe is harder to correct because of this after offensive rebound. The big difference here usually does not lead to points off the turnover in transition. But the turnovers by guards is area where we need to cut down this where we are getting transition where we are giving up points on turnovers. I don’t expect this team to get to low turnovers but if they could get turnovers under 15 and down to say 12 we would have chance to win games with our rebounding second chance points.

I believe if we retain what we have on the team for talent and we add three to five impact players on defense side and change from 3-4 defense to 4-2-5 defense gives us chance to becoming average to slightly above average defense. The offense will need two or three players that can make big difference plus I think we may have some sleepers that didn’t play much last year and with change in coaching could become better players. If I look at our schedule I think we should go 7-5 enough to make the playoffs and who knows where we could be at end of next year. If we get staff put together that can put better game plans together and more attention to players to be prepared against our competition. I think we went to battle last year with staff undermanned to compete against other Dakota schools and need in change in philosphy when we went on the road. I look at staff that had to do day day coaching their wasn’t people to game plan and also look at ourselves see what tendencies we were doing and possible schemes to counter this game to game. I think this why second half was such disaster we weren’t even aware how predictable we had become and this got worse when we had injuries limiting our options to be less predictable. Football has also gone the way baseball has used statistics to help give better options to be successful. I believe we are going to see where we catch up to other Dakota Schools.

I was looking at other Dakota Schools staff when Schmidt took the position it was stated they get recruiting coordinator but was there allowance for additional coaches and support staff. I was looking at what Bubba had for staff compared NDSU we had at least 5 less coaches and no quality control people for both the offense and defense. Not to mention other support staff so if we are going to compete are we also increase whole football operations to keep up with leaders in the conference. Seems to me if we are going to reach stated goals we spent ton facilities now administration is going to also need spend money on staff to utilize our new facilities to the maximum. I was surprised how the staffs at other schools have grown in past couple of years and we hadn’t progressed like them. We were just catching up in strength and conditioning which we had been behind. I wonder how much this hags been happening in other sports as well. The question is this because of our coaches not progressing fast enough or is it administration not keeping up to changes in athletics and us being behind the curve to keep at top in division I sports. If we are behind like I think we are going to need to get ready for larger budgets in the athletic department.

Could be all Missouri Valley football final if South Dakota upsets Montana State putting championship game rematch of either Jacks win over South Dakota in overtime or South Dakota win on final regular season with ending of big pass to beat the Bison. South Dakota will be by far toughest opponent Montana State will face since facing Cal Davis out in California. Montana state playing South Dakota will be toughest opponent they will have played this year and they are lucky to be playing them at home. The other conferences in FCS level is closer to the bottom of Valley and Big Sky conferences. If Valley and Big Sky merged with top teams out both conferences they would have makings of FBS conference and these schools have resources to play at that level with exception of TV contract to help fund these schools.

I. The problem again is turnovers we had 21 and it resulted in 32 points off turnovers and somebody mentioned NDSU against Drake they only had 10 turnovers and they are just as young a team as we are. It’s not just number of turnovers but it’s point differential between us and opponents. This is why we need to take care of ball because Drake had 32 points off turnovers out of 82 points for 39% of their points. I get it Mallory wants to play up tempo but you also need to play under enough control to limited number of turnovers. If we don’t get handle un this we are not going to win many games. Mathern looks like another positive to this years recruiting class she has length and has quickness to play at the D I. Peikny this year recruiting class she looks to be good recruit again has some length and again has quickness.Schiller top recruit this year also has this quickness and Volmer also has quickness to play guard. This group with Sophomores of Pemberton, Ibrahim and Horne make for good future for this team What they need isanother couple of bigger post players to help control in paint. Demers I think will get better but she needs to work on getting herself better body position when she is smaller than her opponent and experience will correct this.

This years offense was by no means the best offense UND put on the field but was adequate to still be effective offense. We started with three quarterbacks with limited playing time and favorite did not come out winner quarterback competition. Oh by way it was one with least pedigree and not one of other two 6’3” quarterbacks that is typical quarterback. Trey could chuck the ball but if probably look at his total film he had limited movement in pocket and very limited running ability so he would have limited our offense which had been case previous couple years with Tommy. Second we had red shirt freshmen with very limited play with great pedigree from Wisconsin large school for football fan natural winner to be playing right away. If he would have been ready I have know doubt he would have played. The problem is he wasn’t ready yet to play and even Tom Miller confirmed this in his watching practices. Romfo started the season he made mistakes but considering this was his first time playing was doing enough to win and if you would look as season he continued improve as season went along. The problem he had limited number offensive weapons he could go to . He had Bo but from there other receivers couldn’t stretch the field and often dropped passes or were us able toget themselves open. We did not have much option at tight end to go to either. He did create offense by his rushing but when we’re already having line stacked and not having more than one receiver to stretch the field or tight end that could catch something up the middle offense becomes predictable. I don’t know what will happen this coming year but my guess is maybe we can bring in quarterback but what happens then do they keep quarterbacks in program or do we start over for the future. I have to believe if there are big changes coming in program it’s going to be additions to the defense if we’re going to even have winning record that assumes we return majority of best players on offense. If we loose some top talent then program will be complete rebuild and have probably 2 or 3 win season. Then looking at year three before we get back above 500 this is best case scenario because of the portal. I look at teams that have tried to rebuild totally by portal hasn’t worked very well at the FCS level. I am confident coach Schmidt will be able to get us to winner but it may not be as fast as some of the people think and I will be curious how much patience here on the board before we start having doubters. the best thing I have heard in comments is revamping of recruiting system for the program I believe that will play biggest improvement to the system. It takes time and people to sell program and get players wanting to come here. This is not to mention I have to believe coach Schmidt will take advantage of our new strength and conditioning program since being apart of elite FBS programs.

Schmidt on paper to be excellent choice for coach and I am excited to see what happens with the program. The questions that remain and to be decided who will be the coordinators and how these new coaches structure the team in systems they will play under remember we probably will need the right personnel if we change systems. We have recruited class that may not fit the new structure we may want to play. It also known we need big influx of defensive players if we want to improve our defense how many scholarships and money do we have to bring in group of players. I would guess we will see some players leaving but usually its talent we don’t want to loose. This is going to be interesting big challenge for new head coach. Second will we retain any of the present staff or is this total turn over staff other than one or two carry over to have some coaching contact with the players. Everyone here thinking change the coach we’re going to be contending next year maybe a bit optimistic this is going to take two or three years to do if things go well. This new coaching staff needs to recruit and start winning recruiting battles against Dakota schools if we going to be successful. This going take effort from coaching staff, administration, donors, fans, and finally the players that are playing here or are going to play here. I am optimistic we can do this and reach our goals. But getting back to present staff, number of them will be gone but the program owes debt of gratitude to number of them for the effort and loyalty right up to the end of their tenure here. These people are quality individuals and I would like to thank them for their efforts and loyalty to the program.

How do we continue to have this amount of turnovers after this many games into the season. Is it we don’t work on pressure defense bringing the ball up and continue to make poor passes, and finally how many travels with the ball. This has to go to the head coach and her offense philosophy and what she expects in executing the offense. I come to conclusion because we have gone through at least three groups of players with same results under Mallory. I have hoped Mallory would turn corner we would start playing smart and fundamental type of game. Jordy Collin’s was hired at about same time Mallory was hired who’s program is better now very little doubt he has brought his program to second in Summit behind SDSU. I look at roster we have, and the talent we have we should be playing with NDSU not playing to four or five in the Summit. The question is do you think Mallory can turn the corner and become coach people thought she could become when she hired. I have been flipping on this question myself and knowing that this group I believe has been working on this and I see step or two ahead then we go back step or two. But my patience is wearing thin and I believe we should be one of the top schools in women’s basketball if Roebuck had been coach now he would have not put up this kind of play.

Terrible start to game and here we go again with the turnovers. Step forward and now to steps backward.