UND92,96

Ada-Borup is well on their way to another state title, and Smart continues to impress me. She's very unselfish, shoots it very well from 3-point range and just doesn't seem to have any glaring weaknesses in her game. I think she'll play and play a lot next year. EDIT: Ada-Borup wins 61-31. Smart nearly outscored the opponent herself, finishing with 27 points and 6 assists. I believe she ended the tournament something like 11-20 from 3-point range.

I guess it goes to show how difficult it is to recruit as a mid-major program. I assume the juco kid they brought in this year was supposed to have provided more of a low post presence, but it didn't really work out that way.

I'm watching the Ada-Borup semi-final game right now, and Smart is impressive. She handles the ball and passes well, and can knock down the 3. Maybe a Carissa Jahner type, but with more scoring ability? EDIT: A-B wins big, and Smart finishes with 22, including 5 of 10 from 3-point range.

Congrats to NDSU on a fine performance. Woodside is an amazing player. It will be very interesting to see what things will be like in the post-Woodside/Winkelman/Nelson era.

If you put Minnesotans Woodside and Aldrich on Tubby's team, how good would the Gophers have been?

Maybe it would be more acceptable if we argued that Lance Berwald and Joe Regnier (and many other dII Bison centers) were far, far better than Moormann, too?

This game was a bigger blowout than perhaps expected, as Ada-Borup ended up winning by nearly 40. Smart had 24 points.

I too was very impressed with Kierah's blog. I will really miss watching her play. She's going to be a big success in whatever she does.

I'm watching Ben Jacobson's UNI team give Purdue all they can handle. UNI returns basically their entire team next year, so when they come to town it will likely be the second-best team we've ever hosted (after Kansas).

I'm not sure there have been enough games against elite teams in the past two years to draw any conclusions. They did play USC (a 10-seed) close, and lost by 14 to Minnesota (another 10-seed), but both were bubble-type teams--not top-15 teams. Last year's game against Florida may have seemed like a big deal at the time, but the Gators only made the NIT. I just don't see any reason to think they're ready to seriously challenge a 3-seed barring some sort of miraculous shooting game.

It's hard to ignore NDSU's 0-3 record vs. tournament teams, and their very low strength of schedule index. I think they'll need a shooting performance similar to Villanova's vs. Georgetown in the 1985 national championship game, i.e. the "perfect game", to keep this one close. Obviously it's a huge jump to go from playing Summit teams to Kansas, and it's not like the Bison were exactly blowing out the competition in the Summit tournament.

Playing the Thursday before Labor Day is understandable, although UND's game against Sioux Falls is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 15.

I'm pretty sure the writer got that wrong. She signed a LOI to play basketball.

Carly Rothfusz and Eden Prairie advanced to the MN 4A semi-finals today.

You can see the new football jerseys here.

If I'm not mistaken, the dI limit for women's basketball scholarships is 15, and you can't split scholarships among multiple players like you can in dII. Is that accurate?

Rothfusz doesn't have highly impressive statistics, but she was listed by ESPN as one of the top six prospects in MN this year, so apparently she must have very good potential. I'm going to be very interested to see what happens in the late signing period coming up in the next month or so. Allegedly, UND has one more scholarship to give, and is looking at Sharkova from Lake Region. But if you look at the expected returnees and the four who have already signed during the early signing period, I don't see how there can be a scholarship for Peterson (who is only verbally committed) AND Sharkova. Perhaps there is more than one player on the current roster who is a walk-on, because short of somebody leaving early, that would appear to be the only way both players end up at UND on scholarship.

You were actually correct regarding the ages of Vonesh and Boschee--I believe both graduated from high school in 1986. However, Boschee walked-on under Gunther and for whatever reason never red-shirted; whereas Vonesh took a medical red-shirt in the 1988-89 season.

Get it right--it's the 1991 Sioux we're mostly wondering about.

Strongly disagree. Vonesh scored over 2000 career points, and had 1200 career rebounds. And that was back when the vast majority of games were against conference teams, so it's not like he padded his numbers against DAC teams. Moormann is not even close to the player V (or Gardner) was. How does a 6'10" guy only average 4 rebounds a game, anyway?

Just my opinion, but the present NDSU team is a bit too reliant on perimeter play. It can work not to have a viable inside game, but teams like that tend to be quite vulnerable in the post season. The JJ Reddick-era Duke teams, for example, had a tendency to flame out early because of an over-reliance on 3-point shooting.

IMO, the 1990-91 team was the best UND men's basketball team (I'm too young to have seen any of the Phil Jackson teams, though). The starting lineup that year was: C Vonesh, sr. PF Gardner, fr. SF Guldseth, soph. SG Jacobson, soph. PG Burkett, sr. About the only "weakness" I think that team might face by today's standards is 3-point shooting. It's too bad that Mike Boschee never red-shirted, because if you added him to that team it would be have been even better.

If JBB and lakesbison weren't enough to preclude NDSU from getting a conference invitation--any conference invitation--I'd say that's proof positive that conference presidents and/or commissioners don't take the viewpoints of a few fans on a message board or boards into account when deciding whether to extend an invitation.

Nicole Smart and Ada-Borup will be looking to repeat as MN class A state champions this weekend.

Carly Rothfusz's Eden Prairie team has qualified for the MN class 4A state tournament.