82SiouxGuy

I think that there are several buildings that don't count suite tickets in official capacities. It is probably because a) the suites are often sold a package deal that includes tickets to all events and b) the suites often have a variable capacity, you have a basic capacity but can get additional seats in the suite. It's easier to just list seats available as a capacity and then they can say they are over capacity even if they don't sell all of the available seats.

Tickets are sold, thanks.

Money won't be the deciding factor in whether Lucia stays or not. His contract isn't nearly as big a part of the Minnesota Athletic Department budget as Haks at UND or any of the other smaller schools. That being said, I don't see Lucia leaving this year unless he has worse health problems than has been publicly reported.

It is very possible that they could add UND some time in the future. But something could happen that would change their plans and they could go in a different direction. Or they could find other schools that also make sense. And we don't know how long it would take before they would add schools again. Assuming that the Summit will hold a place for UND is taking a risk. I'm sure you know what happens when you assume. The SBoHE and UND administration will assess the risk of waiting before they make a decision whether to wait or not on making the final nickname decision.

UND can't wait 10 years to get into an autobid conference, or even 5 years. It would be financial suicide. It would badly damage most if not all of the sports other than football and basketball. Most University Presidents, Athletic Directors and coaches don't last 10 years in their positions under normal circumstances. The financial pressures of sitting in limbo for 10 years would cause a great deal of turnover in most areas of the administration and the athletic department. No one is going to allow that to happen. As far as comparing travel between the Great West and the Summit. First, the Louisiana school will be gone before UND ever gets into the conference. Southern Utah is an outlier, but is also a potential school to leave the conference since they would love to get into the Big Sky. As it currently sits, the Summit has a row of schools basically from Fargo to Tulsa plus Southern Utah in the west and another grouping in Indiana, Illinois area with a school in Detroit. They are trying to add schools so that they can have 2 divisions. You would play more games against your division and fewer against the other division. So a lot of competition could go back to bus travel with trips to Fargo, Brookings, Vermillion and Kansas City. In the Great West there will be no bus trips once USD switches. The closest school is Chicago State, which is also going to try to get into the Summit. Then you have schools in New Jersey and Texas and Utah. The Utah school is trying desperately to get into either the Summit or the Big Sky. So far the Summit won't even return their phone calls. But the Big Sky might be willing to look at them along with Southern Utah if the Montana schools decide to move up. If Chicago State and UVU both get other conferences the Great West would be UND, a school in New Jersey and 2 schools in Texas. That sounds like a great backbone to build a conference on don't you think? If they can get some kind of assurance that the opportunity to join the Summit will be available at the end of 2010, both the SBoHE and the administration would be foolish to not let the issue play out. But if they get good information that the Summit is going to make their decisions during the next 4 months and announce those additional schools before July 1 then the SBoHE and the administration are going to have to do what is in the best interest of the school for financial reasons and for stability.

I'm happy you tried, but you really didn't provide an answer. Why do they need a different conference? Maybe because it isn't an autobid conference. Unless the requirements are changed dramatically, it can't become an autobid conference for at least 10 years (I would have to go back and look at the requirements, but I believe that under the present rules the conference would have to exist as a conference with a certain number of members staying together the whole time for 13 years before it can become an autobid). And it probably won't ever survive long enough to be an autobid conference. It is a temporary home for schools that are looking for something more long term. Plus, it has teams all over the United States. Travel costs are huge for the University. A conference such as the Summit or the Big Sky would limit travel a great deal, which would limit or at least contain some of the travel costs. I am looking for a legitimate answer to which autobid conference would be a possible fit for UND Athletics. If you haven't paid attention to the discussion earlier, we have looked it up before and gone over just about every possibility. Here are a few of the answers. First, we throw out all of the FBS conferences because none of them has shown any interest in adding a brand new Division I school. That means no Big 10, no Big 12, no WAC, no Mountain West, etc. Besides, UND would have to get a new football stadium and dramatically increase football attendance to even qualify for FBS. Second, the conference has to make some geographic sense. None of the East Coast conferences or Southern conference or something like that are going to add a single school on the Northern Plains. Travel costs are too great and there is no connection to the existing schools. So yeah, the conference needs to be at least somewhat close to the Dakotas. That eliminates the Big South, the Colonial, the Ivy League, the Mid-Eastern, the Northeast, the Patriot, the Pioneer, the Southland, the Southern and the Southwestern. What are left that are even possible? The Big Sky, the Summit, the Ohio Valley and the Missouri Valley. The Ohio Valley and the Missouri Valley are both questionable on the geographic basis alone, but they are also both considered "better" conferences than the Summit or Big Sky, at least in basketball. It is very doubtful that they would even consider adding a brand new Division I school that is all alone on the Northern Plains. UND is more than 500 miles from the closest school in either the Ohio or Missouri Valley conferences. Neither one is probably a very legitimate possibility for UND at this time. That leaves 2 possibilities, the Summit and the Big Sky. The Big Sky has already said they aren't interested in adding schools this far east. They had the opportunity to add NDSU and SDSU and said we don't want schools in the Central time zone. Again, UND is more than 500 miles from the closest school in the Big Sky. And that is if they were looking at adding schools, which isn't currently in the works and probably won't be unless the Montana schools leave to move up. The chances of getting into the Big Sky are almost nil. That leaves the Summit. They currently have 10 teams (with USD replacing Centenary as the 10th) but they are interested in adding 2 more to prepare for potential changes in the future. UND isn't the only school out there looking for a home. All of the other members of the Great West would jump at a chance to join the Summit. And there are schools looking at moving up after the moratorium that would also be interested. UND is the best fit for the Summit. It is a good fit academically. It is an adequate fit geographically, although schools on the other sides of the conference might question that. UND has a relationship and a history with several of the other schools in the Summit. But if the Summit wants to move forward now and get their plans in place, they could easily leave UND out of the plans and select other schools. That would leave UND in limbo for an undetermined length of time. And that uncertainty is what is helping drive the potential change in time lines. UND would have a very difficult time surviving as an independent, or even as a member of the Great West, for any length of time. And by that I mean another 5 or more years which is definitely possible if they don't get into the Summit during the next couple of years. The wildcard is the potential shakeup of conferences that might happen after the moratorium on change ends in a couple of years. But that uncertainty is not good for a vulnerable program like a brand new Division I UND. So I've done the homework. I don't see a lot of options. Where else do you thing UND Athletics could find a legitimate home in an autobid conference at the Division I level?

The cost of changing a name on the turf at the Alerus Center would probably be rather minor, and I believe that a replacement for that turf is already in discussion anyway because of its age. I don't know what other turf would need to be changed. Changing the name on basketball courts is again a minor cost, and probably would be done as part of regular maintenance. For instance, they have to resurface wood courts on a regular basis. I have no idea what facilities changes you are talking about other than the needed changes at the Ralph that have been discussed many times. Most of those would also be done as part of regular maintenance and remodeling. And many items would be left as is as part of the history and structure of the buildings. The only other potential facilities changes might be some signing at other buildings. You may not have noticed, but the teams get new uniforms and new gear on a regular basis. There is no additional cost to get new equipment with a different name, they don't charge less because of the Fighting Sioux name. Not really much of a long term cost there. The same with lapel pins or whatever other stuff you want to talk about. The only cost would be the unused items they currently have in stock, which they could probably sell and make a profit on before any official change takes place. There would definitely be a cost to change the name. But most of it has been well defined either through the settlement or through other discussion. Most of what you are throwing out there are costs that the University will have anyway in the next 3 to 5 years as a cost of doing business whether they change the name or not. The only cost that is going to be hard to define is the loss of alumni support. Some will happen, but no one knows how much will happen with a change or how much of that may or may not come back eventually.

I've asked this basic question on several different occasions, and no one has provided an answer. For those that think getting into the Summit is not important because UND will find another league, what other league is an option? As a matter of fact I will open up the question to anyone on the board. Please tell all of us what other league options UND will have besides the Summit in Division I for sports other than football and hockey. Bonus points to anyone that can give some odds for getting into the other leagues.

I will be out of town on Friday and returning too late for the game, so I have tickets available for sale. We have 4 seats and will sell all 4 of them if you are interested, but I have someone that will take 1 if you only need 3 tickets. The seats are at the top of Section 306. Tickets are in Grand Forks and we can arrange delivery. Asking $30 per ticket. Send me a PM if you are interested in purchasing.

I have a pair of tickets available for the Saturday night game between the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs and the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux. The tickets are at the top of Section 306. Tickets are located in Grand Forks and we can arrange delivery. First $60 takes the pair. Send me a PM if you are interested.

The Summit is still more of a sure thing than anything else on the table. Every scenario you bring up is just hypothetical, there is nothing concrete about them. The Summit is currently an autobid conference. And even if the rule changes happen that they are talking about it will be easier to form as a currently active conference than to try to start a new conference. Joining the Summit has a lot of advantages. And the geography problems of the Dakotas will remain no matter what happens with conference changes. I would be much more likely to advocate for pushing the nickname issue if we weren't already approaching the drop dead deadline. We are now less than 10 months away from the absolute deadline. We are less than 300 days away. There are a lot of things that would have to happen to keep the nickname by the deadline. It is going to take some time for those things to happen even under the best of circumstances and we are not operating under the best of circumstances. It takes time to get petitions signed, for the tribal council to debate the issue, for an election to be scheduled and held, etc. So things have to start happening soon in order for them to get done by the November 30th deadline. I don't see or hear anything about actual movement. That decreases my confidence in getting anything done (and that confidence level is already very low from watching the situation develop over the past 40 plus years). Keeping the nickname isn't the proverbial "bird in the hand". You and several others seem to believe that keeping the nickname is a sure thing if they are given enough time. First, there may not be enough time. Government runs slow and tribal government runs slower. Second, it isn't a sure thing even if they are given the rest of eternity. The odds are still against keeping the nickname even if every possible second of the deadline is used. There is no information out there, at least in any public form, that says Standing Rock will approve the nickname at any time. There are 2 huge unknowns in this situation, whether the tribes would ultimately give the proper approval by the deadline and what the conference landscape will look like in 3-5 years. If you could accurately predict either 1 you could make a much more informed decision. If you can't you have to use the information that you currently have. And logic tells you a bird in the hand (conference membership) is worth more than 2 in the bush (keeping the nickname and getting conference membership).

The simple answer to your question is "A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the the bush". There is no guarantee that a major shakeup is going to happen, even though more signs seem to point in that direction. And there is no knowing how UND would fare if such a shakeup did occur. Getting into an autobid conference as soon as possible is advantageous for the Athletic Department economically. But if there is a major shakeup it wouldn't automatically bind UND to the Summit forever. It would still be possible to move if something like your imagined version of a new WAC came to fruition.

I forgot about St. Pattie's Day. Maybe it was too much of the green beer. I stand corrected, I have had green beer as well as red beer (and probably too much of both).

I don't remember green beer, but I have had my share of red beer. Pitchers of Badger Blood at The Spud (Buck Pitchers) the weekend of Wisconsin series.

You just have to watch the World Juniors every year to see the difference between how those games are called and WCHA games. World Juniors games much more open and skill players are allowed to do their thing. Guys like Danny Kristo have room to maneuver, use their abilities and score goals. Those same players come back to the WCHA and aren't nearly as prolific. So changing the way games are called would have an immediate effect on scoring in the league. The ability to recruit more highly skilled players would be a possible additional benefit. Even in your new scenario regularly is probably the wrong word. One night is a bad sample size. I'm pretty sure that 1/3 of the teams don't score 5 or 6 goals most nights. And scoring 5 goals in a game 1 out of 5 games played is not regular to me. Unless you mean that every 5th game they are going to score 5 goals. The difference between scoring now and scoring 20 years ago is that 5 or 6 goals (your new standard) used to be pretty regular with a lot of teams scoring 6 to 8 goals on occasion, while 5 to 6 goals is now considered a pretty high goal total. Pads are just a part of the problem. The lack of scoring results from a combination of several factors. Among those factors are the defensive style being played by many teams, skill level of the defensive players, the way the games are being called by referees, butterfly style goalies, skill level and better training of goalies, the size of the pads, and probably others. You are going to have a hard time forcing teams away from the defensive style of play. You can't force teams to take less skilled defensive players or goalies. You aren't going to force goalies to play a stand up style. The easiest things to change from this list are to decrease pad size and to change the way the game is reffed. Both of these changes would benefit the teams with more skill at those positions and would increase scoring to some degree. It won't get scoring back to the level of 20 years ago, but it could increase it at least 1/2 a goal per team. The other option to increase scoring would be to make a more fundamental change to the game like increasing the size of the goal as someone suggested. None of this would probably help UND win more games this year, but it would make the fans happy by increasing scoring a little bit.

I agree with you about calling the penalties like clutching, grabbing, obstruction, etc. I also like the idea some people mentioned about smaller goalie pads. Both ideas would allow more scoring without making fundamental changes to the game.

Who are these teams that are scoring 6-7 goals regularly? According to USCHO, these are the scoring averages for the WCHA this season overall and in conference: Wisconsin 3.88 3.75 Colorado College 3.38 3.41 Duluth 3.34 3.38 St. Cloud 3.17 3.24 Denver 3.15 2.95 North Dakota 2.86 2.70 Minnesota 2.79 2.85 Minnesota State 2.68 2.45 Alaska Anchorage 2.48 2.39 Michigan Tech 2.11 2.14 That means if a team is scoring 6-7 goals regularly, they are being shut out just as regularly. Goal scoring is down significantly across the league and across college hockey during the past decade or 2. The system isn't working the way it used to and it is causing a problem with fans liking the game so they might want to work on fixing it.

There must be 2 fan buses going to St. Cloud. Here is a different thread about Al arranging a bus trip also.

You must have missed this post where I explained the streaks comment more fully and gave some examples. Of course you don't care about history except if it involves winning a national championship. But you can learn a lot from history. Even after the loss on Saturday the record over the last 10 games is 4-4-2. Isn't that what you think really matters? Wins and losses? Number of goals doesn't matter. If you lose does it matter if you get shut out? It's a loss whether you score 10 or 0. None of the other useless stats matter, right? The only thing that matters is whether you have more goals at the end of the game than the other team. As my post points out, a bad streak can happen in a bad season, a decent season or a really good season. The streak doesn't predict the final outcome of the season. This team is in a bad streak. It may pull out of it or it may not. You have to wait until the end of the season to find out how things end. That's why they play the games. Another piece of useless information for you. Cornell had a streak of 0 for 30 something going on the power play that they broke up on Saturday. I guess it happens to other teams too.

I don't know, which football team DID lose to 2 NAIA schools? My guess is that most NAIA teams did, but that probably isn't who you meant. UND lost to 1 FBS, 3 FCS and 1 NAIA school, who also happened to win the NAIA National title, so that couldn't possibly be who you meant. Did you stump yourself?

I heard that there is a fan bus to St. Cloud but I don't have any contact information. It sounded like someone other than Al Pearson is arranging this trip.

I'm with you. I think a bye week might be the best thing that could happen to this team right now. I have a feeling that we don't know about all of the guys that are banged up. They have enough talent on the team to play with the best teams in the country, they just have to find a way out of the scoring (or non-scoring) funk.

How about an example of bad streaks. I will give you 3 Fighting Sioux teams from the past 10 years. One team had a 10 game streak with a record of 4-4-2. Another had a 10 game streak with a record of 3-6-1. A third had a 10 game streak of 2-7-1. Any idea of which teams are which? I'll give you a hint, none of them is 2001-2002 which had a worst 10 game streak of 2-7-1. The worst of the 3 example years was 2002-2003. You may have heard of the coach, a guy named Dean Blais. Top scorers for the year were Brandon Bochenski, Zach Parise and David Lundbohm. It started the end of January through early March. The team went to the NCAAs and lost to Ferris State the first round. The 3-6-1 streak was 2004-2005, Hak's first year. One of the games was a loss to the World Junior team. The streak ran through January and into February. The team ended up losing in the National Championship game to our "friends" from Denver. The 4-4-2 team? That is UND's record for the last 10 games. My point? Bad streaks happen, even to good teams. They don't predict the outcome of the season.

I'm not trying to spin anything. After watching sports for many years I've come to realize that teams have streaks. Good streaks and bad streaks. Even the most talented teams can have bad streaks when they aren't playing well and when things aren't going right for them. The challenge is to try to limit the bad streaks, and extend the good streaks. UND is in one of those bad streaks right now. I just don't get that upset about going through the bad streaks or get overly excited about the good streaks because I know they will eventually end. The frustrating thing is not knowing when or knowing what position you will be in when it does end. Where you are in the standings at any point in the middle of the year really doesn't make much of a difference. It isn't worth getting upset about. The only thing that matters is where you are at the end of the year. If you are near the bottom in the middle of the year it is going to be tough to get to the top by the end of the year. But being in the middle of the pack right now isn't the worst thing in the world. I am more concerned about whether they can work their way out of this funk in time for the playoffs. Home ice in the playoffs would be great, and they still have a good chance at it. But even if they have to go on the road I think they have proven they can play with anyone and win if they find that scoring touch they had earlier in the season. There is plenty of talent on the team, they are getting scoring chances, they are playing great team defense. They just need to break out of their scoring slump and they will start winning games.

Take a pill. If you read the entire post you would see that the stat was in reference to someone claiming that UND must be in last place in power play goals in the entire NCAA. They are not even close to last in the league much less all of college hockey. A short stretch in the middle of the season does not normally define the entire season. The point is that people overreact and think the season is over. The team is having a lot of trouble scoring right now. They have scored plenty of goals at other points of this season, so they have the capability. This isn't the first time a team has had a scoring drought. It sucks that they can't score right now and are losing games. It is not a guarantee that they will continue to have problems scoring the rest of the season. This could continue and they could lose a lot more games. Or they could break out of this slump at any time and go on another tear. Or something in between could happen. No one knows what is going to happen the rest of the season. That's why they play the games. As far as the fact that the team is in 6th place in the standings right now, that is just as useless a fact. The standings in January are meaningless. What counts is where the team is at the end of the regular season and even more important is where they are in April. So give me a break with your outrage.