ND-fan

The firing of Todd Lee at South Dakota there are some references to Bruns in their forums there may have been may have been some questionable recruiting for Bruns. This may be just talk but i did see where we had both offers to Bruns younger brother also. Now we have McGrath transferring a redshirt freshman after consuming scholarship for us this past year and saving his eligibility to develop him and get him ready when we were playing short handed most second half of the year needing additional front court help doesn't make much since. This is just getting messier and messier as it goes along here with this whole program. The worst is silence from UND and even our local media there are hardly any coverage on what's happening or explanations for why we are loosing some our best recruits year in and year out. Does anybody know what going on it always seems there's group around Grand Forks that knows what going on but rest of us left to guessing and just accept what's happening when they choose communicate to world if ever. I just don't see how they are going to build a fan following without getting the fans involved in the program.

Since somebody brought it up tournament for Big Sky moving to Reno with small crowds made it also poor crowd and not very big experience but the Big Sky was such spread out conference it was going to be difficult for the fan bases to travel that far even for Reno. Second thing it was always durning the Spring Break for colleges and students were not going to travel to Reno they were looking for some place warm. I liked it before when women won Big Sky and they hosted the tournament on their home floor. I liked this because it gave real incentive to win the conference and you got big reward in doing so by hosting. This also gave big advantage to winner of the conference which i felt was deserved for playing whole season. Second the conference tournament was well attended and i guess this could be foiled if conference champ lost early in the tournament but I don't remember that happening when we were doing that in the conference. I believed this was fair because every conference member had equal chance in having advantage for the conference tournament by winning regular season in the conference. The way it is now these two schools its built into for them even if they have below average season they are still going to draw large fan following but for other schools to get equality has to beat them in the early rounds to meet one of the other seven schools. I see its nice show case midmajor tournament with big fan draw but i still have problem in that sets up disparity in conference between the schools for the conference. I am sure there are other points of view and good reasons for present structure but this is how i see it now and i don't like it.

I have something i think needs to be talked about that is Summit conference tournament and basically is it fair to other 8 schools that game is basically played on South Dakota home quart for both the South Dakota schools. Yes, the crowd draw is tremendous and i am sure it provides additional monies back to majority of conference members. The negative is this promotes the two South Dakota Schools basketball programs in that they have large advantage in recruiting talent. I am sure they show how they get to play in front of large crowds of their fans to prospective recruits. These advantages have help build these programs to where they are far way deeper in talent than most of the other schools in the conference. The above advantages that come to South Dakota schools makes it very difficult for other schools in conference to build their programs and compete to get to NCAA tournament. This does not mean it can't be achieved but it makes it hard to build a program that has year in year out success with the advantage these schools have. I also got to believe it's why we hear how number of the schools in conference are looking to other conferences to compete in. Even our newest conference member there're rumors they are only going to use Summit as stepping stone to get to a desired conference for them. I just got done watching tournament on both sides of tournament for men and women the South Dakota schools were basically playing at home . This playing at home usually has always meant about 10 point advantage which may not be that big advantage but is definitely 5 points for sure. Then look at men's final where it was 2 point win for SDSU which factors in who wins the tournament. Even College hockey have not let us have home court advantage in Regionals making it more difficult for us to have regional close to us instead they have moved regional around to different locations. This has been even at cost of reduced revenues to NCAA hockey tournament returns. This i think this has to be considered for Summit Conference too because their other venues around conference to show case and build region wide following of fans and schools in this conference. Look Denver has venues, so does the Twin Cities, Kansas City, and Tulsa to host a conference tournament. This does not mention even Fargo and Us have facilities that could host conference tournament. I would appreciate other opinions on this but I watched the tournament when over 85% of seats were either dressed in Blue or Red for the games I find this not appealing format. Then you add in media color definitely shaded to these schools up until the championship game it makes me bristle. I got to believe new commissioner for the Summit has work cut out for him on conference tournament and getting schools on same media platform for the conference and then retaining member schools in the future and all this is tied together.

I was looking forward to next year building on development of players we had this year and now we starting all over again with the loss of Bruns. We can't build any type of winning program if we continue to loose freshman of the year players in conference to transferring. I thought Sather just had bad luck last year in the transfers we had last year but now i have my doubts something is very wrong here. The first possibility is the coach, or all the coaches, second is the school and community, and third is general atmosphere around the whole UND program which i include administration, support staff, and how the team is treated compared to other division I schools. The latter could be amount spent on the program on conditions of traveling like what type of traveling , places where they stay, and what they do when they are traveling. The final thing could be just how they perceive which direction the program is going. I thought Sather had time to turn this program around but if you keep loosing the core of the team each year this is not possible. Chaves has some work ahead of him he needs to do some research to see what are reasons were having this constant turn over of players. This may mean contacting last years players again to see if he can find the reason for number of transfers we had. Then he will need to address these problems and make needed changes to reduce why players are leaving our programs. I hope this can be achieved by not having major changes in staff but we can not turn this program around until we can keep our recruits on this team. If we loose anymore players we pretty much guaranteeing ourself another year in basement of the Summit. Now looking at this team for the coming year i will find it hard for us keep Nero and major reason he will stay is he ended season still hurt and will be hard for him to find another team take risk on him wondering about his health. That leaves us with Norman, T, Mathews, and Grant all players still developing and big question how they will develop but far from being ready to be full time starters and more likely being players that could fill rolls on team being lead by starting group of players. Sather is going need to find now couple of transfers that can start and make big impact right away. Even with this move we would still likely be in bottom third of the conference for next year.

The year is over and has been improvement over last year but it showed we have long ways to go if were going to compete for conference championship. We have had pleasurer of Leet this year and will be missed next year. We have nobody ready to take on her role for next year beyond Vanderwal who was redshirted this year. This means to me she has ways to go before she will be level of Leet and be major factor to be counted upon. Second we do not have a lot size either on the team or coming in this next year. The two four star recruits are both listed as 6 feet or less and two other recruits are guards. This leaves us with girls over 6 feet tall with Lane, Vanderwal, Van Loo, and McCarthy. This coming year we have good nucleus coming back but we will need this years freshman to step up or new recruits to provide additional talent to bring us up to next level in Summits conference. SDSU will be chosen preconference pick for next year to win the conference, South Dakota will not be the team they are this year but will have number high level talent returning, Denver will be returning number of top players, NDSU will be returning number of players, ORU has couple top players returning, and so does WI if they all choose to return with there extra year eligibility. We will need to improve on defense and on offense we will need to have improvement from other girls to free Borowicz up offensively. We saw that today they really concentrated on her for the whole game and we continued to look for other players to step and lead the team but had no consistency on other players to create and score points. This has been problem all year and when we get this its very difficult to beat this team. I believe we should be able to compete for second place in the conference next year. My hope and dream we develop to level where we can compete with SDSU by end of next season and go play in the NCAA tournament which maybe a dream but if players develop like there expected level of play is projected this might be possibility. One thing i am looking forward to next year see how this team develops and performs. Ps I want to thank all players and coaches on this team for this past year for fine year we have had to watch them play and get better as the season went along. I do appreciate them and recognize hard work and effort they have put forth this year.

The team looks tired and they are not playing well together right now we have gotten away from what was bringing success in that seven game streak. I don't know if what other teams are doing defensively or we have gotten away from inside outside game that was so effective before. What i have noticed lately we have been bringing Leet or Lane to outside to clear out the middle to let Kacie drive and shoot but problem with that is were getting no rebounding or second chances out of this offense. This also brings a bigger defender to perimeter which hurts Manson getting good looks for a three. I Liked it better when we had two bigs down low screening for each other and being able to get position to get layup or good hook shot and if not usually kacie or manson had good chance at outside shot. The second thing this team the girls that are starting have never played this many games previously and played as high minutes as they have this year. I have said it before we needed to be playing more girls and still do to help keep them fresh. Saturday games is prime example four starter played 32 plus minutes for the game and Leet and Danninger split basically playing time each with 22 and 21 minutes. Then rest of minutes went to Davis with 15 minutes and Hoskins with 3 minutes. I know at this time teams are riding with their starters more minutes but i believe we have been doing this for sometime and i think its showing. I have been looking at other teams in the conference we on average have been playing our starters more minutes per game and there have been reasons because we have been in closer games but this something i think UND needs to look at in the future. I too fear that this team could loose the opening round game with way we are playing now. If you asked me three weeks ago i would thought we had good chance winning opening round game and put good showing in semifinal round of the tournament. I guess we will see what happen's at the tournament but sure is improvement over not making the tournament like last year and should help in the recruiting process with improvement in this team.

This team we had on floor was not the team they expected on the floor at the end of the year. First off we have had two starters hurt for most of year in Suecker and Nero with Nero playing limited minutes hurt just ghost of player he can be. Second T did not play up to his potential which he showed at times durning the season but here again we were asking player from Jucco college to come up and carry the load for the front line. Third we had 3 players on this team that were redshirting this year and i believe they were counting on Levias to play this year and i have no idea what type of player he can be because haven't seen him play. The talk was he would have provided point guard that could create and make his own shot or then could dish off to open player. The positive for the season is our three freshman who because of this season got lots of experience playing and developing. Bruns looks like they found diamond in rough and he was getting better as the season went along and this was for kid that was not highly recruited. Mathews and Grant both developed as the season went along look like they can play very important roles in the future on this team. The recruits they have committed for next year look to fill in their needs and look like they can contribute right away for the team next year. I don't think Sather will be on the hot seat next year and would only be on the hot seat in following year if there were so signs of improvement in this team then. I believe administration looks at next year as the second year in Sather rebuilding the program and last two years are part of covid years where nothing has been normal in athletics. There are still big questions in player personal for next year to be decided either by Sather or by the players. This is not to mention if we get some transfers again.

I would agree points differential probably gives extra minutes of playing time for these girls. So i went through there box scores of games that were decided with 10 points or less for SDSU for the most part all four of these girls played in these games even when it was close. Now for the conference season there has been only one close game for them and that was South Dakota then it was Myer and Timmer who played. My point is coach Johnson is considered one of the best coaches in Summit in Women's basketball and I am pointing out one things i have noticed he does in his program. There are number of other things to be considered with my point is talent of Freshman he has recruited compared to ours etc. We will see next year like somebody said how things change with next year recruits and the improvement in the team.

I agree he has two years for sure and if he is showing improvement in 2nd year he will get a third year. This is Chaves hire and he already on record he feel's this year is like women experienced last year with covid and injuries. All the other points are valid on loosing Rebraca and other players and we may never know all the reasons for the player losses but for sure it has not been positive for them in their transfers. Today's game i don't think they played as hard as they have played for the most of the year. I think the way the game went and they were down by 11 at half time and then went down by more than 20 second half it was like season was over. They came back with Grant and Norman but Bruns and Danielson could never get it going and without them contributing it was to high mountain. The worst part is i think we lost Panoam for the final game which will leave us with 7 healthy players and Nero who is dressing and playing still quite hurt. I hope we keep the game close Saturday but i have my doubts on that front. I don't think we missed mutch not going to Sioux Falls because we wouldn't have snow ball chance in July of beating SDSU. I don't think we will see quick turn around next year in the program because we will be primarily made up Freshman and Sophomores look around the league the top teams all pretty well experienced teams and its hard to win with young team. My hope would be could reach 5 in the conference seating in the tournament next year.

Mosiouxfan i can agree somewhat with that rational but i just went through SDSU stats on their team They have four Freshman on the team lead by outstanding Myer who has played in all games with 25 minute average, Timmer who has played in all but one game and has 18 minute average, Vlastuin who has played in 24 games and 9..8 minute average, and then there last freshman Byom who has played in 22 games and 6 minutes a game. I found this impressive that these freshman had gotten that much playing time. Now i look at UND freshman this year Anderson who leads freshman class has played in 17 games and 11.2 minutes per game, McCarthy who has played in 16 games and averages 4.3 minutes per game, Sieben who has played in 11 games and 2.8 minutes a game, E. Land who has played in 10 games and 2.3 minutes per game. This quite difference between the freshman classes and i believe will be advantage for next year. Yes i do know that Myer and Timmer are exceptional athletes. But even there least played freshman for SDSU has more minutes played than McCarthy, Sieben, and E. Lane combine in playing time for this year. The point i am trying to make practice does develop players but there is more to learning basketball than practicing and it is just playing time in real game conditions. The next point is we have four talented players coming in next year by all accounts i am hoping by next year at this time they are becoming major contributors to the team. If we are going to reach next level we will need to develop these players quickly to go along with our proven talent developed. I have even heard Mallory say on radio she has tendency to play players to many minutes durning games and it does have effect longterm on their level of play. Finally i am not picking on Berhard because i think she like this team are better than last year and i know she is learning becoming a better coach like playing nothing like experience makes you better especially if keep you keep studying and learning from what your counter parts are doing.

I wonder if it isn't size of the community and things that are available to them in larger schools and communities. I had cousin that was looking at coming to UND and her parents are former students and alumni was impressed with the school but didn't like shopping and things that were not available to her here in Grand Forks. I have to admit that town has taken quite hit with brick and motar businesses in last 5 to 10 years like number of smaller cities have in the US. I may be wrong on this but this is what our family has experienced in the last year and she choose to go to Colorado because of this. She said the weather she could handle but not having things she was accustomed too in shopping, entertainment, and dining was factor in her choice.

This does not look good for us its going to take a miracle if we make Sioux Falls this year. Even with win next tuesday probably not enough to get there. Ohama also still has game with ST. Thomas. Then we will need to beat the Bison for final game of the season and they will be fighting to hold onto there second place standing.

The big difference tonight is in stats we were out rebounded by 12 rebounds which we usually control by 10 boards. Second they had 29 more bench points than us even if you switch Moore back to starter we were out scored by 10 points by there bench. Again we looked like tired team and they play without any energy. We may have peaked for the season and i hope not but we sure have taken step backwards last two weeks.

They look like tired team and Bernhard continues to play same players. Leet looks like she walking most of time and she has shown to coaches she tired. Lane looks tired. Then there Orth she doesn't even look herself out there wonder whats going on there. They may of hit wall with all the minutes they have played in last month. They are going to have to get it together next week but i kind of think they have settled to have 5 th place and they are not putting forth the effort. Bernhard needs to get over only playing experienced players she did this last year too. You got to have little faith in younger players and sure they are going to make a few mistakes but look at what extra they can bring and need to keep your team fresh through out the season.

If they thought this was level of needing to suspend they should have put in full game suspensions because only having half game suspension doesn't have much hurt put on these teams. Most teams can work around half of game suspension and they still have full sqad when it comes to end of the game. The coaches being fined is okay but if want to send message it should have been players full game suspension, coaches full game suspension, and then added a fine also for the coaches. Even if this would have outcomes for teams in league conference standings it would have sent message this behavior has consequences and is not tolerated.

I thought last night the game got away from us and i don't know why it did but it did. I think our women put too much pressure on themselves and everyone was trying to do too much. This has been building for some time with Leet with calls she hasn't like on defense and i hope this has gotten it out of her system. I have noticed the referee calls and way the games have been called are different when we get to WSI and KC both in women's and men's game lately i don't know but i guess it from different set of referees that are being used. The bottom line is we got to adapt figure how to play with the calls. The other thing why have Mccarthy and Anderson not seen a little more playing time in the conference schedule. Mccarthy showed last night she can play spot roll to help keep our front line people rested and giving us more depth on the front line. This i what i have noticed about SDSU they do play their talented freshman more than we do getting them experience and getting to know what they need to work on to gain playing time. This also cuts down fatigue and injuries to our starters durning long season. I was encouraged by Mccarthy play last night and future for us now this season and next season. I hope with our new recruits coming in they don't have sit on bench a year before we will consider playing them because if were going to make a run next year were going need to our present core of players to make run at conference championship.

How come UND is using Bally sports for the basketball games? I thought we had agreement with Midco sports. This is especially frustrating in that Bally isn't on espn+ and now if i want to watch the game i have pay for another service to watch the game and last time i did this for women's game the feed was terrible for me with pausing frequently durning the game. This is extremely frustrating why can't the Summit get its act together like the Big Sky has and have all their teams on one platform to watch the games. I can't be only one frustrated with this and to me it means poor management of this conference letting everyone go their separate directions how do promote and get people to follow your conference when you either see some of the games or spend a fortune to access these games.

I am not totally sure on this so i may not be totally accurate but the present team roster sits at sixteen players and i believe they have 14 scholarship players with one free scholarship left open. Erica Lane and Carlee Sieben are walk-on players so they don't take up roster scholarship positions. We had four seniors on the squad this year in Leet, Wallace, Orth, and Danniger all scholarship players. These scholarship players are scholarships they offered to the four new recruits coming in. Now if Orth and Danniger as it stands return now we would have one scholarship available for one of them and for other would have to be walk-on. We also don't know who is all returning for next year so there might be other changes also coming on scholarships but this won't be known till after the season. I have been looking and i found no rule on how many can be on the roster as walk-ons but there may be limit like there is on men's side in basketball. If i am wrong on this i will gladly be corrected but looking at information i have found this what i think is correct.

Brady fouling out hurt on those last free throws shot and missed we needed his rebouding ability and his maturity on the floor. I thought he got hosed on number of those fouls today how are you going defend when big just shoulder buts you all the way to basket. That is why they put semi circle to protect bigs down low but if your not going to call it like that they didn't need to put in semi circle. I watched WSI other night with SU and same thing looked like football game and to me that is not basketball. I thought this was poorly called game big could cross block somebody but alot of calls on the shot players had ball and hand which is part of the ball. The loss Howard slot not being on the team has hurt when we are redshirting 3 players and have Sueker who was one of our three big, hurt has limited us. I think alot of you forget that this still very young team on floor especially today at the end we had Bruns Freshman, T and Norman Sophomores from JUCCo, Panoam and Igbangu seniors but only been playing about year mostly sitting on the bench prior 3 years and WSI was mostly senior lead team. Even with all things happen today we were basically one play from winning this game either controlling rebound or hitting the last shot and should i also say just hitting our normal percentage of free throws would have won the game. Were 2 /12 team in conference but nobody has embarrassed on the floor much and i still think were getting better but problem is we need to win couple of more games if we want to make the tournament.

It may not be logical but having Senior day or in high school parents night i have seen where teams get upset so often. Second WSI would have been hard to beat today with the way they shot the basketball and some of it was defense but alot was not. There team percentage for year is 34% and to shoot nearly 50% is quite a bit over average and on top of that they made 7 more three's than their average. They also had 3 point shots from seven players and 6 had two or more 3 point shots so this was not couple of players but whole team shooting above average from 3 point land. Then you add in we did not have exceptional day of shooting and we missed alot of close shots or layups today. The third thing Orth having poor day but with her under the weather with flu they reported and we don't know how many others may have been effected to with this and sure effected her shooting and time on the floor and not having her scoring was difference in the game.. Also the officiating today sure wasn't consistent and they made couple of calls i haven't seen called all season like the 5 second call on Lane . The officiating didn't help but it wasn't why we lost but it played into how the game was played. It was bad loss but they need put it past them and have now good road trip next week. WSI is streaky team and we happened to catch them where they put streak together for whole game.

Yes, this is big game and always difficult on senior day to get win. We will need to play very good defense today and post players need to stay out foul trouble. This is not team to take lightly because if they get on roll they can bury you with their outside shooting. I hope to get a win today and then hope that KC gets beat ORU putting us in tie to set up big next week with above two teams. But first we need to get win today.

I get such a kick out of so many fans here on the board can't let getting jab in on Jones. I don't know all the reasons but some of it has to do with style of basketball he wanted to play and second is Jones recruited some high end talent but in doing so the offense alot of time was centered around that talent even when it was not most smart basketball but it was price to pay for having stars on your team. This made games frustrating at times because watching this talent you thought they should be better than they were. Now Sather promotes more of team concept to getting production but level of talent is not there that Jones had but Sather gets them to play hard and fan gets involved with them hoping they will win. The thing i would like to know why some alumni had such hatred for Jones was it because he was not part of club or did he have way offending them. I just find it all very interesting and it may be something else but Jones for being gone for 3 years still brings out daggers with many on this board. He was hired here at division II era and team had fallen from conference power to be just average and then he had to take through division I transfer and our closest sisters schools would not schedule them. Even then we came out of that where he was winning Great West conference and getting to play some post season basketball. Then we went to Big Sky where after being there 3 years he was conference champ and made NCAA appearance. Then we had beginning of transfer rules changes where we lost a key player setting us back to winning another conference championship. He then finally had challenge of switching conferences and again building team that could compete in the Summit. Along with this i do believe he had poor last year recruitment class and i wonder if this was reason he looked to move or that he saw he wasn't putting in effort he had in past because of family commitments we will never know on this. Also not to mention he did this being one lowest paid coaches in division i and probably with with his assistants to help him. I believe he had about same pay structure when he left as assistant. The program wasn't totally broken because Sather was able to go to conference championship following year and Sather first year recruits were not outstanding with talent either. I think Sather is going to be very good coach once he is able to recruit and retain some of his talent. I just think that UND has over my lifetime had some very good coaches and I even think that of Jones and Sather.

I think he is doing hockey on national outlet as well as his midco announcing.

I believe as it stands now they have fourteen scholarships filled now for next year and that's assuming that Sieben, Erica Lane remain walk on for next year. I also thought we had some offers to other recruits but i assume that can change if need be. If any of seniors do want to continue it would be as walk on with exception of this remaining scholarship. I would like to see both Orth and Daninger comeback this would give time for the new recruits establish themselves next year and give us added depth and experience. We have a such a gap with the sophomore class where we only have Dj Davis in sophomore class but i assume they are going to try to retain some of the junior class in 2023-2024 year then we would have balanced out the years again with 4 in class each year. They will have alot to consider in next year on roster formations.

I have been thinking how with NCAA giving extra year of eligibility for all players has changed make up the summit conference for women's basketball. I look at the two powers of the conference South Dakota and SDSU there teams would be different for sure and there records i think would be quite different. The first is Coyotes they would have lost the big three and the team would have been quite different loosing all that talent and experience. My guess would be they would still be good team but much like alot of teams in the Summit and there record would not be what is now. Second the Jacks would still be power this year but not quite as deep as they are now. The early going would have been difficult for them without Irwen filling and giving depth for a injured Selland. This alone would have changed their record for the season and early part of the Summit conference. The second part to the equation would be that core to this deep Jackrabbit team would be graduating this spring not looking at another year with total group. Then we come to next three in conference KC, UND, ORU, and NDSU these teams decided either bring back a fifth year player or bring in 5 year player to give them needed player where they were lacking depth mostly they looked for this in the post position. They may have done that with transfer or jucco player but these players have made impacts. But getting back to extra players because of eligibility the conference play i believe has been stronger this year but has made it possible for the South Dakota keep their dominance over the rest of the conference. The question then comes how does this effect the conference going forward and how do team manage their roster going forward. I think for the other eight in the conference what they have done will have little effect because adding one player for a year seems to me can be overcome and have little effect going out future year. The Coyotes on other hand is going to put a gap in their roster at some point unless they choose to go transfer route or Jucco route to fill gaps in their squad or they will be playing younger squad in the future. Jacks look to have managed to keep fairly balanced rotation even keeping these players on and this has been done by using redshirt season. This you have to credit Johnson by keeping players even when they have been redshirted and not transferring while waiting chance to play especially at midmajor. I think the next couple of seasons are going to be fun to watch and experience because i think were not going to see the gap there has been between the top two and rest of the conference. I also believe if our recruits live up to their potential and rest girls continue develop as planned UND should have good opportunity to be playing in the post season in next few years.