jimdahl

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/

Exactly. I don't think anyone is trying to imply that HC is secretly really better than UND; no one here doubts that the Sioux would win 95/100 games. However, they only play one and the loser gets tee time. The Sioux just need to intimidate Quesada early and its all over, which leads to... A huge intangible that I haven't seen discussed much is what a different game HC is used to playing. HC has non-scholarship kids used to playing in a 1600-capacity barn for crowds in the 100s; this is an NCAA tournament in a large Olympic ice arena with a crowd of 1000s. Unfortunately, the crowd will undoubtedly be 90% behind HC Now, if we could host HC in a regional at REA...

These are the two that scare me. I was at this regional cheering for Niagara (like everyone else at Mariucci). New Hampshire looked a bit flat, but was pounding the Niagara net the whole game and it always seemed like at some point they'd start scoring and win, but pretty soon it was late in the 3rd and UNH was mysteriously still down by 2. UNH couldn't put anything in and Niagara capitalized on every chance. It's the same feeling I had after the Sioux playoff losses in 98, 99, and 03; in each of those games, the Sioux seemed like the better technical team to me, and throughout each game I felt like they'd eventually go ahead and win. In each, the Sioux continued to seem flat and the underdog simply executed better (call it being "hungrier" or "wanting it more" or whatever you want). Admittedly, Michigan/BC aren't HC, nor even is Ferris. The Sioux are clearly much deeper and way better conditioned so if they take the Crusaders seriously, the Sioux should be able to work hard to an easy victory. If the Sioux don't work hard, all bets are off.

A couple points: The percentages don't tally because each box currently show the top 3 non-blank picks for each team. Some games have had more than 3 winners picked, and some games have been left unpicked in submitted brackets. I'll try to modify those to be percentages of non-blank picks. Though this crowd is pretty much in agreement on the West bracket, there's quite a bit of variation in the other region finals: 49% Minnesota-Duluth 39% Minnesota 49% Boston College 26% New Hampshire 20% Michigan 62% Maine 26% Wisconsin 6% Ohio State The homogeniety in the West bracket could just make WPOS look like a genius for picking Miami : 94% North Dakota 1% Miami

Yeah, I guess if the pic isn't familiar it could be a bit confusing. Here's a bigger one. If there's ever a flute in my avatar, be very afraid. Yeah, I'll lock the picks sometime Friday, probably. At a minimum there will be a leaderboard that show who has the most picks correct (which could get really ugly if UND doesn't go all the way); I'll try to at least make it so you can view those people's picks.

First you have to fill out a bracket by selecting the team you think will win each game from the dropdown box (as you pick the teams you think will win the regional semifinal round, those winners become the choices for the later rounds). Once you're done and want to save your picks, you enter your message board username/password and hit 'save'. Or, you can choose a new username/password and that will also work (as long as the username isn't already taken). Users with message board accounts have those names reserved so no one can go put in bad picks under the name 'PCM' and make Pat look bad. Later, you can return to that page, enter you username/password and hit 'load'. That will retrieve the picks you previously saved. Very handy for last-minute changes or checking on your results.

I'm certainly no Excel guru, but enabling the Forms toolbar under View -> Toolbars is probably a place to start. The combo box control seems to be able to take its choices from a cell range AND lets you link the selected value of the box to a cell, so that's probably the mechanism you'd use to have a combo box's options be dependent on another combo box's selection (such as is required in a tournament bracket).

The blank actually means that someone didn't make a pick for that game. Maybe I should figure out how to exclude blank picks from the tallies, since no one has yet dared take Holy Cross or Niagara. BTW -- KRACH gives UND about a 95% chance of winning the game. Maybe I'll throw KRACH predictions into the bracket if I don't get stuck doing any real work this afternoon.