jimdahl

I don't question it so much out of sense of entitlement as I find it an interesting business question. Is REA really better off charging for tours than giving free tours as a way to build excitement among visitors and stay connected to the community? (Think of those people who bring every out-of-town guest to see REA and how this may change their behavior). Expand that question to a few different instances in which die-hard fans have questioned whether REA was nickel-and-diming them. It makes me wonder what will happen as the initial excitement continues to die down or if (God-forbid) the team has a down stretch. I find it entirely plausible that doing what you can to build the fanbase and create goodwill (even if it involves some incidental expense) could actually increase total revenue by increasing sales of the core products (tickets/concessions/tv contract). Don't get me wrong, it's $3 and probably wouldn't affect my behavior much, I'm just speculating on the overall business philosophy of charging to cover the costs of individual services vs. covering the costs of incidentals with sales of the core product.

Coming into the Spring run, here are the leaders: North Dakota State 147 South Dakota 140 North Dakota 139 Remaining sports: baseball/softball, tennis, outdoor track Reminder of scoring: Points are awarded on a 16 for 1st, 14 for second, etc. basis. The Sioux & Bison are neck in neck near the top in baseball; USD... less so. NDSU will get some good points off softball; UND and USD will finish last. UND will gain back that ground in winning women's tennis (NDSU fielded no entry, USD middle of the pack). None of UND/NDSU/USD fielded a men's tennis entry. The Sioux and Bison distanced themselves from USD, but didn't change much relative to each other up until that point. I'm not going to even pretend to know how to score track, but a glance through the records makes it look like NDSU would widen the gap over USD/UND. If interpret it all correctly (a big assumption), it looks like despite a strong Fall, the Sioux would have to fight for a distant second in the final standings. Congrats to the various Bison teams for leaving the NCC with a bang!

For anyone with way too much time on their hands, the details are somewhat interesting: State of Wisconsin v. Audrey Ruth Seiler

From USA Today: It's tricky, because they're measuring percentage of people who have had 5+ drinks within a "few" hours, which is not the traditional "who can drink the most" question, in which Grand Forks would be thumped by Madison.

Fascinating story in the Dakota Student: [url=http://www.UND.edu/org/ds/News/news3.html]Ex-parking officer: UND

There was a permissions error on some of the user-uploaded avatars (presumably caused by the server change in late January). I fixed that -- let me know if the problem still persists.

I'm certainly glad to see her unharmed and am thrilled for her family and friends. However, a big part of why this story broke nationally was the mystery of what she was doing leaving her apartment through the front door alone at 2:30am wearing sleep clothes, without keys, without closing her apartment, etc... it not feeling right from the beginning was why it was big news. That all suggests that the alleged abducter was someone who knew her, right? If the cops know the identity of their suspect, why not release a name like most manhunts do? It's not like he doesn't know he's being hunted (the usual reason for not releasing a name). Where's the composite sketch? (they now claim one may come this afternoon). Why release her if her abductor is still at large with weapons in hand? Why not warn the community if this dangerous guy is at large with weapons? How was she walking alone on John Nolen Ave? (released, escaped?) Where was she held captive and why haven't we seen news cameras surrounding that place yet? This could really go one of two ways -- the Madison police are behaving strangely because they're not used to dealing with highly publicized cases of this nature; or, the Madison police are doing a poor job of covering something up.

The SiouxSports.com photo galleries have quite a few game pics. The search feature isn't necessarily complete, because not all photos are necessarily tagged with relevant search terms, but it's a decent place to start. FYI -- the pics were all shared by members of the site and are reproduced on SiouxSports.com with the express permission of those contributors; reproduction elsewhere for non-personal use would be a very bad idea.

It's also apparently been reported on the AM Clear Channel station in Grand Forks (sorry, I forget the callsign at the moment). So far we have reports from Grand Forks radio that Zach is on his way to sign with the Devils; until Zach actually signs on the line and the press release comes from the Devils organization, you have to judge the credibility of those reports for yourself.

I may not be the right one to answer, since I don't hate the Gophers, but I do cheer against the Gophers winning the NCAA hockey tournament. I don't want UMN/UW to win simply because I enjoy the Sioux leading the national championship count. I'm happy to see UMD/Denver advance because I'll be able to cheer for the WCHA in Boston with no mixed feelings. There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing here -- could it be that a lot of the Sioux fans take pleasure in seeing Minnesota lose BECAUSE some of their fans hate us as much as they do? Congrats UMN on a good effort -- it's a shame that the new tourney structure and WCHA success forced these intraconference matchups before the Frozen Four. I would've enjoyed a Sioux/Gopher game there.

I agree, one can't just look at SOG and claim that the teams with the most SOG should win most games. Denver was playing a very defensive game, not taking a lot of SOG, but when they did get one off it was a series of cross-passes and traffic in front of the net that resulted in a high percentage shot. UND seemed a bit more desperate as the game went on, throwing the rubber straight at the net frequently, hoping one would sneak but; but a lot of those were lower percentage shots. It's no coincidence that Denver played a game similar to Holy Cross's -- that's how you beat the fast passing, high-shooting teams the Sioux have had under Blais. Slow it down, frustrate the Sioux and try to reduce their advantage in fundamentals and speed, patiently wait for quality scoring chances rather than try to compete straight on in a wide open game.

Yeah, I'm more of a first place or last place kind of guy -- not shooting for a safe second. We'll see how the other #1 seeds fare this afternoon, but with one big notable exception (), it's been a somewhat predictable tournament. Only four brave soles had Denver defeating the Sioux in the West region final. It will be quite difficult for the 90% of Sioux fans here who picked UND to go all the way to win, even in the "single point" scoring scheme, because they're guaranteed to miss at least the two more games for which they picked the Sioux. Of course, a Minnesota loss would put our Gopher-fan visitors in much the same boat. Current standings

With 6 of the weekend's 12 games complete, the consensus picks have hit every game correctly (the only consensus predicted upset so far being UW over OSU). Those of us who tried to be clever are hurting, while there's a big cluster of "play-it-safe" types tied up for 1st.

0-0 End of the 3rd. On to OT. First scoreless OT in the history of the NCAA ice hockey tournament (according to the ESPN announcer).

From USCHO game recap: OK, I was one of the 11 who guessed Parise would start out, but I'm not sure I really believed it

I've got the 1st one -- In '96 #1 BU, #2 Michigan, #1 CC, and #2 Vermont were the Final Four.

Unfortunately, we can't reproduce the content from a pay site; so if anyone does pay their $0.60, it will have to be for their own interest

No doubt any situation, such as injury, that suggests a team will perform vastly differently in the tournament than the rest of the season being analyzed would make the probabilities less useful; that is indeed what gambling is all about. Where I think Sagard's analysis is really interesting is in trying to figure out UND matches up with Holy Cross. Could've been 5:1, could've been 2000:1, I find the 95:5 interesting. Clearly when the Sioux match up 60:40 with a B.C. or Minnesota, it's anyone's game. Bracket Pick'Em Updated Info The first game is at 5et, so I'm going to close new entries at about 4et. I'll create two leaderboards (by Saturday at the latest): 1) 1 point per game (this will be the more interesting one since we're such a homogeneous crowd and widely picked UND to go all the way) 2) traditional bracket scoring: each round worth a fixed number of points, so the value of individual picks doubles each round (more traditional, but the homogeneity of our picks will make this less interesting).

That's not really how probability works. If you flip a fair (50-50) coin and a head comes up, that doesn't mean the odds of getting a tail were 0%; going through the deterministic event doesn't affect the prior probabilities. KRACH predicts the possibility that UND could lose -- it thinks there's a 5% chance of UND losing to Holy Cross, a 30% chance of not making the Frozen Four, and that the Sioux are 7:3 more likely to lose the tournament than win it. No person is denying Minnesota any credit, KRACH is quite mechanically crunching the chain of who Minnesota has beat and who has beat them to come up with probabilities of victories for future contests. Minnesota is just an ID number to the emotionless code calculating those probabilities.

Cool, thanks Sagard! I was meaning to do that all week, but trying to make the crazy bracket work has consumed most of my time reserved for such foolishness. I'm stunned to see how high the probability for UND is; I would've expected more along the lines of 10%, since it takes 4 wins and the matchups against teams like BC/Minnesota/Maine are only around 60%.

Well, there you go. Thanks SFiP!

Word on the street is that you can pay a whole lot less than that. Follow through the whole conversation on this thread for additional info, explanations of the technology, fan experiences.

That doesn't sound right to me because I know it creates two copies, one if the senders "sent" folder and one in your "inbox". I'll send you one and then I'll delete it and let's see what happens.

I hope following the thread you've noticed that 90% have been supportive of the cheer team's efforts. I know the cheer team probably isn't as accustomed to being publicly criticized/disliked as some of the more publicized sports teams might be, but I would advise not taking it personally; it comes with being in the public eye. Anyway, I remember the early 90s, UND didn't even have skating cheerleaders. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the time they spent hanging out in the aisle next to me, but it's great to have them back on the ice! Let's see if I can drum up some additional love -- check out the new cheer team website: http://www.UND.edu/org/undcheer/