UND92,96

link

I believe Jossy most likely will be the starting point guard. With regard to Brekke, she's the daughter of current co-acting UND a.d. Steve Brekke, who was a great player for UND in the early 80's. I'm pretty sure she'll red-shirt this year.

Kevin Fee blog.

I suppose this will be the last year we have to hear about how Augie always gives UND fits. Sometimes I think that by repeating this over and over, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kind of like how UNO always loses in the playoffs. That has to be in large part a mental block. Anyway, I think the talent disparity between the teams this year is pretty substantial, so hopefully the Sioux can take care of business.

Not that my question has anything to do with this thread, but does it seem to you that both California Great West schools are down this year? Davis lost at home to Western Washington, and Poly barely beat dII also-ran Western Oregon last week.

Don't forget about these guys: link.

It's hard to believe in this day and age that two teams could combine for over 100 points and neither team even attempted a field goal. I will never complain about a win, especially on the road, but I'd feel better about giving up so many points had it been against a team that was known as an offensive juggernaut. WWU had only scored a total of 38 points through their first two games. I'm not sure about Bodoh, but I'd expect Stroup back next week, which should help. I believe Noah Dombrovski played last night for the first time this year (he entered the season as the expected starter at the strong side OLB), so at least the linebacking corps is starting to get healthy, assuming Stroup can go next week.

Well, I don't think I did any of those things, aside from perhaps being anti-Buning, but the point, as it were, is that as a fan and alum, I'm going to give my opinion when it comes to what I perceive as damage being done to the department. Of course not everything Buning did was bad, but evidently the bad outweighed the good or he probably wouldn't have gotten such low marks from those in the department. To the extent I'm in any way responsible for Buning's apparent ouster, I'm not trying to absolve myself. I just don't think it would have happened based upon complaints from people outside the department. Personally, I e-mailed Phil Harmeson exactly once, and it was during the men's basketball coach hiring process. As somebody once suggested, I pretty much let the professionals handle it. And I guess they did.

No, actually I try not to assume. You know the old expression. But do I think Buning's fate was in any significant way related to postings on this or any other message board? Not at all. I also don't think for one second that Harmeson based his decision on anonymous complaints. I believe the survey simply confirmed that what he had been hearing from many people within the department was indeed a consensus opinion. It is obviously unfortunate that UND is not looking very good in many people's eyes because of this whole episode. Which is why I ask the question: what SHOULD the UND administration have done?

A couple of questions: 1. In your opinion, had nothing ever been mentioned about problems within the athletic department on this board, would the end result have been substantially different for Buning? Put another way, were the whispers a substantial cause of Buning's problems, or merely a result of his actions? 2. In your opinion, how should the administration have handled this matter?

Has that ever been verified? See post #165 questioning it.

It seems like there are a lot of parallels between Buning's tenure at UND, and Alfonso Scandrett's at MSU-Moorhead. After about two years, Scandrett was "re-assigned" within the MSU athletic department, his contract wasn't renewed, and he apparently went away without a peep. I honestly thought the Buning situation would go down in a similar fashion, but clearly I was wrong.

There's no question that this isn't an easy situation to step into for an "outsider." However, what I think people need to keep in mind, especially now that we know how poorly Buning was graded by athletic department employees, is that by defending Buning, those people are essentially impugning the intregrity of those employees. If this were simply boosters who were unhappy (again, the Wanless example comes to mind), or just a few coaches, then perhaps one could make the claim that Buning was being wronged. However, it was apparently the nearly unanimous sentiment of coaches and staff that he simply wasn't a good leader. Whether intentionally or not, defending Buning now as "just doing his job", as many of the comments on the Herald site basically stated, is essentially a slap in the face to the coaches. Not that they need people like me to defend them, but it just rubs me the wrong way for people who really don't have a good grasp of the situation to think so little of the coaches to suggest that they would try to get somebody fired over something as trivial as cutting a few perks.

I have to stop reading the comments to that article. If these people are representative of the Herald's readership, I'm starting to think that roughly 80% of them must be insane.

Harmeson explains why he can't talk about Buning's "leave of absence." [url="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=50980

I was referring to the comments left by readers on the Herald website.

I'm not saying that the twins may not still change their minds, but my understanding is that the chances of that happening were a lot better prior to Minnesota's head coaching change.

I had a long "comment" telling off these people all ready to submit, but then I decided against it. What's the point? Anybody who still supports Buning after all we now know (and most of us don't know the half of it) must not have much regard for UND coaches. I choose to believe that if most of the coaches are saying that things are bad, then things must be bad.

Almost unbelievably (at least to me), if you read the "comments" to the Herald story on the Buning survey, they're mostly supportive of Buning! I guess we're supposed to bring him back and get rid of everybody else in the department and start over.

I'm a Rob Bollinger fan, but if he's not interested, and if Ray Purpur still isn't interested, I'd give Terry Wanless a call. And yes, I'm serious. I never had any big problems with him, and any mistakes he made were early on. I always thought he was a pretty good guy, and he could manage a budget, and NOT have all the coaches hate him.

Swyg was mistaken.

WWU utilized a lot of misdirection, as I recall, and it worked pretty well, but the main reason that game was close was because it was the first game post-Manke-injury, and the UND offense was extremely anemic that day.

Herald article on the results of the recent survey of UND athletic department employees: [url="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=50885

That certainly appears to be true. The second-best team in the GLIAC may be Michigan Tech. Tech lost to Winona State earlier this year.

Ralston and Brekke have been named co-acting a.d.'s. link.