RD17

Since I have to do all of the research anyway, I thought I'd give UND fans a weekly rundown of how I see things in the region that specifically effect the Sioux. There isn't enough room in my column (and it really wouldn't be appropriate considering that there are 35 other teams in the region for me to cover) but I can go into some more detail here. -The last time I was this encouraged by a loss was in 2001 (the OT loss at home to UNO). Why? Because I thought if UND was going to lose to SCSU, the game would play out much differently (i.e., Matt Birkel would have a huge game and UND wouldn't be able to run the football). UND rushed for 175 yards to SCSU's 119 and was just a play or two away from winning the game. UND won the battle at the line of scrimmage for the most part and despite all of the mistakes, that is very encouraging. I know it's a long ways off and not worth even thinking about at this point, but as a point of reference- if UND could get Bowenkamp back healthy and played SCSU again in the postseason (either home or away, wouldn't matter), I think the Sioux would win by 10 points. -The biggest positive thing that happened in the region for UND is the fact that Western Washington lost. WWU had been 3-1 and with no games remaining on their schedule against teams with winning records, they were a real threat to run the table and "steal" a playoff spot. They now have two losses (one to a bad team) and it would take a miracle (i.e., most of the other top teams in the region finishing with at least 3 losses) for them to get in. -I can almost guarantee that the GLIAC and NCC will share 5 of the 6 playoff spots. If UND can win the rest of its games, the chances are still very good that the Sioux capture one of the top two seeds in the region. Even with one more loss and an 8-2 record, I still think UND will get into the postseason without much trouble. -I don't think I need to tell anyone what a big game this is with Ferris State. This is the way I'm looking at it- if UND can survive one more week without Bowenkamp and win this game, the next two (Duluth and Mankato) are games the Sioux can win with Ross Brennan under center. A win against Ferris would effectively buy three more weeks time to get John healthy and get him back in the lineup for tough games with UNO and USD and a push toward the playoffs. -A breakdown on Ferris State: 1) Very talented defense- possibly the best UND will face all season long. Linebacker Kevin Myers and defensive tackle Whitney Bell are both All-American caliber players and the rest of the defense is fast and senior dominated. It's going to be tough to move the ball consistently on these guys. I do think though, that UND has the best offensive line Ferris has seen to this point and the Sioux will be able to run the football on them. 2) Inconsistent offense- the running back had a huge game last week, but there have been games against the better defenses they have faced where FSU has done nothing on the ground. I honestly don't think UND will have much trouble slowing down their run game. They have one real talented receiver and have been more productive since switching quarterbacks a few weeks ago, but the Bulldogs don't have an explosive offense by any means (23.3 points per game). 3) Without Bowenkamp, I think this will be a pretty tight, low scoring game. But UND should have a big advantage in special teams play and I think Roland will go for about 135 yards. The defense will shut down the FSU offense enough to win, 20-10. Bob Eblen D2football.com NW Region Columnist

Please, think a little bit. The focus of most conferences (including the Big Sky) is football. Which football program would you rather have in your conference- UND or SDSU? The only circumstance under which you'd answer SDSU is if you're looking for a potential dormat. If you're not willing to admit that UND would offer the Big Sky (especially assuming that NDSU gets in) many, many advantages over SDSU, you're not being honest with yourself.

SIOUXTX and Big Game, Thanks for the compliments. It is hard trying to put all biases aside when doing this. I can write something that one person will interpret as being "UND favoritism" and the next person doesn't think I'm giving UND a fair shake. Just comes with the territory, I guess.

I would say that SCSU's defense is very similar to Central Washington in the sense that the defensive line is the strong point. I do think though, that SCSU has more team speed on the rest of their defense, but there are some areas that can be exploited. SCSU is similar to UND in that they really focus on shutting down the running game. In no way do I think SCSU has a defense the quality of UND's, but with their style of play, it doesn't really need to be. What it looks like to me is that SCSU (especially early in the game) tries to run a bunch of different coverages and blitzes and create turnovers. I think they look at it like- yeah we might give up a big play or two and some points, but we're betting that if we can get you to turn the ball over once or twice early in the game, our offense will go for the throat. Plus, SCSU getting behind by a couple of scores early in a game isn't near as big a risk as it would be for most other teams. The weakness is the secondary, especially the corners. They are both freshmen and Northern was able to sneak receivers behind them a couple of times, but the QB wasn't able to deliver the pass (it was windy). That is why for this game, I think it's so important to have a healthy Bowenkamp. He would probably be able to pick them apart, but I'm not so sure Belmore can do it consistently enough to win the game. SCSU is also missing All-NCC middle LB Mark Henderson due to an injury, but I was told that his replacement played very well last week. One thing I totally missed talking about in my column this week is that SCSU has had 3 punts blocked so far this year. UND isn't the most aggressive team around at going after the punter, but I bet the Sioux come after the punter hard, especially if they are pinned deep. If UND could make something big happen on special teams that could totally change the outcome.

I agree. Sometimes the NCAA seems to treat some of this stuff like it's classified information. Also, it would be nice if the specifics of the next year's SSI was decided upon before all the scheduling takes place. I have a feeling that if the specifics of the new SSI ratings would have been available in January, UND and NDSU would be playing this fall.

I was sent a copy of the new SSI formula for this year, and it has been changed drastically, so that the penalty for losing to a good I-AA school is gone. For example, losing to a I-AA school with a greater than .500 record yields 9 points towards your SSI. Losing on the road to a D2 school with a .700 or better record (i.e., if the Sioux were to lose to SCSU on Saturday) gets you just 8. So this part of the formula has been fixed and makes it appear as if playing I-AA teams now makes sense again. The problem is that you are not rewarded very well in points if you beat a good I-AA team. A win over a .500 or better I-AA team now gets you 11 points, whereas beating a .500 or better D2 team at home yields the same. You can get 14 points for beating a .700 or better team on the road (i.e., UND wins on Saturday). What's the moral of the story? You are now much better off playing a good I-AA team than a poor D2. You would get the same number of points for losing to NDSU as you would in beating Crookston, with of course the potential to get more points if you were to beat the Bison. It now makes very little sense to schedule a D2 team that you know is going to be bad if you can schedule a game with a quality I-AA program. The only drawback would come from a lack of regional wins (how much that comes into play for playoff selection, I don't know). BTW, if any of you have listened to Dale Lennon's show last night, you heard him say that Winona's loss to SDSU will really hurt the Warriors in the SSI because SDSU is in a non-qualifying I-AA conference. This is NOT true. Even though NDSU and SDSU could not yet qualify for the postseason, they are considered as being from a qualifying conference because they currently play above D2 standards. If anyone's interested, I can post the entire points system.

I suppose I will. I think I still have the spreadsheet from last year around here somewhere.

Don't pay any attention to the regional poll- it's absolutely meaningless at this point. It's not like the old days where if you were ranked #1 in the first regional poll you stayed there until you lost. It's now figured on a week by week basis and will fluctuate wildly. Most likely, the winner of the UND-SCSU game will be #1 next week because they will accumulate a bunch of points for beating an undefeated team, but there is no guarantee that they will stay there very long. With the new system, it's not worth paying much attention to the poll until the last two or three weeks of the regular season.

For those that don't know, Missouri-Rolla is a specialty/engineering school similar to Michigan Tech. One of the reasons they cited for leaving the MIAA is that their high academic standards and specialty status make it difficult for them to compete in football. What makes this ironic is that it is happening at the same time that Mich. Tech and Colorado School of Mines (another D2 school like MTU and UMR) are both undefeated and having what looks like the best football seasons in the history of their schools.

This is also the same officiating crew that worked the Delta game. Remember the "catch" on DSU's opening drive that led to a field goal and the ridiculous pass interference call on Hoffschneider on that 3rd and 15 pass that led to DSU's last TD? They are incapable of officiating a game at this level and need to be shown the door. I'm sure Eddie Schultz can help his buddy Heitkamp land a job in the Dac-10. I'll be dead honest- I don't like Belmore at all at quarterback. He throws a pretty nice deep ball, but he's way too inaccurate on the short stuff and doesn't seem to see the underneath defenders. Manke might not be the best pure passer on the team or be the tall pocket type passer the coaching staff seems to like, but he seems to have that extra "something" that it takes to lead a team (similar to Klosterman). I really hope he wins the job next year. I think that if Bowenkamp can't go at SCSU, UND is in serious trouble. It will be a tough game for UND to win either way, but without John, I think the Huskies win by 10-14 points. SCSU is just a very good football team.

I'm not all that concerned about this game because Augie isn't very good on offense. They were held to under 300 yards total offense against both Southwest Minnesota and Concordia-St. Paul and they'll have to be alot better than that to move the ball against UND. Their offensive line is brand new from a year ago and they don't have the high quality skill position players we're used to seeing. Defensively they are pretty solid, and like you said, I hope the UND offense doesn't get too conservative. Belmore will be starting again so I hope they turn him loose to throw the ball downfield when the opportunities are there. You also bring up a good point about Augie's style of offense. Seven or eight years ago they were one of the few teams that UND saw that would spread the field and throw the ball all day. Now it seems like every other team on the schedule runs some form of a spread offense and the Sioux defense does a much better job of containing those types of teams than they did even five years ago.

Mesa State is not going to be helping UND's strength of schedule. Mesa has now dropped to 0-4 after losing its first two conference games, including one to New Mexico Highlands, who had not won a game in over two years.

I have to laugh sometimes about some southerners and their football. They believe all success on the football field is a direct derivative of speed and not much else. Of course speed is important, but if you consistently get beaten at the point of attack, you're not going to have an opportunity to use it. I wonder who DSU quarterback Scott Eyster thinks has the better defense- the UNA team that didn't record a sack the entire game and allowed the DSU running game to flourish or UND, who shut down the running game, recorded 6 sacks and sent Eyster home with a monster of a headache?

Dale Lennon stated it last year on his radio coaches show. UND was also trying to work something out with SVSU. The GLIAC plays 10 conference games and has an odd number of teams, so you're at the mercy of the conference schedule for when an open date might be. That's how it worked out with Ferris State- they were off for October 9th and UND has an open week from the NCC schedule. Another interesting note from last week's coaches show- UND had it worked out to bring Carson-Newman up here to open the 2002 season. I believe it was for a $65K guarantee and buying their turf shoes. C-N backed out at the last minute, so when they came calling again this year because UND and C-N had the same open date, UND told them no thanks.

UND has been trying to schedule GVSU for a game. The problem is that GV's entire schedule is now made up of conference games with the shortened regular season. The only open date GV had is for this coming Saturday and obviously that won't work with UND playing a NCC game.

Obviously, CWU's game plan was to blitz alot between the tackles and take away the inside running game and try to rattle Belmore, but if you're going to play that much all out man coverage, you've got to have DBs that can cover better than that. Webber just plain made that one corner look awful on those two long plays. I think if Bowenkamp would have been playing the offense would have gotten to them a lot quicker. I suspect he's got more freedom to audible and could have taken advantage of their blitzing and hit a big play earlier in the game.

I hope we start seeing a lot more of Dressler on the punt returns. Groeschl scares me back there not just because he occasionally doesn't hold onto the ball, but he also doesn't seem to know what a fair catch is.

The people that have noted that the fake punt was run to give future opponents something to think about are right on the money. UND has a freshman punter back there and showing future opponents a well run fake might make teams think twice about coming all out on the block. BTW, the fake was the exact same play the Sioux ran against UNA in the playoffs last year. The CWU coach also said something to the effect that the UND defense "out-physicaled" their offense and the CWU defense did the same to the UND offense. What game was he watching? I don't consider 35 carries for 223 yards being outmuscled.

Huskies, Is the SCSU stadium "expandable"? Did they leave enough room on the river side for another grandstand if attendance dictates that it is necessary in the future?

Mesa State plays in a really weak conference so even if they're 0-2 after the UND game, they still should finish better than .500 for the season. Mesa would have to really collapse the rest of the year to hurt UND's SOS. From what I'm hearing on Mesa State, they're defense isn't near what it was last year. They brought in a couple of transfers that turned out to be All-American type players last year, but those guys have graduated. Offensively, they run the option and only throw when absolutely necessary, so I think that plays right into UND's hands. The UND defense really didn't have a problem stopping them either of the last two years- it was the turnovers and Mesa having a better than expected defense that beat the Sioux last year.

Even in extreme circumstances, there has been a reluctance to lift redshirts under Lennon. In 2001 Jed P. was out with an ankle injury and then Jim Miller blew out his knee against Mankato. I remember there was some talk of taking the redshirt off of Mahmoud at the time but the coaching staff never did. It might have cost UND the Omaha game that year because there was no rushing attack.

There's nothing wrong with that. With the size of the school, the proximity to the Twin Cities, and the new facilities, there's no reason SCSU shouldn't be a very good Division II program in the future.