UND Fan

92,96 - I really don't think we are disagreeing in our thoughts. I would agree for Augie to be a contender soon, it would make sense to bring in some transfers. I do know that it is somewhat difficult to recruit transfers into a Lutheran college - both qualifying for the school and creating interest from the recruit to go to Augie. Again, my only point was that it appeared that Augie signed 3-4 very good HS prospects! But, who knows until they hit the floor!

I continue to be confused. Why is everyone so cynical about what is going on? The Engelstad family built us a tremendous hocky arena. The profits from the arena have helped fund all UND athletic programs - including the very expensive Women's program. Now they agreed to make the payments on a bond issue that will allow the UND BB and VB programs to have room to practice as well as play some games in a first class facility. There is nothing wrong with us fans and alumni being asked to help complete the building in a similar first class manner as the hockey arena. There was no confusion about how much it would cost to complete. The REA folks agreed to build and fund the basic arena but the finishing touches were needed to be funded by BB fans and alumni. What the heck is wrong with that? There is no conspiracy or ulterior motives! Personally, I very much dislike the atmosphere of the REA for BB - I greatly prefer Hyslop. However, the place is a dump and spending a bunch of money to get it refurbished would not have been prudent. It was also difficult recruiting as recruits prefer "new and exciting" to "old with atmosphere". Botton line - UND has gotten a great facility which is now being expanded. We need to complete it properly. If not, recruits and fans will continue to feel that BB is secondary to to hockey at UND. We all know that is basically true. However, every competing coach who is recruiting a kid who is interested in playing BB at UND, tells him that BB is a second class sport at UND. Having the new BB facility not completed nicely would reinforce that. Whether you agree with that analysis or not, there is nothing wrong with those of us who live and die with UND athletics to step up and help complete this building. We can't expect everything to be handed to us!

I did not say that I thought Billeter was a great coach. I simply siad that it appeared that Augie had a pretty decent recruiting class coming in. They have signed 7 HS seniors. They signed the 6'8" Ver Douw kid from Bismarck early. Who knows how he will be - UND backed off of him after being very interested when he was a sophomore. They also signed the 6'7" Klepatz forward out of WS early. UND looked at him hard as a QB. Last week, they signed three guards - from SD, WS and IA. They averaged 18, 25 and 28 - all decent size. The Keller kid (6'7" forward) from WS was rated the 13th best senior BB player in the state. Finally, they got another 6'6" all-state forward from IA. Who knows how good of NCC players these guys will be, but they are quite impressive on paper.

It looked like Billeter and Augie had some good luck!

Well put, Corella! Let's end this silly discussion now!

I am a bit confused by the confusion!! The $7 million needed to build the facility were obtained via a bond issue. This debt will be serviced by profits from REA and the new Betty. The $7 million covers the structure itself. To "finish" it in a similar style as the Ralph, they need another $500,000. There is not an extra half million sitting around in REA's pocket to pay for this - nor should that be expected. It is great that they are earning enough to service this addition debt. I see nothing wrong with asking the community and alumni to assist in making this a first class facility. It is much easier to do so now than try to fix it up later. Obviously, if things aren't done fairly nicely, it will be very noticeable in comparison with the lavishness of the Ralph next door. I will write a check to assist.

As the Herald pointed out this AM, it appears our only signee today will be Dane Seckar-Anderson, a 6'6" forward, out of Oshkosh West. I don't think he got much scholarship $ but some was available after Winkleman didn't commit. Apparently he has some good potential but wasn't All-State or even first Team All-Conference. He is a friend of UND recruit Daniel Harkins. I haven't watched it but apparently you can get "streaming video" of a couple of Oshkosh West games by going to wisconsinhoops.com. Hopefully, we can land the very good JC recruit that visited 2-3 of weeks ago. He is still looking at a couple of schools. They were attempting to get a fairly talented a power forward, about 6'7", out of Illinois to walk-on. Don't know if that is happening or not. Of course, they can not announce walk-ons. It appears that Keonig is staying at UW-GB. We should still have the better part of two scholarships available - depending on how much $ we gave Seckar-Anderson. If anyone else has any recruiting info, let us know.

Great - thanks for the update!

If anyone has the ability to provide updates on the UND-SU games this afternoon (via webcast or whatever), they would be greatly appreciated.

UND and NDSU Athletic Department's absolutely pay for the tuition and fees for their scholarship athletes. This is the major reason why the need for athletic fund raising continues to grow each year. This isn't the case at all universities. For instance, one of the reasons that the Montana schools moved to DI many years ago was that their state legislature funds a large portion of their scholarship needs. Therefore, the state is in essence paying the University a portion of each athlete's tuition and fees. So, it isn't necessary to raise as much $ at schools whose legislature help them out. Most schools will attempt to raise as much $ but they have the luxury of spending the excess on facilities, travel expenses, recruiting a wider geographic area, guarantees to schools coming into Bozeman or Missoula, etc. With North Dakota's financial struggles, this will never happen up there.

Big doubleheader with NDSU tomorrow - what is the weather supposed to be like up there? Hopefully, we will have a good crowd there. It will be interesting to see how the webcast of the games turns out. I assume Scheving will pitch tomorrow. Any idea who the other starter will be tomorrow? We must not have much team speed. Per NCC stats, we have only stolen three bases in our 12 conference games.

I am often the one providing inside info into UND recruiting, etc. but I haven't been able to talk to anyone recently. Do any of our GF/UND posters have any info about who we may be signing this week? I know who we were after but don't know what has transpired in the last couple of weeks. Bison fans will say that this is sour grapes but regarding Winkelman, the UND coaching staff had some real concerns about his not playing hard much of the time. He would take a night off or a quarter off too often. That being said, they did want him - he has great ability! I would assume that the laziness habit could be easily broken.

Does anyone know if Coach Roebuck has brought in any potential recruits for visits this spring? I know he doesn't have much scholarship $ available but curious if anyone other than Beck will be announced next week. As others have noted, I have a concern about our lack of size/experience in the middle next year.

92,96 - You make some very good points. Times probably haven't changed that much that the items I mentioned would result in our less-than-stellar results in recent years. I do know that if we had landed 4-5 of the kids that "flipped the coin" and decided to go elsewhere, we would have won some championships. I absolutely agree that there is no excuse for our losing some of the games we have lost in the last 5-6 years. Many embarrassing losses - even in years when we had some pretty decent talent. Coaching has to take the brunt of the responsibility for these losses. Ther have been more of these type losses in the last five years than in the preview 15. A previous post stated something about an orchestrated retirement for Rich. If the decision is made that it is time for a change, it would be great if Rich wasn't "fired". However, I don't think they could call it a retirement as I would doubt that Rich is in the financial position to retire anytime soon. The best case scenario is that we get back where we used to be: always in the running for the NCC title and often winning it, not losing games we shouldn't lose and getting to the NCAA playoffs on a consistent basis. Time will tell. I will give my thoughts on recruiting and next year's team on the recruiting site within the next few days.

My take on the 2003-2004 season and on the Glas situation: The Season I think that Rich and his staff did an excellent job of coaching this team to a 14-14 record considering the early season injuries. As we all know, we let several games slip away and could have easily won 18-20 games - which would have been amazing based upon the talent level of the team. The primary problem with our losing games in the late going was that we only had one guard on the team who was recruited - that was Johnson and, unfortunately, he has not proven to be the leader who can take control of a game when it comes to crunch time. All the rest of the guards were walk-ons and performed like walk-ons for the most part. Not taking anything away from Jahner. He played pretty well but you are not going to win a NCC title with him at the point. Austin was recruited but he certainly didn't contribute much this season due to many personal problems. I am not sure whether he will be much better next year. Hopefully, he can get his life together. That was the good news - a respectable record under the circumstances. For those who question Rich's coaching ability, he did a pretty good job this season. You certainly could question why, with 10 scholarships, he didn't have more players on the squad who were capable of contributing. We do have to remember that it is very difficult to recruit kids to UND - mostly because of three reasons: 1) Distance from their homes (there are not many DII quality kids in ND or NW MN). Many kids (and their parents) who do not go DI, want to be fairly close to home so family and girl friends can watch them play. Most every recruit we go after out of state lives closer to any of the other NCC schools than Grand Forks. For talented kids, many of whom have turned out to be NCC all-conference performers, their college choice has gotten down to UND and another school. Often, the deciding factor is location. 2) Recruiting costs. Because of GF's remoteness as opposed to all other NCC and DII schools, it is expensive to bring kids in for visits - not many can drive. If you look at the rosters of the other NCC teams, you will see that many of their recruits lived within a couple of hundred miles of the school. More times than not over the last 15 years, the recruiting fund has been depleted prior to filling our needs. 3) Weather. There is no question that GF's weather is a factor. It is cold and the winter is long. Be assured that our competition is reminding kids of this. I was born and raised in ND and am proud to be from there but I currently live in Florida. I cannot imagine moving back to ND because of the weather. The same goes for recruits who have options to go to a variety of schools. A lot has been said about whether it is best for UND to recruit talented freshmen or JC players/transfers. I can assure you that the UND coaching staff would prefer to primarily recruit talented HS players along with a very good JC player each year. But it is not that simple, we have to get the best players who are willing to come to UND and in recent years, it has been difficult to recruit freshmen. Obviously, we have had success with many HS players but believe me, we would have won some NCC titles had we been able to land a few of the HS recruits flipped a coin and decided to go elsewhere. We have also been the top DII choice for many players who decided to go DI. Had we landed a few of them, things would have been different. From both a recruiting and injury standpoint, we have not had much luck recently. However, I do buy into the theory to some degree that you make your own luck. The new facility should help a great deal deal with recruiting although the home-court advantage we have had at Hyslop on't be there in The Ralph. Hopefully, that kind of atmosphere can be established at The Betty. The new digs can do a great deal to offset our location and the weather but recruiting will always be a challenge due to the reasons noted above. I feel the current staff has done a pretty good job under the circumstances in recent years. However, I also feel that after a few years at the same school, a change is often necessary. That was the case with Gino and Gunther. Both were great coaches and great people but the change was needed. It will be interesting how next year plays out. I agree that if we have another mediocre year, there will be alot of pressure for a change.

I am curious what happened with the discussions between UND and Indiana-PA. Both have open dates on September 18th. They were talking but apparently they couldn't work out a deal.

I agree that Parise would be in the top three with Bob Joyce and Troy Murray not too far behind.

It is quite likely that Zach will become the best NHL player to have come out of UND. Plus, he may have had the most "tools" of anyone who has played for us. However, I think Hrkac and James Patrick were better as collegiate players. Had Parise stayed another year or two, I am sure he would have been the best ever to wear the Green and White.

Great win yesterday over the Gophers! All of us mourning Sioux fans will be pulling for you in Boston!

Never mind.........

Siouxbear1 - how did you get your reservations at the Sonesta? Directly through the hotel or a service?

If we were unable to get into the hotel where the team is playing, do you have any suggestions regarding hotels near the Fleet Center? Not crazy about paying $300/night but I assume they will all be quite expensive!

Not a problem. While I agree with you, this game could have easily been 7or 8 to nothing. We missed some opportunities and their goalie played very well. We will be OK - we'll play better against a better team!

I appreciate your "insightful" response!!

I realize I am getting ahead of myself but does anyone know where the team and fans will be staying if we make it to Boston.