jimdahl

Sioux fan ejected Nice, buddy, way to represent.

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have quoted your post, it was just the one in front of me as I was pondering the discussion of bias. My opinion was meant to be a profound, significant, and enlightening contribution to the thread at large , not specifically calling you out as anti-Kent... *The author of this post warrants it to be 94.7% free of bias toward any particular institution, creed, or dogma

Add me to the list who think BisonKent is a one of the good guys. While if you handed me the article anonymously, it would be easy to conclude that it was written by a Bison fan, I thought he went out of his way to try to suppress his biases. I think this assessment of the end of the rivalry was treated quite fairly: The official Bison fan party line seems to be to ignore that NDSU's change in classification created the situation where UND would be penalized in the post-season for playing them; kudos to Kent for including that critical fact. Of course, in an article purportedly about UND, he unnecessarily slipped in some stats about how many football titles NDSU won before most students were born, but failed to bring up other interesting stats like head-to-head record or nickel trophy record. Written by a Bison fan? Obviously. Unfair or false? I don't see it.

Argh, the two year window of sanity seems to have closed. Looks like we missed our last chance to play NDSU ever again, unless we reclassify. Sounds sort of like a poorly defined PWR -- RPI + common opponents + H2H + TUCs (+ antiTUCs???), though with arbitrary weighting and smoky room fudge factors.

There seems to be a legit commercial / public viewing Fox Sports DirecTV package that does include Fox Sports North (and Rocky Mountain). Anecdotally, last night's game was on FOXSN and was playing at my local sports bar on the East Coast, far out of market (as WCHA games often are from FOXSN and FOXSRM).

Tonight is definitely slightly different from last night. Last night it was on FOXSC, which is on cable in my area (and it was on at the local sports bar via DirecTV). Tonight it is not on FOXSC and not on my cable at all (though presumably bars can still pick up the Fox Sports Rocky Mountain feed).

If you want to talk pure mathematical possibilities, WCHA possibilities is what it looked like before Friday night's games. I never did bother to make that work between games...

Whoever said UND is in trouble correctly noticed a large point gap between UND and the teams immediately above us, but somewhat glibly assumed the only way to overcome that was to sweep out AND play another TUC in the WCHA playin. As sagard said, the biggest deal is indeed TUC, mostly because moving over the cliff instantly changes the number of comparisons for each team and dramatically shifts everyone's TUC comparisons. Without duplicating the events sagard mentioned, Duluth is very close to becoming a TUC. SOS improvements alone over the next 2 weeks will push them up to .4881. Get some wins against CC and UMN and they could be a TUC. Since UND is 4-0 vs. UMD, them becoming a TUC instantly bumps the Sioux to 11-12-1 on TUC. That + some wins against Denver + other teams' TUCs shifting could definitely give us some comparisons. However, even without TUC help, there are quite a few other comparisons UND can flip: Denver -- A sweep over Denver would give us the H2H, hence the comparison Michigan -- We can take the comparison by taking RPI by doing better vs our remaining 4 opponents than they do vs. Ferris (current RPI is .5456 vs. .5492) N. Michigan -- We can take the comparison by taking COP by sweeping M. Tech SCSU -- We can take the comparison by taking TUC by doing better v. Denver than they do v. Wisconsin CC -- though we're 3 points down in this comparison, there's a lot in play. Do better against Denver than they do and we can take both RPI and COP, taking the comparison. Duluth getting victories against CC is a double-bonus in that in addition to knocking CC's RPI down, it makes Duluth a TUC, which could help us win the comparison. Get a few of those and we're sitting right with Harvard / OSU. Though we lose the individual comparison with either of them right now, we also beat both of them on RPI.

Whelan used to do this at his site, then later at USCHO, but I don't know what effect his defection to CHN will have on that. It was a great tool in that it did precisely what you're asking for (you edit the full set of game outcomes and it gives you the PWR), but I also quickly realized it didn't answer the questions I wanted in that you laboriously had to test nearly every permutation for the outcome of the 100's of remaining games, because any one of them can profoundly shift PWR. Even with just a couple weekends and the conference tournaments remaining, that's hundreds of games, which is an incalculable number of outcomes. I believe, for that reason, YATC is usually only available just before conference tournaments (when most of PWR is pretty much decided, yet you still have to explore hundreds of permutations). I've been chasing that problem for a brief time, myself, but would certainly love to see someone else ( ) provide it so I can get the benefit of the information myself without having to complete tackling the math...

I had the exact same reaction when I first read "expand the Alerus" -- why would we do that when it's never even full? The answer that satisfied me was that we need more burst capacity for sellouts and need to be able to accomodate larger crowds if we want to attract interest from I-AA conferences. Think of all those years of NDSU playing to a half empty FargoDome, yet the extra space came in handy when the UND game came around and when NDSU started shopping itself to I-AA conferences. Back to the topic, great attendance. UND is pretty definitively one of the biggest shows in D-II, and would be in the top third of I-AA if it maintained that attendance after a transition.

I hadn't put the byline together with the man (subtitle updated). Frankly, I'm not surprised I didn't make the connection, because isn't he a little old to be writing for the Minnesota student newspaper?

Have you hugged a Nodak today? A later published opinion counterpoint: At least North Dakota isn't Canada Letters to the editor The author defends his original piece by further exploring his "North Dakotans are alcoholics" treatise: North Dakota's binge drinking, now U's problem

Thanks for the analyses Sagard. It's a little humbling that I'm not getting them done myself, anymore, but my schedule is pretty definitively not permitting this year. Unfortunately, that also means the now 3-year-spanning project (a.k.a. "Big Kahuna"), that's supposed to do all this for us, is definitely not going to be ready for this playoff season...

I think we're confusing two sets of issues: 1- WinFixer seems to be some sort of SpyWare program that gets installed on your machine and generates popups when you browse the web. Though those popups appear when you visit certain sites, they are NOT coming from the sites you visit, such as this one, rather from the spyware installed on your machine. 2- SiouxSports.com does open advertising windows, but they are: spyware free (does not install anything on your computer), pops under the window instead of over, do not popup additional ads or refuse to close, no more than 1 popunder will be delivered in a 12 hour period and the same popunder will not be delivered more frequently than once per week. If you see anything that doesn't sound like #2, it's NOT intentionally coming from this site so you may have some malware installed on your computer. You should seek one of the spyware removal programs cited above. Since the ads in #2 are NOT spyware and don't harm your computer, rather they're just ads, spyware removal programs won't block or detect them. You can still block regular ads with anti-advertising programs (though if everyone did that, most sites would shut down or begin charging you to visit them, as advertising is the primary source of revenue for most of the web).

ACT trends Definitely a slight bump to an all-time high in average ACT score upon entrance.

Spring update Numbers look pretty good. Even with the change in admissions, about the same as last Spring. And the NDConnect program continues to be loved... Recruiting program faces possible cuts

Small new addition to the RPI ratings that probably doesn't deserve it's own thread: click on any team's name on the RPI ratings page to see some RPI details. The cool part is that it not only gives you additional information on how the current RPI was calculated, but it also shows you how the strength of your upcoming opponents will affect your RPI. For example, UND's RPI is currently .5413, but it's remaining games are weak enough that if it managed to play through them with no change in record, UND's RPI would drop to .5347 (opp% would shift from .5336 to .5232 and opp-opp% from .5145 to .5091). Back on topic -- the ratings charts are starting to get pretty cool as additional data fills in.

I think it was a Sioux fan who brought up Minnesota's AAU title... you can't very well expect to be able to attack an opponent and then scream "off topic" when one of their fans rushes to their defense.

Does G.F. have any other restaurants where entrees begin at $36? That struck me as near the top for the area, though I admittedly am pretty out-of-touch with the G.F. restaurant scene.

If only UND were D-I in women's bowling, we could be basking in that glory...

The split might have made sense as a stop-loss 25 years ago. Had scholarship reduction been stopped and II-A kept full scholarships, there might not have been the long slow bleed from D-II into DI-AA. The DII-A powers probably wouldn't have been so concerned about the watering down of II-AA. Now, however, it's just a finger in the dam that has already let most of the water through. Frankly, it's even a further watering down of D-II (taking part of the playoff bracket away from the best D-II teams and giving it to lower scholarship teams).

Now it's just getting weird: St. Cloud completes sweep by Virg Foss, Fargo Forum Huskies stun Sioux in overtime by Virg Foss, UND press release It has to be hard to write two different articles about the same game. Despite a decent job of using different quotes and ordering, I still get a sense of deja vu when reviewing all the game coverage and coming across things like: vs

N.D. to test balloons for cellular service Of course, I remember everyone saying he was crazy to run against Spaeth, polling at something like 70% at the time...

Particularly poor choice of lame comebacks -- I think the average Sioux fan knows a hell of a lot more about RPI than the average Bison fan because our #1 sport has been D-I for as long as RPI has existed... You should have tried to pick on Quinnipiac, that's a funny word.

That there was an article in a newspaper about Sioux fans isn't enough to make it Sioux message board worthy? People have been jumping all over each other for starting topics they don't like, lately. If you're not interested in a certain topic, just don't join in that discussion! Though a little lower than I might have guessed, for a little under 10% of season tickets to come from a town 70 miles away is pretty impressive. I would bet a fair number of F-M fans also make the trek each week on individual game tickets (as more casual fans might not buy season tickets if they can't hit every game). The economic impact of bringing in so many out-of-towners twice a weekend could be considerable -- G.F. is fortunate to have such a draw.