jimdahl

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.

No homerism so far On the other hand, what self-respecting Sioux fan dares pick anyone other than the Sioux? Consensus picks Let's pin this, see if we can get a few more people to play along. Just don't tell the Gopher fans, or they might get confused and think the NCAA champ is actually determined by fan vote and try to stuff the ballot box. I'll throw together leaderboards once results start coming in.

Already eliminated from your basketball office pool? For amusement and pride... fill out a hockey bracket. This might prove a little more effective than posting large text-filled posts of predictions in threads to which no one will ever go back to notice your prescience. Don't forget to save when done, and I promise to do interesting things with the data (leaderboard / consensus picks). Why do I expect a lot of UND wins from this crowd? BTW -- I finished this mere seconds ago so it's not as well tested as projects which were less time-sensitive. Please report any problems.

Not according to reports.

Sioux outshooting Seawolves, 11-5, with 5:30 remaining in 1st. Murray scores from Parise/Bochenski! 4:04 to go. 1-0 Sioux.

Overall, so far (8 mins in), UAA is playing a much better opportunistic game than the Sioux. They're making a stand on the offensive blueline, creating a lot of turnovers and getting a lot of odd-man rushes, testing J. Parise. UND is getting some quality shots, but more through playmaking than the big breakaways the Seawolves keep getting. Still 0-0. UND on powerplay (the evil Jim Dahl is in the box for UAA).

J. Parise in net, as mentioned elsewhere. Schneider penalty at 1:10 in the 1st for hooking Fournier. Still 0-0.

Very tricky-- the link above leads to a new posting screen. Trying to up the traffic, eh? Don't fall for it Sioux fans! The Bismarck Tribune coverage has this interesting tidbit: UND could use some new parking. We don't have a mascot, so there shouldn't be any habitat problems.

If I dare try to get the board back on track -- Anyone want to explain this "top 3" thing to me? If the selection committee narrowed the field to 3, and then started over again considering those 3, we wouldn't want both Bochenski and Parise to make the the final 3 or there would be a nasty vote split. If the votes were placed among the 10, we were told the top 3, but the winner had already really been decided, then we want to see as many Sioux as possible in those 3 However, that's not at all how the Hobey Baker site explains it:

The key is closing the tags with a {/tagname}. I can't use the real square brackets or they'll be interpreted as brackets, but just imagine the curly brackets are square brackets: normal {color=blue}blue{/color} = normal blue normal {size=14}big{/size} = normal big

After the Sioux had trailed 4-21 in the 1st, the Sioux came back and traded leads with the Jacks back and forth for the most of the last 10 minutes of regulation. With 2 minutes to go SDSU started to run away from the Sioux, gaining a 63-57 lead with 1:30 to go. UND sunk two consecutive 3's to tie it up at 63 with 0:49 remaining. Sioux got called for a travel with about 0:30 remaining, SDSU burned the clock down to 0:06 before the Sioux forced a jump ball and got the possession arrow. With the clock reading 0:00 the Sioux finally launch the ball toward the basket, it trickled in, but too late. Extra period was back and forth, with SDSU slowly amassing a 71-67 lead. UND threw the ball away with under 1:00 to go, had to foul. SDSU missed the free throw, UND scored and got a free throw off the score to cut it to 70-71 with 0:37 to go. SDSU made 1 of 2 free throws for a 72-70 lead, which was the final. You'll have to wait for the Herald or someone who heard the game better than I to fill in names/stats. Congrats to the Sioux women on never giving up tonight and another great season! Congrats to the Jackrabbit women -- represent the NCC well in your last trip to the D-II Elite Eight!

Hyping the home site -- this page shows matchups won/lost for UND and lets you dig in more detail into how each criteria is determined. When you look at the details of UND's lost matchup vs. Maine, we already have RPI. COP will be very hard to change because we're 4-4, they're 4-1, and we have no COPs scheduled. TUC is where it could happen. Had Michigan Tech gotten a game off us, that would've raised their RPI enough to make them a TUC and adding in our 6-1 record vs them would've put us over Maine. As is, we just need to beat one more TUC in our conference tourney than they do, because RPI (which we already win) is the tiebreaker.

Lest you all think Sprig has gone insane, he responded too quickly to a post I removed for retooling... More fun predictions culled from the archives: Calling me out on my predictive skills and Who agreed with me We all know how that one turned out (just don't scroll up to see my less prescient Vanek prediction). I'm still waiting to see the results of this one.

I don't think McFeely is so much anti-anything-in-particular as he likes to stir the pot, take a contrarian viewpoint. If you're a Sioux fan, you're intrigued when he explores the Bison's foibles; if you're a Bison fan, you find him tolerable only when he's reporting on the Sioux's foibles. Personally, I've always found his willingness to intentionally explore a contrarian point of view interesting, even if he does sometimes have to go a little over the top to do it.

According to the STrib, the Vikings are currently negotiating with Kleinsasser to try to beat the Wednesday deadline, at which time he becomes a free agent. They also report that the Redskins are interested, should he enter free agency.

IMHO, the Bison fans here have generally been quite friendly and come around to discuss items of interest to Sioux fans (though many understandably take pro-NDSU stances in conflicts between the schools, such as "the rivalry"). There ARE a few people out there who just want to denigrate and disagree with anything pro-Sioux, but those people don't last long. If anything, I've been surprised by the anti-NDSU obsession that seems to have dominated this forum this off-season. On the topic of GVSU -- clearly playing the same opponent for the national championship twice in 3 years starts to create a bit of a rivalry. I had a lot of fun talking to GVSU fans on my trip to Florence. Unfortunately, the new regions won't allow the rubber match, but they do encourage our teams to meet in the regular season (it would also be fun to meet in the playoffs, in the Alerus, of course).

When determining whether they'll make the playoffs in a worst-case scenario (i.e. not winning the conference tournament), the only thing to look at is PWR. Using the above-linked numbers, Minnesota is currently #6. How many teams get in on the basis of PWR alone depend how many of the automatic qualifiers would NOT have gotten in on the basis of PWR, but it seems a pretty safe bet that #12 in PWR should make the tournament. About as bad as it could get for the Gophers would be swept by SCSU/swept in WCHA play-in by Denver. That would still only drop their win% to .5375; SCSU and Denver both have win% around .54, so wouldn't hurt UMN's opp% of .56 much. Minnesota's RPI would drop to around .54. That would flip the comparison with UW, UNH, and possibly U-Mass and Miami, depending on their relative success. Minnesota doesn't really win any close matchups on the basis of TUC or COP. Even dropping from winning 18 comparisons to 14 or so, UMN would likely still be around #10. Of course, weird dramatic shifts can occur when bubble TUC teams drop in/out of consideration, but of those on the cusp only Bemidji St jumps out at me as a Gopher opponent, and their inclusion would help MN's TUC.

Well, I'm 100% certain that it has been H2H first in the past, and I like to think that even I would've gotten the memo if that were changed, but I'd still be happy to consider a legitimate source that indicated otherwise.

Source?

2 pts for the Sioux guarantees a share of the MacNaughton and the #1 seed in the WCHA tournament (Sioux would win the H2H tiebreaker with UMD). The Badgers can overtake UMD for 2nd, leaving UMD in 3rd, with a sweep in Madison (and we all know exactly how possible that is). Any other outcome guarantees the Badgers spot #3, and the Bulldogs #2 if the Sioux get at least 2 pts, or #1 if the Sioux fail to get at least 2 pts. 4-7 is a dogfight; each of the teams vying for these spots is playing another team vying for these spots, making the permutations ugly. Denver has the H2H for seeding over Minnesota and SCSU. If the Gophers don't do better against SCSU than Denver does against CC, Minnesota faces an unenviable play-in series in Denver. Who will the Sioux face in the play-in? AA, Mankato, or M. Tech. If UND sweeps Mich Tech or gets 3 pts, the Sioux finish 1st, Tech 10th (Tech loses the tie-breaker against Mankato for seeding), Sioux host Tech. If UND gets two points against Tech, UND finishes at least tied for 1st, gets the #1 seed via tie-breaker w/UMD, and Tech earns enough points to pass Mankato. Sioux host Mankato. If UND gets 0 or 1 points against Tech, Tech climbs to 8th and drops AA to 9th. If UMD gains enough pts to finish 1st (3 more pts than UND earns), at #2, UND hosts AA; otherwise, at #1, UND hosts Mankato.

So, I was catching up on the Washington Post restaurant reviews and it seems I had missed our very own G.F Herald restaurant reviews having caused quite a stir in our nation's capital. In Grand Forks, Restaurant Week Reports the brouhaha begins: and continues Though you would think a discussion of G.F. restaurants in the D.C. restaurant review chat would be of limited scope and interest, it continues on to next week, Grand Forks, Cute Sommeliers: There were quite a few more comments in each of the chats, but I hit the highlights. I've gotta admit that see the point of the woman who wrote in -- a newspaper restaurant review of Taco Bell is funny anywhere.

Grand Cities please, please, please, die, die, die. It would be fine if it were just some random word that were associated with the area, but while the "grand" in the city name referred to the forks being striking in size, the name "Grand Cities" invites interpretation of it as indicating some sort of ostentatious greatness. It's embarrassing. IMHO, of course.

Yep, Gonchar didn't suit up for Florida last night. Word is the Caps will get Colaiacovo, a 1st round pick, and another player (the Caps want Staijan, but the Leafs think that's too much) for Gonchar. No offense to Zach, but Colaiacovo is a bit higher currency than Parise -- more likely to be a quick impact player, IMHO. Shopping Gonchar around seems to have upped the price successfully.

It's a little better when broadcast from REA (particularly a bit better color/contrast) because they have additional cameras and I suspect a cleaner digitalization/transmission. However, this blockiness is reasonably representative of what happens when you compress high action FMV to 200k/s.

I don't recall there being any piped in music either, and there definitely weren't conspicuously read advertisements during play. For those with broadband, here's a small taste of Kohl Center. Sorry about the quality, I didn't have a video camera with me, these are taken with a still camera, so pretty low-res. Sieve (2.7Mb .mov) We want more (5.3Mb .mov) In both I'm on the completely opposite side of the arena from the students and that is the sound of the ENTIRE arena shouting in unison. You can see in the sieve video that the entire crowd is doing the hand motions. Similarly during "we want more" the entire crowd is waving their arms while counting.