UND92,96

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.

IMO, NDSU beating Wisconsin in basketball a couple of years ago was bigger than beating the Gophers in football. The 2007 Minnesota football team may have been one of the worst Big Ten teams in recent memory. Wisconsin's basketball team was actually good. Now I realize that football and basketball are very different in terms of the potential for upsets, but UC Davis knocked off Stanford a few years ago, so it's not unprecedented for a non-playoff-eligible FCS program to beat a poor team from a major conference.

I certainly didn't expect USD to stay within 25 of UNC. I wasn't impressed with the Yotes in any of the four games I saw them play this year.

According to a Wayne Nelson blog from earlier this week, UND has offered Doug McDermott. I had previously thought he was a senior this year, but apparently he's a junior.

I think we all know what Walaker probably meant, but the fact is that he said it in a very untactful manner, and he's going to justifiably get crucified in the media for it. He knew, or should have known how those comments would be perceived by a lot of people, and not just in Grand Forks.

I have a feeling Sioux Falls doesn't report attendance so as to avoid looking bad compared to Augustana.

In case anybody is wondering, these were Johnson's comments: I was curious about Sioux Falls attendance, so I checked out their web site. They conveniently neglect to include attendance figures. I'm sure Johnson is enjoying being a head coach, but I highly doubt he's getting better fan support now than he was while at UND.

Wayne Nelson blog. Looking like we may have to wait until October for a home game.