UND92,96

There will be a one-hour live webcast discussion on the game at 1 p.m. today here: http://www.argusleader.com/article/9999999...emplate=mogulus

I don't know much about the other Great West programs, but USD should be pretty good since their best player (Hegge) sat out last year with an injury and is now back. I think they also got a pretty good transfer from Iowa State, although presumably she has to sit out a year. UND should be more balanced in scoring than we've seen in a long time, since for so many years it seemed like one or two players--Kimbrough, Langen, Boese, Leighton, etc.--would be the leading scorers by far. This year, there should be several players at or very near double figures, and I don't really see anybody averaging more than about 12 ppg.

Is Morningside better now than they were as an NCC program? Where do you think Sioux Falls would finish if they were in the Northern Sun this year?

I like what we have going in terms of young d-linemen, and this year's red-shirting LB's look very good on paper. There will be a lot of pressure on them to play early considering we have no scholarship LB's remaining from the recruiting class of 2008, and few from 2007.

In addition to Bamba, Hawkins and Schwenzfeier, I'd say a healthy Boyle and perhaps Bondy would have started on most of the good UND teams of the past 8-10 years. While I agree that the overall talent level right now is nowhere near where it needs to be, I'm frustrated at the seeming lack of progress being made by the defense over the past four or five years. I had really thought we'd see some improvement this year given all the experience coming back, but besides getting more turnovers, there hasn't been any real improvement as far as I can see. We're actually giving up more rushing yards this year against FCS opponents than we were last year though four FCS games, and as mentioned by several people the pass rush is absolutely non-existent this year.

When you look at the statistics, it's kind of amazing that UND is 3-2. The defense is giving up more than 300 yards per game passing, and over 160 yards per game rushing. I can understand struggling in one area or the other, but not both. It seems that the saving grace right now is turnover margin (UND is +6), and defensive/special teams scoring (3 td's and 2 safeties).

Not a good combination for a defense. Plus, it seems that some of our db's have questionable ball skills.

Do you think people will still be complaining about Barry Hall and/or Chapman's house nine years after they're completed? And will they be expected to turn a profit? O.K., I'm going to stop reading this thread before I get myself into trouble.

Just curious, do you actually regularly attend UND football games? I've been to every game since the Alerus opened, and I was at every game at Memorial in the 1990's and much of the 1980's, and I certainly wouldn't want to go back to playing football at Memorial whether it was renovated or not. I have to assume most people agree given the difference in attendance at the Alerus compared to Memorial. If tomorrow's game were at Memorial, attendance would be anywhere from 3000 to maybe 5000 tops. Indoors, it will be at least 10,500.

Regarding property taxes in Fargo and Grand Forks, I was curious so I went to each county's web site, and compared property taxes for two homes which were assessed at values within $1000 of each other. Even including the dike assessment which we pay in GF, and which presumably Fargo people will be hit with soon, the GF tax bill was actually about $60 lower. So IMO, if you're really comparing apples to apples, i.e. two homes with nearly identical values, taxes are NOT higher in Grand Forks.

But at least in North Dakota, we don't need to worry about scrambling to make up for state budget cuts by raising property taxes the maximum amount under state law, like what's going on across the river. Personally, I much prefer the relative stability of the overall North Dakota tax situation. We pay higher property taxes, but we pay low state income taxes.

It appears that this is a one-game contract, as future UND schedules do not show a return trip to Stony Brook. If so, this was a very good job scheduling by Faison, et al., as Stony Brook appears to be a top 50 FCS team right now according to computer rankings. At a minimum, it helps to offset the fact that we agreed to play at Stephen F. Austin with no return trip.

While that's fine in theory, it doesn't seem like it's going to work unless they want to play non-scholarship dI's or dII/NAIA teams. I believe that's why Montana had to start actually honoring their home-and-home contracts--it was proving too difficult to find decent teams who would travel without the possibility of a return game.

Regarding NDSU's schedule, the thing I find somewhat surprising is the difficulty they've had lately scheduling home non-conference games. This year, they only had Wagner, and that game was added very late. Next year, they have none scheduled yet.

According to the UND football media guide, the trophy was introduced by a weekly publication that hasn't existed for years. So my guess is, since USD itself did not originate the trophy and would seemingly have no basis for requesting it, UND probably does still have it in a trophy case somewhere in Memorial Stadium.

To answer my own question, I guess the correct answer was both. For this week at least, I'm actually more impressed with the offense, for the simple fact that the defense was supposed to be the strong point of the team, and the offense was supposed to be a bit down--and the offense was pretty weak through three weeks. It will be interesting to see if the offense can sustain or even improve its performance, or whether Saturday's performance was in large part a result of USD's tendency to really struggle on the road to stop anybody. Had the offense done most of its damage through the air, I may have been more skeptical, since USD's pass defense, at least on the road, is bad nearly every year. However, USD is generally decent against the run, so Sutton's huge day may be a sign that the line has really started to turn the corner.

Just to reiterate a point from a different thread, official capacity is 12,283 (according to UND), so this should be classified as a sell-out. I believe this may be the only one since the NDSU game of 2001. A different seating capacity was used in 2001, as that season's numbers included suites and standing room, which have not been included in the official numbers since.

Shepard 0-4. Meierkort 1-5.

The good: -yet another win over USD; -Sutton and Bamba are legit playmakers, and Landry played his best game thus far; -offensive line took a huge step forward; -goal line stand late in the fourth quarter was huge; -blocked two extra points; -very good attendance. The not-so-good: -Boyle's injury; -still had some tackling problems; -far too many rushing yards allowed; -almost no pass rush; -kicking game was sub-par today with a missed field goal, a high snap resulting in an unsucessful PAT, and two kickoffs out of bounds. Overall the good far exceeded the bad--a very good day!

Even Wayne Nelson is picking USD: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/135811/ USD was coming off a good win the week prior to playing UND last year too (a 42-20 win at Southern Utah, possibly the only relatively high-quality road win of Meierkort's USD career), and we know how much that ended up mattering.

2009-2010 SCHEDULE 09/05/09 at Arizona State Tempe, AZ L, 50-3 09/12/09 at Oklahoma Norman, OK L, 64-0 09/19/09 at Weber State * Ogden, UT L, 44-17 09/26/09 vs. Central Washington Pocatello, ID L, 33-22 This program is an absolute mess. They're a terrible team year after year; they're showing no visible signs of improvement; and they're apparently also desperate for money. Quite a combination.

Yes, that was me, although I can't really remember what the e-mail said.

According to UND, 12,287 is a sellout. There are 18 suites--some have 12 seats, and some have 18 seats, according to the Alerus Center web site. If it's like the Ralph, there's room for a lot more people in the suites than just the 12 or 18, but the the web site doesn't give a total capacity for the suites to my knowledge. The web site still lists football capacity as 13,500. It doesn't seem like the discrepancy (1213) can be entirely attributed to the suites. It's possible that the standing-room areas behind both end zones may be included in the 13,500 number, although I have no idea if standing-room tickets are actually sold.

I'm fairly certain that it doesn't.

If we lose by four scores, on our home field, to an opponent we've owned for most of the past 20 years, a week after being embarrassed, it will be the low water point for the program since the late 1980's IMO. I don't see it happening. USD has a lot to prove before they should be heavily favored on the road against any halfway decent scholarship FCS program.