UND92,96

I agree about Archer and Allard. The kid I'd like to see them run some plays for is Haugen, as he's supposed to be a very good 3-point shooter.

I've got a lot of opinions on this topic, but I kind of want to wait until after the season to share most of them since the last two games should tell us a lot about the state of the defense. All I'll say at this point is that we're giving up 29.2 ppg, and 408 ypg, and if the numbers don't dramatically improve against UC-Davis and Central Arkansas, it will be the fourth consecutive year where the defensive numbers were worse than the season before.

It was disappointing that Wilmer wasn't in uniform, as he was one of the freshman I was most interested in seeing. Not sure what his injury status is. I thought Clausen looked pretty good. He knocked down some 3's, and wasn't afraid to take big shots. He also took a big charge late. None of the freshmen really did much offensively. It's hard to say which of them may develop into scorers in time. It was clear that the offense has a long way to go before the players are comfortable running it. It never seemed like anybody got a good shot as a direct result of running the offense. Probably the most disappointing aspect of yesterday's game was that Bemidji seemed able to get an open look, particularly from 3-point range, nearly every possession of the second half against our zone. Their offfense moved the ball much better than ours did.

Pretty sure they're still red-shirting. The women's red-shirts played a few minutes in their first exhibition game, too.

Just a reminder--there is an exhibition game today at 3 o'clock against Bemidji. Looking forward to seeing what the freshmen and Clausen can do.

I would recommend sending an e-mail to Brian Faison. Not only is he obviously UND's a.d., but he's also on the Alerus Center commission.

Normally I'd agree, but I can't help but wonder if Brian Kelly's success may cause a school to want to get Lennon before a bigger/better program does, assuming SIU makes a deep run into the playoffs? While he doesn't have a long history with SIU, he does have a fairly long history of success as a head coach.

If SIU wins a couple of playoff games, I wonder if Lennon will get a shot at an FBS job? Maturi should fire that clown Brewster and hire Lennon.

It would be nice, but I can't really fault Lennon for going all-in to make one last run at a dII national championship, which was presumably a big part of the decision not to red-shirt Ankenbauer, Saporu and Murray in 2007.

While I understand the issue with Cameron as a punter, you would think that his leg strength would warrant him kicking off rather than Hellevang.

Agreed--I was mostly referring to his field goal kicking this year, which has been quite good.

In addition to Bondy, I believe the one sr. who may prove difficult to replace in terms of on-the-field performance is Hellevang. Hopefully either Cameron or Miller can be an adequate replacement.

I'm a little concerned that this year's team is really going to struggle to score points in the paint, and if the outside shots aren't falling--and they sure weren't last night--scoring is going to be a real problem. This is probably the first season since about 2003-04 where we haven't had a talented scorer in the low post.

I suspect that may be true. He's put up some very impressive rushing numbers the past couple of years.

I am a small business owner, and while the commission has definitely made some mistakes, I have always supported the Alerus. I didn't vote for it with the idea that the building itself needed to make a profit in order to justify its existence.

UND picked to win the Great West: link

Sioux Falls better than Illinois? App State? Southern Utah? Stephen F. Austin? And the list could go on and on. I think they're pretty good, but that ranking seems somewhat ridiculous.

Haven't had much reason to talk about polls/rankings lately, but the new Sagarin rankings have UND at 137, or number 29 among FCS teams: http://www.kiva.net/~jsagarin/sports/cfsend.htm

A case certainly could be made that of all the defensive coaches on the staff right now, Kotelnicki may actually have the best credentials, particularly in terms of what he did before joining the staff here. He has previous dI experience AND coordinator experience from a major dII conference. Nothing against Mannausau or Kelling, but to the best of my knowledge Kelling was always a position coach (and I believe primarily on offense) at Augie, and Mannausau's non-UND experience is all at the high school level.

I'm not going to go so far as to say what Mussman should or should not do, but hypothetically speaking, if he did decide to go in a different direction at d-coordinator, the two people I'd like to see him call are, in no particular order, Tim Tibesar and Eric Schmidt. For Schmidt, it would be a promotion, and I have to think he'd be open to it. The fact that Lennon brought him along to SIU tells me all I need to know about his potential as a coach. As for Tibesar, I have no idea what a CFL position coach makes, but I doubt it would be all that much of a pay cut to come back here (could be wrong, though).

From a UND perspective I hope Meierkort stays at USD for as long as possible, because I certainly wouldn't want to see what somebody like DeBoer could do with 63 scholarships. If Meierkort were let go for some reason, I'm sure DeBoer would be at or near the top of their wish list.

I was a little surprised that according to the box score, Sharkova only played 10 minutes. As between Sharkova and Kuehl, who looked more physically ready to play at the dI level?

86 UND 56 JC final

I can't make it either, but I believe Tom Miller from the Herald is doing a live blog from the game: link

I love a good 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' reference.