UND92,96

Last year, NDSU had four legitimately good players. This year, there's Alexander and...who exactly? Which means that Richman did one heck of a job.

I think the most obvious candidate would be Benton, given the fact that he was really the only non-senior scholarship player who practically never played. He could probably be a good player at Upper Iowa, Morningside or some other small school in Iowa where he's from.

Even though I had limited expectations for this season, I just didn't see a last place finish coming. Nor a 1-8 home conference record. I figured if Jones won 12 games or so, that would buy him another year. But I did think there was a minimum acceptable record. I guess I was wrong. As I've stated before, next year really concerns me. We all know some improvement is inevitable, but how much is absolutely required? Does Faison extend him again if he just approaches .500?

Big Sky awards announced: http://www.bigskyconf.com/documents/2015/3/9/2015AllConferenceTeam.pdf I was a little surprised there was no honorable mention for Hooker.

Here's a link to Minnesota class of 2016 players with division I scholarship offers: http://www.mnfootballhub.com/page/show/1286303-2016-recruitment

I was just looking at the UND basketball media guide. And it reminded me exactly how mediocre this program has been for 20 years now. As far as I'm concerned, the high-water mark was 1999-00 (Mustard, Reinke, Travis, et al. senior year), when the team finished 23-8. Good for third place in the NCC.

I think most people's fear is that Jones is retained, improves enough next year to approach .500, and then stays at that level for another year or two, just like during Huff and company's career. Yes, next year's talent level should be a bit better, but I think it comes down to this--if you're Faison, how confident are you that Jones is at least close to being as capable as the average opposing coach? Sadly, after watching him for nine years, I'm not confident at all.

I'm assuming you're focusing on the 12-8 Big Sky record, and not the overall 17-17 record from last season? Personally, I would be a bit more willing to give Jones the benefit of the doubt had there been some improvement record-wise from 2012-13 to 2013-14. I felt like the Huff, et al. group pretty much plateaued as sophomores. I didn't see much, if any progress during their junior or senior years. Although the degree to which Brekke's injuries impacted things is hard to know for certain.

5-6. Probably should have been 6-5 given how the last game was lost (uncalled too many men on field penalty), but that's neither here nor there.

I know some people hate the Jones-Muss comparisons, but I'm just throwing this out there because it struck me as interesting: Mussman 31-34 career record (.477) 3-8 record in final season (.273) Jones 126-152 career record (.453) 8-22 record this season (.267) And yes, I understand Jones' overall Big Sky winning percentage is quite a bit higher than Muss's was, even with this year's debacle. And even though both had bad home records in their last/most recent seasons, at least Jones mostly lost close games. Whether that's enough to override the other numbers is anybody's guess. Also, both had/have two years left on their contracts.

Yup. He didn't have five years NCAA experience, and therefore was not even considered at UND nine years ago. I feared at the time that we'd look back at the whole process 5 to 10 years later and realize what a joke it was. And here we are.

UND is ranked 10th in the Big Sky in terms of RPI. When you add in the Summit, UND is ranked 18th out of 21 teams, and last among the six ex-NCC schools.

I'm not doubting what you're saying. I'm just a little surprised. On the other hand, it's always been my belief that the people whose families go back a few generations in EGF sometimes have a very different viewpoint from the more recent transplants. I graduated from Central in 1988, and I can think of at least a dozen people from Grand Forks who graduated the same year as me who have since moved across the river, mostly due to the housing being a bit more affordable. Some of these people have kids who have recently played hockey for the Green Wave, and they would never dream of rooting for the Gophers over UND. For that matter, neither would any of the EGF people I knew in high school. But then again, I mostly knew the kids who played football and/or basketball. I guess maybe some of the hockey families felt differently.

That is interesting. I would be interested to know the identities of some of these Section 8 kids Gino didn't recruit but should have. Was Mack one? Obviously I remember the Christian's, Burggraf's, Bowen, Pelawa, Riendeau and a few others. In terms of kids UND didn't get, such as the Broten's and Erickson from Roseau, I assume that wasn't due to a lack of trying.

UND was 1-12 against the field. But on the bright side, we were 3-2 against teams that didn't make it. So we've got THAT going for us. Which is nice.

In the case of basketball, the second half of the conference season has been about as bad of a combined stretch as I can recall. The men finished 1-8 in the second half; the women 3-6.

Yes, I should have remembered that. He was a very good athlete as I recall.

It would have been really nice to have gotten both Klabo and Stewart. Especially since Stewart is on record as saying she was planning on going to UND until she got so much national recruiting attention while playing AAU ball last summer.

It seems crazy that in the first half (give or take) of the season, UND was able to beat Montana (RPI 100), win at UNC (RPI 138), give USD (RPI 76) and Colorado (RPI 115) all they could handle on the road, and play Minnesota (RPI 39) tough even without having Evers for most of the game. And yet despite not having any major injuries, lose six of its last seven games. What happened? Starting with the game at Montana, pretty much nothing went right.

If Jones is retained, I highly recommend that he try "doing the opposite" of what his instincts tell him to do. Couldn't hurt.

Given all the connections between current and recent graduate EGF high school players and UND, that would be bizarre if true. I don't doubt there's a certain segment of the long-time EGF population that resents Grand Forks, and by extension North Dakota and possibly even UND. However, what's the ratio of UND to UM grads in EGF? 20 to 1? 50 to 1? Maybe even higher? And how many EGF kids have ever played at UM in hockey? Any? None that I'm aware of. But I do remember Mishler, Bowen, Riendeau, Tyler Palmiscno, etc. Not to mention athletes in other sports such as Vonesh, Zeller, Perkins, Lueck, Brekke, etc. The reality is that unless somebody is a UM grad living in EGF, the fact that there are two EGF grads playing at UND, with another on the way, plus one on the women's team, should be enough to prefer UND over the Gophers.

Quite honestly, if there's any doubt in Faison's mind about Jones' future, this absolutely has to be a big consideration. Nine years ago, a good chunk of the casual fan base had mostly given up on UND men's basketball. Now, what has changed? Nothing in my opinion. UND is losing long-time fans to old age and apathy at a much quicker rate than new fans are being added.

I think we can safely count on Loyd, Dyer and Szabla to all be consistent double-figures scorers next season. But as for the rest of the returnees, I think only Strand and maybe Sawatzke are capable of scoring more than about 4 per game. That's a problem. We will need Klabo, Freije, Hass and at least one of the incoming guards to be part of the regular rotation, and provide some offense.

A buyout may or may not end up being much of an issue. For one thing, it would be due in monthly installments, as opposed to a lump sum. Secondly, it would be reduced by any coaching income he would derive in the next two years. I'm fairly confident the contract also provides a provision that Jones would have to actively seek other employment, as well, so he couldn't just sit back and have an extended "summer of George" while collecting checks. As for the potential loss of players, that's a real possibility, although it could probably be obviated to a large degree if the next coach kept a current assistant on staff.

Montana was picked 8th in the coaches' poll, and 5th by the media.