UND92,96

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

I certainly agree with regard to the talent in NW Minnesota being far better five years ago than it is now. But I'm not sure the transition in and of itself should be that huge of a detriment to recruiting. SDSU seemingly wasn't adversely affected at all. I think we need to do a better job of recruiting southern Minnesota, where we picked up the Pudenzes, Arndtson, Boese, etc. It's been awhile since we've picked up a really good player from that area, but SDSU has picked up several. Wisconsin is another area which should be pretty ripe for the picking. Brewster presumably has contacts in Iowa, and we have gotten some Iowans of late so hopefully that trend continues. Basically, although I certainly like to have ND kids on the team, we may have gone overboard in signing locals as of late. Hopefully it works out, but truth be told I don't think any of them are, or ever will be of the caliber of Heisler, Meier, Kleinsasser, Richards, etc., and that's the type of talent we need, whether it's from ND or elsewhere. One final thought--doesn't it seem like perhaps we should occasionally get a player that is good enough to play at a high-major school due to the school of aviation? You would think that there should be a few great girls basketball players out there who are interested in majoring in an aviation-related field. I don't think that's happened since Crouse.

When SDSU went dI, we were basically dead even with them in terms of talent. Since that time, there's has gone up--mostly with SD, MN, WI and IA kids--whereas ours has clearly gone down, although not immediately since we did get Langen who they wanted very much, along with Kimbrough and Bagaason. Are we not targeting the right kids, or are we just unable to sign the top kids we do target?

Based upon everything I've read about Title IX, I don't believe a school can be required to add any particular sport in order to comply. A school can be required to add opportunities and scholarships for women, but the manner in which the school chooses to do so is up to the individual school, so long as the sport or sports added are NCAA-sanctioned. From the women's sports foundation web site: Is girl's/women's hockey somehow more important than gymnastics, for example? Gymnastics has been a sport at the ND high school level far longer than girls hockey, but I've never heard any talk of Title IX lawsuits to bring it back as a sport at UND or NDSU. Or are there simply no litigious gymnasts/parents in this state? Based upon the facilities already in place, and the general interest in hockey in this area, I think adding women's hockey was the "right" thing to so, although clearly not the most feasible from a purely financial standpoint. But it wasn't the only option IMO.

IMO, a big part of the problem is that since the Kimbrough-Bagaason class, no big-time scorers have been recruited. With a few exceptions, the recruits weren't even huge scorers at the high school level. So it's probably not a big surprise that this team seems to score in the 40's and 50's every game. That's not going to win a lot of games.

I guess we won't know for sure how bad things are/aren't until we start playing similarly situated programs, i.e Great West opponents, but I honestly never expected a Roebuck team to be this uncompetitive. I know the competition has been pretty strong, but I don't believe for one minute that the team from a few years ago with Boese, Langen, Kimbrough, etc. would be getting hammered like this. And certainly not the Crouse/Pudenzes/Richards teams. We are in serious need of a talent upgrade.

According to the Bison media blog, Langdon-Munich lb Travis Beck (presumably related to former UND women's basketball player Karla Beck?) will be taking an official visit to NDSU. Has anybody heard with UND is recruiting either Beck or Jon Dinius?

Whenever I see any reference to Villanova football, I always think of 2001--the season they somehow lost to dII New Haven, whereas we beat New Haven 42-10. I still don't know how an 8-3 FCS team featuring Brian Westbrook could possibly have lost to New Haven. I think Lennon will lead SIU to the championship game, although knocking off Richmond will be tough.