UND92,96

UND up by 20 at the half.

Mea culpa. I just had such a hard time believing UMD was legit for a couple of reasons. First, Schlafke never did anything in four career starts vs. UND. I thought he was highly overrated. Second, UMD has several kids from this area playing for them who I frankly didn't think could play at a high dII level.

Poor defense and poor 3-point shooting isn't going to win you a lot of games, but unfortunately that's where we are right now. The latter problem is something that's plagued UND for years, it seems.

I've only seen the Eastern Michigan game, so it's hard to say exactly what's going wrong since, but IMO we need to get at least close to double figures every night from Kimbrough, Guinn, Youngblut, Seay and Bagaason. For whatever reason, the latter three haven't been doing so the past couple of games. Hopefully once we start playing other transitional teams, things will take a turn for the better.

Or how about the fact that Southern Utah had nine first-teamers? Strange. But for UND being in an especially charitable mood a couple of weeks ago, SUU would have been winless in the league.

UND selections were Blair Grover, Brian Troen and Josh Murray on the first team; Mitch Braegelmann, Brett Holinka and Brandon Hellevang (as a punter) on the second team; and Kyle Bondy, Ty Boyle and Andy Miller as honorable mention. USD did not have a single first-team selection. link

I noticed that he played some tight end and/or fullback on short yardage/goal line situations in the second half of the season. Not sure whether he'll be playing defense anymore or not.

IMO, one of the biggest keys to next year's season will be whether the defense can improve and be more consistent. This year, against FCS competition, UND gave up 32.2 ppg and 412.5 ypg. Let's face it, that's not going to win a lot of games. The following are returnees from this year's two-deep depth chart: nose guard 1. Nate Wayne 2. Ty Boyle possible impact newcomer: Devin Benjamin left defensive end 2. Link Gottbeheat right defensive end none possible impact newcomers: Ross Brenneman and probably a couple of jucos weak side inside linebacker 1. Andy Miller 2. Paul German strong side inside linebacker 2. Ryan Pollow weak side outside linebacker 2. Ryan Kasowski strong side outside linebacker 1. Jeff Tescher 2. Ross Cochran possible impact newcomers (linebackers in general; not any specific positions): Jay Nelson and hopefully some of the other young linebacker who didn't play a lot this year. Juco's/FBS transfers? left corner 2. Dominique Hawkins free safety 2. Kris Ankenbauer strong safety 1. Joel Schwenzfeier right corner 1. Kenny Watkins possible impact newcomer/returnee from injury (db's in general; not any specific positions): Delano Saporu and Justin Belotti

Brian has done a great job--no question about it. With regard to people being upset at the time he was hired, my recollection is that it had nothing to do with Brian himself. Rather, it was because of a process whereby at least one person with strong UND hockey ties was encouraged to apply by the previous a.d., only to then be told by that same person that he/she wasn't qualified enough to warrant an on-campus interview. That was what caused most of the uproar IMO.

Talk about a disappointment. I certainly expected a closer final score than that.

It looks like USD is quite down compared to last year. They lost at home to unranked dII NW Missouri State last weekend, and last night they managed just an eight-point win over something called Northwestern College of Iowa, a 4-4 NAIA team.

Herald article.

I was really young at the time, but I still remember the 1981-82 Sioux team featuring Dan Clausen, Steve Brekke and Aaron Harris. That was a great team. It's pretty ironic that both Brekke and Clausen have sons who are a part of the same UND recruiting class!

Stephen F. Austin is apparently improved over recent years, but they haven't had a winning record since 2004, and they average around 8700 per game. I'm going to reserve judgment until we know for certain this isn't a home-and-home, but I'd certainly like to think we shouldn't have to resort to this type of scheduling. During our entire run as a dII power from 1993 to 2007, I don't believe we EVER agreed to a road-only contract against a program in our own division (in other words, Northern Iowa was the sole road-only contract to my knowledge).

I can't disagree with any of this, although of course the difference between this year's situation and all of the others is that in those cases, teams weren't substituting four of their toughest conference games for games against UMC, Northern St., SW MN St. and MSU Moorhead. Even if it's true that UMD is good enough this year to have won an intact NCC (circa 2006 and 2007 anyway), unless they have a good showing in the playoffs there will be a healthy dose of skepticism in some circles that their improvement wasn't in large part a function of a much softer schedule. Whether that's fair or not, I don't know. BTW, do you know whether UND ever recruited the Winfield kid?

If true, I'm quite disappointed that we'd accept a one-game, road-only contract with an FCS team. I could understand doing it for this season, but now that we'll be a counter, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm not too disappointed in the result of this game. Montana State is supposed to be pretty good (picked third in the Big Sky), and obviously playing a Friday night game followed by a long bus trip for another game less than 48 hours later isn't easy. I think the Sioux are going to win a lot of games vs. dI opponents this year.

Herald article on some of the freshmen who may make an impact next year.

With USD beating SUU, I guess we're now the only Great West team without a conference win this year.

I have to respect Bob's opinion, as he follows dII football a lot closer than probably any of us. But if UMD is really that good this year after going 4-6 last year and not looking very good at all IMO, Nielson must be some kind of miracle worker. In any event, you almost have to think this year may be something of a mirage, similar to how Winona State had some really good teams in the early 2000's, because presumably the effect of the scholarship cut necessitated by re-joining the NSIC is going to begin to be felt in the coming years.

If last night's game was any indication, it looks like only eight players will regularly see playing time: Harkins, Joseph, Porter, Harrison, Mertens, Bledsoe, Mitchell and Benter. According to the boxscore, nobody else played last night. I'm amazed that we were able to win without Mertens scoring in double figures.

I've been somewhat critical of recruiting in the years since Kimbrough was brought in, but I do like this year's signings. MN alone produces a lot of dI-caliber girls basketball players, and we just need to do a better job of recruiting other parts of the state besides only the NW part. SDSU has provided the blueprint. There's no reason UND can't do something similar.

I was very pleased with tonight's performance. I believe Kimbrough, Youngblut, Guinn, Bagaason and Ledger were all in double figures. It was nice to see that the Sioux could win without a monster performance by Kimbrough.

The strange thing is that this has gone on the past few years, under multiple a.d.'s/interim a.d.'s, and two different SID's. I just don't understand why it should be like pulling teeth for the athletic department to issue press releases promptly upon receiving signed letters of intent (for sports other than football, for which this has never been a problem). EDIT: I see a press release for a baseball signee was just posted, so perhaps releases for other sports are forthcoming. But I still don't understand the delay for men's basketball when both verbal commitments signed their LOI's yesterday. I strongly suspect it's a similar story on the women's side, as it's doubtful that any of the four expected signings didn't take place yesterday.

Here's confirmation of the Josh Schuler signing. I also know that Brandon Brekke signed yesterday because Jones said as much on the coaches' show last night. So why can't we get this info from the Herald or fightingsioux.com? Nearly every other dI or dII school in the area announced their signings yesterday.