bincitysioux

Can someone also explain why UND couldn't bus to the Montana schools? I know it is something like a 10 hour drive to Bozeman and 12 hour to Missoula, but it is an easy one on Interstate all the way. The football team bused to Dekalb this year, which is fewer miles, but a much more broken up route and actually more driving time. Obviously not ideal, but is doable is it not?

Thanks, fixed it...........

How soon can we expect to begin conference play? Is 2012 workable or totally out of the question? I assume at the very least we will still retain the 4 games against USD, Poly, Davis, and SUU that year. Will Big Sky schools be "encouraged" to schedule the new members in 2012 (and maybe even 2011), with full competition starting in 2013. Gosh I hope it is 2012. How about the rest of the sports? How far out do they schedule? It is also worth noting that Montana St. is scheduled to play NDSU in 2013 and Montana in 2014, both games in Fargo. I wonder if Big Sky expansion will impact those games? Montana especially likes home games, and if the Big Sky does go to a 9 game conference schedule, that only gives them 2 potential OOC home games. Will they travel, or go for the home games that generate so much money for them? Someone remind me which years upcoming have 12 games schedules..............I know there is at least 1 or perhaps even two in the next 5 years. If either of those games are cancelled, I'm sure the Sioux/Bison game proponents will be out in full force. And of course, North Dakota will be blamed for damaging NDSU's schedule, just like back in '04.

I'd prefer if you didn't vote then!

Anybody care to take a stab at how the division lines are going to be drawn? For football, I'd like to see: North/East Eastern Washington Montana Montana St. Idaho St. Northern Colorado North Dakota South Dakota South/West Portland St. Weber St. Northern Arizona Sacramento St. Southern Utah Cal Poly UC Davis Weber and Idaho St. could be assigned as permanent rivals, ala Pac 10/12 with their 4 CA schools. Will there be 2 or 3 cross-division games? 2 would provide an equal number of home and away conference games each year and allow an extra non-conference game. But 3 would allow for more conference competition which could help sort out the conference champ with 9 games rather than 8. I think I'm leaning toward 3 cross-division games. Will they go to divisions for basketball and other sports? I hope so. If they do, move ISU into the South/West division. With divisional play for basketball etc., we'd have 10 divsion games, and 6 cross-division games for a total of 16, which is what the current Big Sky plays now. Travel would basically be the same for all the current members, and probably greatly reduced for ISU, Weber, SUU, and NAU. This would also allow for lots of OOC scheduling flexibility for the Pacific schools to play Big West and WCC teams, the Mountain schools to play WAC and MWC teams, and the Dakota schools to play Summit , MVC, and Horizon teams. Non divisional play in baskeball etc. would fill out the schedules nicely, but I think this is where travel would become a real burden for virtually everybody, much moreso than in any football alignment.

But I started that thread over 4 years ago! And I'm pretty proud that it reached 139 pages!

There is a poll going on over at FightingSioux.com asking if football start times should be 1:00, 4:00, or 6:00. Currently 1:00 is getting 53% of the vote. Personally, this is a shock to me. I had thought the 4:00 start times this year were pretty well received. Get over and vote if you agree with me. If not, ignore this post...........

Agree with everything you say. In the first quarter, I believe it was his first throw, he missed a wide open Hardin badly on a 3rd and long that would have moved the chains or perhaps even scored with some creative yards after the catch. At the time I thought "oh boy, this is gonna be painful". But other than that I thought he did fine, and ended up being pleasantly surprised. Agree that he will struggle alot more if and when teams take away the intermediate stuff. One thing I can't figure out about Goska's "package", as the coaching staff likes to refer to it, is why there is never any true option stuff in it. Seems with the apparent limited vertical passing threat, that could be an interesting wrinkle that could be difficult for defenses to defend with Murray or Sutton flanking him, rather than just having Goska fake the handoff and run off-tackle all game long. At any rate, the offense gained yards today, and that was good to see. Also nice to see the D measure up against a pass first offense finall. Although the most talented opponent, they like to throw the ball and didn't have much luck with that today. The attendance was so disappointing.....................There were probably 25 Lamar fans there, and not many more students. Thank you to the band for always showing up to do your thing, and participating while in the stands as the football team does their thing.

I voted no.............. And I also tend to agree with dakotadan................. I predict that this thread will end badly.

I've been frustrated with QB play over the past season and half as well, but who on the roster now do you think could do better. The staff obviously has no confidence in Goska's throwing ability..................they've said as much to the media. Nichols is 3rd string and has handed off 4 times in his career. I fear that QB play could be even more frustrating next season................. We were spoiled over that last decade with Klosterman, Bowenkamp, Manke, Freund, and yes........even Belmore.

Great effort on the road against a highly ranked opponent. This was probably the team's best performance of the season since the Northern Illinois game. Nice to see some improvement, after getting pretty much smoked against USD and SUU........

Around 4:00 I think........

Yes, I believe it is quite common. Especially when they are heading west, they can go direct to Denver or SLC, rather than from GFK, to MPS, to somewhere else.

Lennon left because he had the opportunity to become the head coach at a perennial national title contender. Yes, SIU paid more than Montana St., but part of that is because SIU is a lot higher up on the FCS food chain than MSU is. Southern Illinois offers a far brighter future than does Montana St.

I agree as well....................also have to remember that Mussman was hired on short order when we had no A.D. as well. I think Mussman was the right hire at the time given the scenario due to the timing, the transition, recruiting situation, and having no A.D. I'm not necessarily convinced that he still isn't the right guy for the job, but I think he at the very least has to chin up and make some difficult decisions regarding some of his assistants. IMO, 4 years of a regressing defense and a severe drop off in offensive productivity since Mussman turned over the play calling duties warrants a re-evaluation of his coordinators and/or their schemes. I think UND92,96 brings up a valid point about Kotelnicki...........he has experience as a coordinator, and the special teams at UND have excelled in his time here, and they were also quite good when he was running the special teamers at K-State.

I can't really see the Big Sky looking to Bakersfield unless it blows up WAC-style and loses Montana, Montana St., Sac St., and Portland St. all within a year..................

Yes, but the coach that UND did hire was hired from within, so that in theory should have its own advantages as well: the schemes stayed the same, many assistants were retained, he had a hand in recruiting alot of the players, etc. It is not like Lennon left and a new coach with drastically different ideas came in and none of the players or staff were in place to implement his new ideas. I'm not arguing one way or another, just sayin...........it is not like we were an option team with a 4-3 defense and a new guy came in and decided to switch everything to a spread offense and 3-4 defense.

And neither am I as I plan on continuing to support my favorite squad in not only football, basketball, volleyball etc, and I don't question the loyalty of most of the fans here.......................but I do think that some critism is warranted. I understand that the transition to DI is extremely difficult, but who here would have guessed that of USD, NDSU, SDSU, North Dakota, and even UNC, that North Dakota given the resources, facilities, tradition, and alumni, would have struggled during the move perhaps the most of the 5 former NCC schools that have moved to DI? I admit that really the only success that Northern Colorado has had compared to us is that they secured conference affiliation quite early in the transition, but honestly, as far as performance on the football field goes, it pains me to say that through this transiton North Dakota is much closer to Northern Colorado than it is to SDSU, NDSU, or USD. I think that given the proud and successful history of North Dakota's football program, we should at least look like we belong on the same field as schools like South Dakota and Southern Utah.........we didn't during the past two weeks.

I have never been a fan of the arrangement.................. I will say though that supposedly up until this year Kelling was calling the plays and now Mannasau is as far as I know. It seems like the team is getting more pressure on the QB, since they already have 16 sacks on the season whereas they only had 16 total in 2008 and just 15 in 2009. The problem is, the defense is giving up more yards passing and rushing than in either of the two previous seasons.

It looked to me like Sr. Paul German probably suffered a career ending knee injury.

Without the14 point swing created by that INT return, the final score could have easily been 52-14 when you consider that SUU had a 50 yard TD pass in the 2nd quarter called back for holding, and another sure 50 yard TD that was dropped by the SUU reciever who smoked by Belotti later in the game. Total domination on both sides of the ball. This year's squad is not performing nearly as well as the 2002 team did. If this keeps up for an extended period of time, I can see the type of apathy setting in that has been plaguing the men's basketball program for the last 7-8 years. Regardless of how it happens, the results on the field need to turn around.

I cannot. I've felt on paper coming into each of the last 3 seasons that with talent in the defensive backfield, namely Hawkins, Ankenbauer, and Schwenzfier, along with Watkins as well, that the secondary should be perhaps the strongest part of the defense. Yet each year I'm left surveying opponent stat sheets that indicate miles of pass offense. In 2008 and 2009 I chalked it up to a poor pass rush, but so far this season the pass rush has been a bit better, but with still the same results in the secondary.

Given what I saw last week, it is pretty difficult for me to believe that UND can hold SUU to under 500 yards of offense. I think that won't bold well. Hate to say it, but I think SUU will win......

I always feel it is embarrassing to lose to the Yotes............especially when they dominate us. This was just like the 2005 game. We were dominated in every phase of the game, but the defense was particularly poor, and really, it has been for 3 seasons now.

I don't think this game is looking nearly as tough as it did 2 weeks ago.............. Not taking anything away from NDSU's victory over them, but the Yote's gave up nearly 350 yards rushing last night. As has been the case in the Meierkort era, their defense appears to be suspect at best. My thought is that if North Dakota can get something going on the ground in the first half with Murray, then that opens up the big play threat to Hardin. I'm not all that worried about USD's running backs, or Dante Warren leading the Yote's with is arm...............the biggest problem for the defense will be to contain Warren when he is running, something we really struggled with at Northern Illinois. I like North Dakota by 3 in a nailbiter......