jimdahl

The disbelief generally comes only from those who desperately wish the Sioux were a bad team; it's tough to criticize UND's record (conference sweep) or post-season success (national semifinals!) so the only criticism they can come up with is that UND's wins weren't flashy or dominating enough. UND may lose eventually, but we're still watching our Sioux play while those people are are sitting at home checking the scores each week, hoping that loss finally comes. I'm incredibly impressed by this team and the way they've won their games this year. An early season loss to unheard of Mesa State was worrisome, though in hindsight our only regular season loss came in OT to the #1 West seed! This team has done what it takes to win, no more, but no less. Today when it seemed like everything was going against us, they could've been disheartened and given up, but the defense still made big plays and the offense made a big play when it was needed most to lock in the win. As I said in the thread I started, the defense and special teams have been huge contributors in the playoffs -- the whole team has combined to do what it takes to win. Many of us have given the Sioux their due this year with predictions like how well the Sioux receivers would match up against the Bison's weak corners (when the weekly derision about how the Sioux were "lucky" and would be "exposed next weekend" was much louder); I just don't know enough about Northern Alabama (yet) to make an intelligent analysis of how we match up. I do acknowledge that UNA seems to be our toughest opponent yet, but we could be one of their most formidable challengers, so we're kind of entering the unknown.

On whether games always turn out as expected -- Grand Valley State got ANOTHER road playoff win, this time over undefeated, #1 ranked Saginaw Valley State. FYI-- I gathered a bunch of "quick facts" about UNA and threw them in my Sioux weblog.

That's why they play the games on the field instead of just hand the trophy to the team that ends the season #1, there's always a chance. No doubt UNA is the toughest opponent UND has faced all season; UNA will be heavily favored and UND will be a tremendous underdog. I have to think the game will be in Florence, which will favor UNA even more. UND has been able to step it up and play with favored opponents all year (Mesa St., NDSU, UNO), but none of those teams proved to be as good as the Lions so there's no real metric to determine to just what level the Sioux can "step it up". I just hope the Sioux can bring their "A" game and put forth their best effort next week, and then it will be tough to complain, win or lose.

For the second playoff week in a row, turnovers and special teams are a key contributor to the Sioux offense in a close game. This week featured a punt return for a TD, 2 forced fumbles and an INT in the first half, and another INT in the second half (sorry if I missed any). Through the hills and valleys of each game, I've almost come to expect a shot of momentum from the D or special teams when the offense is sputtering (see my prescient prediction in the play-by-play thread). All season long, every part of this team has made important contributions to winning each game, not just relying on the offense to run up points. Congratulations team!

Awesome season, Winona St -- first ever playoff win and a great showing against UND. The Warriors are definitely sending the message that you can no longer pencil in NSIC games as free wins and I expect we'll see you again in the playoffs soon! Winona St ran an offense that reminded me of NDSU's, very tricky to defend against. Great coaching job by Sawyer.

1st and Goal UND on a huge pass from Bowenkamp to Caleb Johnson

They heard me Digger Anderson pick, Bowenkamp in at QB. Now burn that clock, boys. Even a FG on this drive would be huge.

We need a big turnover here; I think only a big defense/special teams play can recapture the momentum on this game. Or will they bring in Bowenkamp?

I know it's been discussed various places for a while, but the Forum picked up on the story today:

Winona Daily News (This is the same AP story I've seen in quite a few places) Not much new: On WSU's offense: On big victories this season: On how much older this team is than the one we faced in 2001:

I'm sorry that my choice of what topics to pay for people to discuss doesn't include some topics you want to discuss; however, I and many others who contributed to creating this organization consciously chose that it would provide news about and an opportunity to discuss UND athletics. Since you "despise UND", it's not surprising that you find the topics on this web site not necessarily aligned with your interests. While DI-AA may be very interesting to you, it no longer has anything to do with UND now that all the decisions about changes in the NCC have been made and are nearly completely executed. The conversation about DI-AA from the perspective of whether UND might reclassify has more than played itself out, barring any additional news. Therefore, after consulting others and giving a brief opportunity for public comment, I closed that forum. I'm not sure how that makes me "not classy" or "living a life of denial", but name calling certainly won't bully me into changing the mission of this site to try to please self-avowed UND-haters.

I agree that UND probably wouldn't have continued the series even without the SOS implication, because the argument used to be that "we wouldn't be competitive". The game hurting UND's playoff chances was a tremendous convenience to those opposed to continuing the series. Hopefully D-II will continue to tweak the playoff selection criteria and improve that SOS stat -- an RPI that completely excluded games against non-Divisional opponents is my personal leaning. It's hard to argue against the assertion that the top tier of DII is very competitive with DI-AA in football. The best of DII have been transitioning to I-AA quite successfully for 20+ years. UNC's success this season is another great example.

So, WSUWarrior, where's our scouting report? (We promise not to pass it on to Dale Lennon). I really don't know much about the Warriors. In their only interaction with the NCC this year, they had a close win over a decent SDSU team (which UND also defeated in a nailbiter). Though it's a different team, I'm sure the Warriors remember the 28-42 loss to UND in their only other playoff appearance and don't plan to make it that easy again. From the articles I've read, it sounds like WSU had a really good defensive showing against ESU, and Pitt. St. has shown that it's possible to contain the Sioux passing game. It makes me wonder if this will be the wide open game I would have expected, or if it's going to be another closely fought battle settled by special teams/turnovers.

+5 on turnovers finally results in more than 7 points on the board

The real problem is that his ratings are very complex because his goal was to make a computer rating that could replace professional polls, which means the results have to be meaningful after just a couple games. That included things like adding a margin of victory; then realizing that margin of victory rewards running up the score (not necessarily a sign of a good team), so included an anti-run up the score measure; then realizing that some teams might never win by 20 (because of coaching style or other) but always win, so included Bayesian correction for that. The Massey rankings include so many corrections for individual "problems" with mathematical ratings that the complexity is too high to be able to agree that the results are "correct". Note that the Massey ratings people usually quote are NOT the Massey ratings used in the BCS calculation -- those simply analyze record/strength of schedule.

I'm inclined to agree. I haven't lived in Minneapolis for a few years and I remember going to Sensor's to try to get them to show Sioux games. I believe we started going to Sensor's because that was often the site of the satellite parties back then, so we knew they could pull in the games. Every now and then there were a couple of parties of Sioux-watchers. Here is direct evidence of Sioux fans organizing trips to Sensor's on this message board before Zach joined the Sioux.

As PCM is the only one in this thread that I know has first-hand experience on how much attention the USD-SDSU game gets in South Dakota, I'm inclined to believe his opinion on the games' importance to the fans of those two schools. However, I do believe that UND/NDSU has drawn more regional and national attention recently because the schools have frankly fielded much better football teams than the South Dakota schools; they have frequently been playing for control of the conference and shot at a playoff appearance. Though the USD/SDSU hype in SD certainly may exceed the UND/NDSU hype in ND, I don't think the SD matchup has drawn much attention outside of South Dakota. I honestly don't understand the resurgence of this topic today -- it doesn't seem like there's anything new (other than Bison1234's coming around from criticizing UND's stance to agreeing that playing a team in another division is a bad idea)? The game still is the biggest guaranteed football draw for both schools, UND and NDSU still aren't planning on playing next season, the game will still (stupidly) hurt UND's playoff chances, and NDSU is still trying to fill out a football schedule that looks like swiss cheese.

I've been negligent in keeping up the stats, and, understandably, Bison fans' interest in publicly talking about the Goldern Arm comparison has waned (however, they will remind you that they won some championships in the 80s). Here are the end of the season stats. Edge Bowenkamp: Rushing yds, rushing TDs, pass efficiency, passing yards/game, passing TDs, INTs, longest pass Edge Stauss: Pass Completion % (pass yds/Att-Cmp intentionally omitted because they are easily calculated from included stats) RUSHING GP Att Gain Loss Net Avg TD Long Avg/G John Bowenkamp 10 24 82 30 52 2.2 1 11 5.2 Tony Stauss 11 28 6 160 -154 -5.5 0 3 -14.0 PASSING GP Effic Att-Cmp-Int Pct Yds TD Lng Avg/G John Bowenkamp 10 152.22 281-183-5 65.1 2247 20 69 224.7 Tony Stauss 11 133.77 325-220-7 67.7 2134 15 43 194.0[/code] Looks like Stauss lived up to past reputation:

Hmmm... I've always felt it strangely out of place at UND hockey games because it makes my mind go to the Orioles.

So who's going to call up the cheer team and volunteer to be their official photographer?

I don't think that's what I said at all. I was just saying that I thought UNDProud's reminder was timely (that people are likely to read what is written about them). In fact, I kind of thought I was defending your criticism by pointing out that no band member is likely to be crushed to discover that there's someone who doesn't like the band.

I'm always a big fan of reminding people that whatever they write about someone is likely to make it back to that person. That's not to say posters shouldn't be critical, but it bothers me when posters hiding behind relatively anonymous aliases say things that they wouldn't actually say to someone's face. That said, I don't think any band member will be shocked to learn that some people don't like the band and think they're not good. Though never at the college level, I was a pep band geek in high school (shocking, isn't it?), and certainly knew that a lot of people didn't like the band. I can't believe they mike the brass -- that's just wrong. It's also unfortunately common for pep band trumpets to try to maximize volume rather than quality (yes it is a tradeoff).

I don't think anyone is taking Pitt St. for granted. To repeat some of my points from my story: So, Pitt State has made the playoffs 80% of the previous 15 years, and have frankly done pretty well there. The Sioux have seen the Gorillas enough that I hope they aren't afraid of Pitt. St., but I also definitely hope there's adequate respect. I think UND should be favored in this game at home, but a loss wouldn't be a shock at all. Unlike most NCC games in which I focused my pregame prognostication on UND's defense, for this game I'm actually concerned about UND's ability to score.

IUP not making it seems unfair, when a team like Winona does, but that's a known effect of the regionality; the SE region is absolutely loaded. The quirkiness in that region is a side effect of the SOS point values having been arbitrarily made up. Basing SOS solely on opponents' win percentage instead of including opponents' opponents' percentage (like RPI does) doesn't properly sort out the relative strength of conferences that play relatively insular schedules. Bentley, at 10-0, was pretty much guaranteed a higher seed than 10-1 Grand Valley because of a combination of that characteristic of SOS and the emphasis on win/loss records. Simply replacing the current SOS and win percentage criteria with an RPI would help a lot, but wouldn't provide the function of encouraging teams to play a D-II schedule, as desired by the committee.

Here it is: NCAA D-II football playoff bracket Midwest region was pretty much as everyone who studied the selection criteria predicted (with the only question being the order of #3/#4): 1. North Dakota 2. Winona St. 3. Emporia St. 4. Pittsburg St. The committee seemed to perfectly follow the criteria as laid out last summer.