UND92,96

73 Mayville St. 61 UND I have no comment.

Yes--111-27. And MSU-Moorhead beat them by 50 earlier this season.

That 2005 game still leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons. One, the turnovers at the worst possible time by one player in particular were absolute killers. And the other was, if memory serves, the apparent refusal to pay special attention to Chris Denney. Denney was really their only receiving threat, and yet he always seemed to be open in the fourth quarter.

Very true. Keep in mind also that there's something to be said for productivity even if a kid doesn't necessarily have blazing speed or a 40" vertical or can bench 225 pounds 20 times. I don't know anything about Carr, but Miller was extremely productive for probably the best high school program in North Dakota. He seems like the type of kid SDSU has been having a lot of success with lately. Given a choice between a kid with all the measurables but modest productivity, and a kid without great measurables but with great productivity, I'll take the latter most of the time. Given the already excellent performance of the class of 2008, and the rumored potential of the class of 2009, I can't second-guess Mussman as an evaluator of talent.

Cameron was both in high school, but I guess I don't know for certain whether it was contemplated that he would concentrate on punting at the college level. This is strictly a guess, but it wouldn't surprise me if Cameron punts and maybe kicks off, but Miller handles the extra points and field goals.

In addition to SDSU, there's another former UND opponent that recently moved up and is experiencing early success at the dI level. Remember Florida Gulf Coast, UND's opponent at the 2007 Elite 8? They went 26-5 last year, and made the WNIT. They're 4-2 so far this year. Sagarin has them at number 94 right now--10 spots below SDSU.

There will likely be a competition for the kicker job between Cameron and Zeb Miller.

As I've said before, we won't know for certain exactly where the team stands until they start playing Great West opponents. We're unfortunately quite overmatched against the most of the teams we've played so far, but perhaps not so much so against Great West teams. But regardless of the level of competition, the shooting has been poor, and that's probably largely a function of not having a low-post scorer and having to rely too much on outside shooting.

UND shot 11% from the field in the first half against WKU, and 21% for the game.

I don't know exactly what the problems are. I'm not as worried about the talent level as I am about getting the most out of whatever talent we do have. But I'm going to just sit back and watch how the rest of the season unfolds and refrain from making any further comments until then.

Good points. Basically, when you combine a slow-down, turnover-prone offense, poor shooting and an ineffective zone defense, it adds up to being number 341 out of 347 dI teams in the country.

Pioneer Press has come out with their all state team. Interesting that Crookston jr. LB Brody Davidson made the team, as you don't normally expect kids from not-especially-good teams from northwest MN to get a lot of recognition state-wide. Some of the names I'm especially interested in from this list are John Crockett from Totino-Grace, Shea Walker from Cretin (h.s. teammate of Kleason and Binns), and Matt Michaelson from Pequot Lakes.

I never expected miracles, but I did expect that Glas's successor would have us clearly better than teams like Bemidji State by his fourth year. We're not.

Pretty much every high school boy basketball player dreams of playing dI. For that reason, we should be in a good position to, at a minimum, get some of the best dII-caliber players around. I'm not sure we are. In fact, I think we'd finish in the bottom third of the NSIC right now. Yes, Jones didn't come in at a great time with the impending dI transition, but it's still his fourth year, and no apparent improvement has been shown. That's a concern IMO, particularly since he has no track record as a head coach anywhere else.

If Northern Colorado can go from being 4-24 in the 2006-07 season, to 6-0 and apparently a more than respectable mid-major team in 2009-10, there's no reason something similar can't happen here in the next few years. But I'm growing impatient. The UNC coach was hired at the same time as Jones, and even though they were dI when he was hired, and UND was dII when Jones was hired, the UNC situation was still at least arguably worse than the one Jones took over.

There's no question that the present team doesn't hold a candle to the early 1990's teams. But have we seen any improvement compared to the Rich Glas teams of the early-to-mid 2000's which struggled so badly against DAC teams? Granted, we're not playing many of those teams anymore, but I just don't see that the talent level has gotten any better, and obviously the team isn't grasping the Princeton offense. Throw in a zone defense which is allowing opponents to shoot 42% from 3-point range (and even Bemidji State torched us in an exhibition game from behind the arc), and it makes a person wonder exactly what is going on.

While I'm not sure if both of them are necessarily projected as corners, is there much of a chance Hall and/or Mackey could potentially challenge for the other starting corner position?

Question: Is this program in any better shape right now, at least in terms of on-the-court performance, than during the latter stages of the Rich Glas era?

The defense will be more experienced than any group we've had in some time. The starting d-line returns intact with Boyle, Brenneman and Bellmore, and Benjamin also returns as the backup nose guard. Backups at defensive end will need to emerge in spring ball, but Lundeen should be a strong candidate for one of them. Kasowski and Dublanko lead the linebacking corps, with German and Cochran also being very experienced. After those four, and Dan Hendrickson, it should be pretty much all red-shirt freshmen--Bennett, Finley, Goodman and Otto. The secondary should also be very experienced, with all four starters returning--Schwenzfeier, Ankenbauer, Hawkins and Saporu. Watkins and Kudrna are both pretty experienced as the backup corners, and Belotti and Mersereau should be the backup safeties. Red-shirts Mackey and Hall should also contend for playing time in the secondary.

My guess with regard to the receiving corps is that we'll see Hardin and Townsend as the primary complements to Bamba, as we need athletes and those guys reportedly have more speed/quickness/athletic ability than the older returnees. Davis could also be an option here. I like the fact that we seemingly have four offensive line spots in place with McGurran, Queoff, Lynch and Schroyer, but I'd sure like to see all but Lynch come back at least 15 pounds heavier. Unfortunately, that's probably not realistic with regard to Queoff and Schroyer, as they've had four years to put on weight and it hasn't really happened yet.

So, does anybody care to go on the record as having voted "F"? Probably the same people who voted last year's recruiting class as the "most disappointing."

It's probably not a good sign that there have been absolutely no posts either during or after the men's game vs. Green Bay, or the women's game vs. Ball State. I suppose a combined 2-11 start will have that effect...

If I were basing it mostly just on the overall record relative to what realistic expecatations were, I'd say B. I think there were four quality wins--USD, Stony Brook, Cal Poly and Central Arkansas--and four quality wins isn't bad. But basing it on overall performance, I'll say C. The team was just too inconsistent to warrant a higher grade. While numbers certainly don't tell the whole story, I think the offense needs to score about a touchdown more per game next year (we averaged about 23 ppg), and the defense needs to give up one less touchdown per game (we gave up about 28 ppg).

UND is now 7-7 vs. FCS competition through two years of the transition--not bad all things considered. We obviously have a ways to go, but it seems the program is at least heading in the right direction. The latest Sagarin rankings have UND at 33rd among FCS teams. I consider that pretty good considering clearly this team wasn't one of our better teams of the past 15 years or so.

70 UNC 63 UND final