UND92,96

I believe this actually happened way back in the Omaha week, but it appears UND has suffered the first casualty from the 2007 recruiting class. Safety Cory Hanson from Willmar, Minnesota is no longer listed on the roster. I have no idea whether he quit, or was dismissed from the team.

Good question. I would hope Tibesar would be ready by next year (although I have no idea the extent of his injury), but the only other fullback on the roster that I'm aware of is the Safranski kid from Stephen-Argyle. Speaking of Stephen-Argyle and fullbacks, I saw the state championship game, and was thinking that the Gratzek kid looked like he might be a nice college fullback. I know his brother's at NDSU, but he might be somebody to watch for.

There were a number of linebackers red-shirting this year, including this kid who could be a good one, so hopefully one or more of them will be ready to play next year. We definitely could use a big nose guard in the Callahan/Schultz/Wolff mode.

It seems to me this poll would make more sense once the actual schedules are released, but since they've gone to the trouble of having one and all...I'll say UND finishes 3-1, beating USD and SUU, and splitting with the Cali schools. I just hope the season finishes with a home game. It would be nice to actually have a good chance to finish the season with a win for the first time in several years.

Not to mention that a huge chunk of the scoring (Little and Youmans in particular) will be gone. Next year's team is going to be extremely young.

I'm almost certain that two of the home games will be against dII opponents (presumably one is St. Cloud), as Lennon has mentioned as much a few different times on coaches' shows. IMO, the best bets would be UMD (Bubba factor, plus they've played Northern Iowa in recent years) or possibly Central Washington (they've played Montana State and Eastern Washington in recent years and we seem to have a good relationship with them due to travelling there in the past for non-conference).

Does anybody know whether Mike Gutter is still in school at UND? I saw him at both games this past weekend, which surprised me.

One thing was made abundantly clear in the past two weeks--you can never have too many quality running backs. Even though Chappell has two years to go, and both Murray and Solum were brought in this past year, I think it's imperative to bring in a couple more good backs in this recruiting class. I wonder if Brady will be back next year?

Probable UND opponent McNeese State was beaten badly on its home field last night in the first round of the FCS playoffs by the second-place team from the Big Sky, Eastern Washington. It was a very good day for Washington schools in the playoffs!

Unlike a certain GVSU fan, I'm not going to make excuses ("if Anes would have played in 2001..."), but I really wish we would have seen the "real" Sioux offense today. I would have had far less of a problem with losing today had I felt like UND played a good game and just were beaten by a better team. That's not to say that GVSU isn't necessarily the better team, but I think we all know the UND offense is far better than what they showed today.

What makes this all the more amazing, aside from the fact that UNO killed them on the road two weeks ago, is remember how terrible the CWU rush defense looked when UND played them? How the heck did their defense improve that much? BTW, Behrns is now 1-7 all-time in the playoffs.

I have nothing whatsoever against CWU, and I'm normally a UNO football hater, but I can't say I'm happy about this. All this does is benefit Grand Valley. Now they're at home instead of travelling to Omaha to play against what is normally a great rushing team. I can't believe UNO laid yet another playoff egg.

Yes, I'm at a loss to explain why we didn't make more of an attempt to run the ball.

I almost feel sorry for Pat Behrns right now. I never thought I'd say that.

McNeill and Miller have combined for just 59 rushing yards today!

It's now 17-7 UNO.

Here's the UND-GVSU box score. The rushing and rushing defense numbers are really ugly for the Sioux. And remember, GVSU was giving up more than 150 yards per game on the ground on average.

Well, I guess it IS the playoffs, and UNO is still coached by Pat "Regular Season" Behrns...

Here's a link for the "live stats" for the UNO-CWU game.

UNO is up just 14-7 early in the 4th.

Barring injuries to Miller or McNeill, or new injuries to the UNO o-line, I don't think it will be that close. UNO will control the clock and the game running the ball, and I don't think Iciek (sp?) is a good enough passer to really burn the UNO pass defense.

We need to go out and find some impact players for the front seven. We were neither effective stopping any decent running team this year, nor did we have much of a pass rush in most games. I am proud of the way the team battled back today, and the secondary played well I thought, but our front seven needs upgrading.

Maybe Murray can't play anymore due to injury, because that's the only possible reason I can think of as to why we seemed to completely abandon the running game in the second quarter. Running between the tackles seemed like the only way we were going to be able move the ball. I can't help but think this isn't really a case of the GVSU defense just being that good. Their defensive numbers are basically the same as ours.

I don't believe he is, at least at this point in his career. He didn't seem to hit the hole very hard last week IMO, despite decent numbers overall. Lennon spoke of options A, B and C this week, without naming them. Obviously Chappell and Murray are options A and B, but I still think Dressler would get a look before Battle. If we're going to give GVSU our best shot today, we need our best player to touch the ball as much as possible.

According to the UND media guide, Chappell was timed at 4.42, and Dressler 4.44. I suspect those are hand times rather than electronic times, but I don't really know exactly how they do their testing in the spring.