jimdahl

The Forum's daily attempts to stir up Fargoans by creating "news" when there simply isn't anything new continue. Regarding this quote, we've all been saying forever that UND and NDSU would be in the same division again soon if for no other reason than that UND fans simply wouldn't tolerate being in a lower division from NDSU. Of course what NDSU does affects what fans expect UND to do, just as the reverse would be true. I'm baffled that Kupchella starting to feel that pressure is surprising to anyone??? We've all known for months that UND was studying reclassification now because the criterion cited as most important by NDSU's Carr report and UND fans here for years (securing a conference affiliation before reclassifying) is demanding timely consideration. Kupchella acknowledges that many of his "reconsider moving" catalysts have occurred, including much of the NCC reclassifying and the transition becoming less punitive, yet he still has the same concerns about increased travel, budget, and lower exposure for most sports. As a long-time on-the-record supporter of both ND schools reclassifying, looks like same old, same old to me.

Unfortunately, not that I know of. His current rankings would have UND beat GVSU by about 4 at home. But since the rankings incorporate that game, that's the whole point, they're supposed to accurately describe past results. Regardless, such a system is going to be able to make much more meanginful comparisons between teams like GVSU and UND that have at least a win and a loss; it's always going to predict great things for an undefeated team (because the past data indicates there's nothing you can do to beat them).

It depends how you want to measure SOS. A simple to understand, so well-accepted measure is something like RPI uses, a combination of opponents' win% and opponents' opponents' win%. Those are currently: UND: opp%: .6369, opp-opp%: .5623, weighted SOS: .6120 Pitt St: opp%: .5667, opp-opp%: .5230, weighted SOS: .5521 Massey (formula unknown) says: UND: 15.84 (hardest schedule in DII) Pitt St: 14.10 If you believe in the predictive power of Massey's ratings (which even Massey doesn't), they would predict a 37-22 win for Pitt St. Pretty much any stats you run will indicated that Pitt St's offense should thoroughly embarrass UND's defense; but the predictive ability of such measures is even more limited than usual in this case, since Pitt St. has never faced a D as highly rated as UND, and UND has never faced an O as highly rated as Pitt St. Guess they better play the game just to be sure. I can't get a solution comparing Pitt St. to UND using Bradley-Terry since Pitt St. is lossless.

According to the report I cited in this thread, it costs about $1m/year to run REA. As is also noted there, the increase in revenue to the athletic department from REA is about $1.6m (not counting the increase in Fighting Sioux club membership).

On the topic of the thread, here are the current top 5 ranked by Bradley-Terry: 1. Minnesota 256.8100 10-3-0 77.0429 2. Colorado College 189.8530 10-2-0 37.9707 3. Denver 148.5680 8-5-0 92.8551 4. Wisconsin 141.4880 10-4-0 56.5952 5. North Dakota 100.0000 9-5-2 60.0000 What's most interesting to me is how ridiculously lower the strength-of-schedule is for the CCHA/HE teams that appear in the top 10.

Woohoo-- GVSU's quarterback coughs it up on 3rd, GVSU's first TO of the game claim their announcers. Sioux ball on GVSU's 30. Bowenkamp back in. Sioux drive to GVSU's 11. Strouth to the 1. 6:09 remaining. TD Sioux!!!! QB runs it in. PAT good. UND 19, GVSU 15. 4:59 remaining.

Belmore picked by GVSU on the GV 30. Another punt-by-interception for the Sioux. Sigh -- late hit by UND, so GVSU gets it near the 50. 8:47 remaining.

Crazy drive for UND. GV has a 15yd facemask penalty, then a pass interference to help move UND up to about GVSU's 25. Strouth ran it in straight up the middle from there for a TD. Glas missed the PAT, putting UND in position to need a FG to tie instead of win. UND 12, GVSU 15

Huge 50yd pass for GVSU to Collins(?). GVSU 7, UND 3

UND just turned the ball over around their own 15. They held GVSU for 3 downs, GVSU is going for it on 4th from about the 7. BIIIIIIIG STOP Sioux. GVSU tried to rush forward the needed 1ft but didn't even break the line of scrimmage. 4 and out GVSU, UND takes over on downs on their own 6 with about 7 minutes remaining in the half.

Your mileage may vary, but for me this looks WAY better than Dataflix. It's interesting to compare, because it looks like both feeds are encoding the same source video. GVSU is using RealPlayer instead of the Windows Media used by Dataflix, the encoding rate for both seems to be about 220k/s. Though it pixellates a little more during periods of big motion, its way sharper and more fluid on my system when zoomed in. Not to mention, the price is right

This is non-original footage, I posted it last February, but in case there's anyone new around: 1... 2... we want more (MPEG, 2.8Mb) Sieve chant (MPEG, 5.5Mb) The first one is a lot better, and more representative of the entire crowd joining in a cheer. The whole crowd is in on the 2nd cheer, but it's less obvious. Both are somewhat mediocre as they were shot with a still camera. You can't beat the crowd participation at Wisconsin.

Yes, the announcer definitely said that. Unfortunately for the Sioux, but quite justly for St. Cloud, it seems he was wrong.

I have absolutely no idea what glitch those of you who check such things at 1am encountered, but the list of scores in my first post was printed directly from the database (Grand Valley St 24 @ Michigan Tech 7), and it looks right to me now, after the late night automated score harvesting. Sorry for the inconvenience. Anyway, the above-posted picks are the most obvious prediction from our SSI/win% numbers, so I would endorse those also. I still wonder exactly how far the head-to-head can move things (past weeks' rankings point to UNO jumping SCSU, but I think they'll resist that one because it would bump GVSU). Regardless, its hard to come up with a situation in which UND isn't in and we'll learn a little more about what happens in the smoky room. If they don't change much next year, I think we're pretty near the point of being able to accurately predict these regional rankings.

It's always been explained to me that earned access gets in a team in the top 10 (by NCAA rankings, not conference finish) if no other team from the conference is in the top 6. That wouldn't apply to UNO, since there will be an NCC team in the top 6. If that's incorrect and the NCAA does give some sort of autobid for conference champs, that shouldn't affect UNO's ranking so their slot should be at GVSU's expense (again, with the caveat that I simply have no idea how much weight the committee is going to give UNO's head-to-head wins over SCSU and UND).

While that could definitely affect seedings, remember that Winona is a lock for a playoff spot because of earned access. I agree, it looks good for now. I don't see how GVSU gets ahead of UND, though the SSIs could tighten up pending some remaining results. The big question on seeding (and for GVSU making the playoffs), is how far is the committee willing to move teams based on head-to-head results. This season, I've never seen them move a team so far as to put UNO ahead of UND or SCSU, but you never know.

Having punched in the important games highlighted here manually, I've updated the SSI. Keep in mind that UNO and SCSU both have H2H wins over UND and UNO has an H2H win over SCSU. We've seen those H2H's make pretty big moves in the regional rankings, though not yet as big as the current gap between UND and UNO. I'm still missing a few scores that could shift UND's SSI (though SCSU looks like the win is in hand, so we're really just waiting on Delta St). I'll update it again tonight when I get the rest of the D2 results, and in the morning after all the day's results are in. Note -- the ONLY valid results on the SSI page right now are for the teams on the bubble in the Northwest; I'll have the full update before Sunday morning. The ONLY games from this week included in this calculation right now are: Saginaw Valley St 47 @ Ferris St 14 Tiffin 39 @ Gannon 50 Ashland 21 @ Indianapolis 24 Grand Valley St 24 @ Michigan Tech 7 Northern Michigan 18 @ Northwood 48 Nebraska-Omaha 13 @ Minn St-Mankato 20 South Dakota 21 @ North Dakota 41 Northern St 44 @ SW Minnesota St 9

Glas missed a ~31yd FG attempt. USD ties it, 7-7, 12:24 remaining in the half. UND almost held on. From a 1st and goal, UND D held off three attempts, but the 3rd was ruled pass intereference, bringing on another 1st and goal. UND then stuffed 2 running attempts, but USD got in on the 3rd. UND scores, 14-7, 5:50 reamining in the half. Belmore is doing well, 11/15 for 130yds, TD to Wisthoff. 14-14. 5:28 remaining in half. USD answered immediately with 72 yd run by Logan. He's up to about 170 rushing yds in the 1st half. What has become of our run D? 21-14 UND. Belmore to Weber. The USD secondary is awful -- Sioux receivers are open on every play and our coaches seem to be figuring that out. Unless both teams adjust big at the half, this one's a shootout.

Hopefully the quietness here today is because everyone is at the game For anyone looking for an update-- Sioux off to an early lead with a scoring drive following an INT. 7-0 UND in the 1st.

Nov. 15 Business Week mentions reforms in the NDUS in an article, "Should Public Universities Behave Like Private Colleges?" Relevant excerpt: Nice to seem some national recognition for the improvements the NDUS has made the last few years. The increases in research grants and out-of-state enrollments at UND and NDSU have been phenomenal.

Day's problem was one of timing. He wasn't HH material his first 5 games, and nominations were being made a couple weeks ago, so he had really only had 3 breakout games at that point. Still, a disappointment that arguably the biggest impact player in the NCC this year didn't even get the nod.

Thanks to some help from Bob Eblen, we've now got the ratings sorting in about the same outcome as the regional rankings (the only big exceptions are when there is a significant head-to-head result between nearly tied teams). We'll see Sunday morning if this formula carries through to prove correct in the final week.

Doh -- I made that mistake in more than one place. I was treating .667 teams with 9 GP as not being able to make it >.700, which is wrong, they only need to = .700. The only other one in that category was Indiana PA for UNO. Looking at my sample D2 RPI, for example, USD's D2 opp win%/opp-opp win% are .4425/.5790, whereas Winona's are .3371/.4969. There's no doubt in my mind that USD has played a tougher D2 schedule; however, D2 chose to severely punish games against lower divisions and USD chose to play 3 of them, which killed their SSI. We've seen numerous instances this year in which a team ahead in both SSI/win% is ranked below a lower team, even when there's no obvious H2H/COP/in-region/etc... explanation. That makes it seem likely they are considering other factors like recent big wins, but keep in mind UND is also playing a quality opponent (>.700), though at home, so who knows. If UND and GVSU both win, we certainly shouldn't be booking our flights to Michigan until the selection show is over.

My one big uncertainty when writing the above analysis was I had no idea where the committee would put USD, given their pathetic SSI but superb record. At #8, just behind UND/GVSU, they could fight for a spot if UND and GVSU both lose. Them knocking in the door makes it a lot harder for UND to make the playoffs with a Sioux loss this weekend, because USD would likely jump ahead of UND in line. It's official boys -- go out there and win.

My back-of-the-envelope (i.e. manual, so error prone) take-- UND: if def. USD, SSI: 9.90, Win%: .80 if def. by USD, SSI: 9.30, Win%: .70 UNO: if def. Mankato, SSI: 9.818, Win%: .818 if def. by Mankato, SSI: 9.27, Win%: .727 SCSU: if def. UMD, SSI: 9.9, Win%: .80 if def. by UMD, SSI: 9.3, Win%: .70 GVSU: if def. Mich. Tech, SSI: 9.60, Win%: .800 if def. by Mich. Tech, SSI: 9.00, Win%: .700 From what I can tell, NCC, NSIC, and GLIAC will each get an "earned access" representative. There should be a rep. from each conference naturally ranked higher than UND, so the earned access won't result in a loss of a slot otherwise available to UND. I'm assuming Northwood, Winona St, and Michigan Tech. are locks at this point. Plenty of scenarios there that get UND in if they win Saturday. If UND loses, the Sioux will need a lot of help. If UND and all the other teams listed win, it could come down to UND vs. GVSU (SCSU has the H2H over UND, and SCSU/GVSU have no COP or H2H). UND and GVSU have both defeated their only common opponent and have otherwise similar records. UND has a slightly higher SSI, but I'm tempted to guess that however the NCAA relatively ranks the two of them this week will carry over to next week if both win or lose. Though it ain't gonna happen, it's still mathematically possible for UND to be the #1 rep from the NCC How former opponents' results could affect SSI (the odds I missed something here are quite high): if Mankato def. UNO, Mankato Win% becomes >.500, giving UND .2 and UNO .18 and SCSU .2 more SSI points if SCSU loses to UMD, win% becomes <.75, dropping UND .2 and UNO .18 SSI points if UND loses to USD, win% becomes <.75, dropping UNO .18 and SCSU .2 SSI points if Delta St loses to Ark-Monticello, Delta St Win% becomes .500, dropping UND .2 more SSI points if Western Washington loses to Humboldt St., win% becomes .500, dropping UNO .18 and SCSU .2 SSI points if Tiffin def. Gannon, win% becomes >.500, giving UNO .18 SSI points if Ashland def. Indianapolis, win% becomes >.500, giving GVSU .18 SSI points if Northern St. loses to SW Minnesota St, win% becomes .500, dropping SCSU .2 SSI points