UND92,96

Wayne Nelson blog on the start of the NCC season and the disappointing performance by the Sioux vs. SCSU.

Sioux up 38-25 at the half.

Another interesting thing from the above-linked column is that Kelling's name isn't mentioned as somebody who has been interviewed via phone. I wonder if he's still in the running?

I'm not sure whether this has been posted elsewhere, but here's the job announcement for the a.d. position. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of applications submitted on February 5-7. The reason? The new president is supposed to be announced February 5. Applications for the a.d. are going to start being reviewed February 8.

Just a guess on some of these positions, but here goes: QB-Danny Freund* RB-Ryan Chappell* FB-Marcus Tibesar WR-Brady Trenbeath* WR-Alex Nicholas TE-Blair Grover LT-Kyle Bondy LG-Brian Troen* C-Mitch Braegelmann* RG-Erik Moe RT-Keith Queoff DE-Jeff Richter NG-Nate Wayne DE-Nick Farstveet OLB-Bobby Stroup* ILB-Brett Holinka* ILB-Ryan Kasowski OLB-Jeff Tescher CB-Drake Otto FS-Rory Manke* SS-Derek Malner CB-Delano Saporu K-Brandon Hellevang* P-Derek VanZee *-denotes returning all-conference or honorable mention all-conference players

Interesting column in the Mankato paper bemoaning the fact that Mussman isn't going to be the next MSU-Mankato coach.

Oops...sorry. Anyway, I guess the point is still the same. SCSU has essentially the same team as last year. We should be better. Not sure what happened last night.

I'm disappointed that the Sioux weren't more competitive last night. Last year, UND lost by only three at St. Cloud, and that was without Youmans.

On the WDAZ news last night, it was reported that the first two applications for the a.d. job have been received: Tom Seitz Joe Biedron

It's very interesting that UND came out in a zone last night, and it apparently worked quite well. I was a bit surprised that Mankato only beat UMD (probably the worst team in the league) by four points. Granted, it was in Duluth, but I didn't necessarily expect that game would be particularly close.

Bakken's mea culpa.

I'm still hoping for Smith, but Kelley does sound like a good candidate.

Herald confirmation of the Sutton commitment. link

Chris Mussman is on the coaches' show right now. A few things: -all commitments are still solid; -since Lennon resigned, there have been three more verbal commitments; -he's working on Dale Lennon to make a big donation to UND with his fat new contract.

Not sure how often this is updated, but here's one: link

Excellent! I was really hoping we'd get one of the two very talented Wisconsin backs considering UND (Ewing being the other). Sutton led the state of Wisconsin in rushing, and as mentioned in Walrus's post he was the WI Gatorade POY. Last spring, wissports.net rated him as the 19th-best senior-to-be in the state. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd now be ranked higher than that among WI seniors after the amazing season he had.

Bakken blog. Methinks Bakken just got himself removed from the Roebuck Christmas card list (if he's saying what it appears he's saying). While I would agree that this is a game the Sioux could lose if they don't bring their "A" game, Mankato really hasn't beaten anybody of note. Their one real test was Concordia-St. Paul, and they lost that one by 12 in Mankato.

Ex-Bismarck High player Jamie Sigl has transferred from UMD to UND: link Sigl was the North Dakota AAA player of the year his senior year.

According to Pat Sweeney on the 6:00 WDAZ sports, Blais won't be applying for the UND a.d. job.

Ashley Langen should pass Kristi Boese on Thursday to move into third-place on the all-time UND scoring list. She'll also likely pass Sheri Kleinsasser at some point during the conference season to move into second place behind Jenny Crouse.

According to the Eastview football website, he did commit to UNI.

It doesn't look like early round playoff games draw all that well at SIU, either. link.

Ryan Bakken blog.

I suppose it's difficult to compare teams at this point due to the varying degrees of schedule difficulty, but the NCC and the region as a whole look pretty tough this year. UND and Concordia-St. Paul are the only unbeatens, but Mankato, USD, UNO and Fort Lewis all have just one loss so far.

It's interesting that another former NCC coach--Beau Baldwin from Central Washington--just took the head coaching job at Eastern Washington, which like SIU was a FCS playoff team this past year. However, he'll "only" be making $100k, which is half of what Lennon is getting at SIU, and less than what Lennon was making at UND in dII (at least in terms of base salary).