UND92,96

If I were Maturi, I'd want to talk to Boise State coach Chris Pedersen. Granted, this was his first year as a head coach, but an undefeated season and a win over Oklahoma is bound to make some major conference schools take notice of him.

It's interesting that both Bohl and the guy who fired him at Nebraska, Frank Solich, are being mentioned as candidates. link

From a football perspective, it's a great move. But it runs contrary to what the twin cities sports media have been saying all year, because Mason is owed four more years' salary. Somebody must have come up with about six million extra bucks.

Sioux win 72-58. Stat of the game--UND out-rebounds Seattle-Pacific 49-23! The bad news--UND has another 25-turnover game. That needs to stop.

I think this game is crucial if for no other reason than to give the team confidence that they could conceivably win an NCC road game this year. With a loss today, I would have serious doubts as to whether they will win another game away from the Betty this year.

I haven't been inside Purpur Arena in years, but I know they used to have a plaque on the wall of the lobby area which included all the years that game was played, and the yearly winners. If I have a chance to get over there, I'll see if it's still there. That would at least give an idea of when the game was discontinued, if indeed it has been discontinued.

In ND, probably Catlin Solum from South and Luke Senger from Bismarck. Not sure about MN and elsewhere.

Here's a recent article on Brackins, from the Winona paper. I'm not sure why it doesn't include UND in the schools recruiting him, but I suspect the problem is the foster father wanting him to stay in IF and play for him at Rainy River. I still believe UND has a good shot at him, though. Who's the 10th verbal? I count nine--Hendrickson, Belmore, Daggett, Anderson, Murray, Goska, Rose, Ankenbauer and Nguyen.

If Maturi hadn't signed him to a contract extension after last season, he would probably be fired. But unless some rich alum ponies up the money to buy out his contract, I can't imagine Minnesota could afford to buy out Mason AND come up with the money to hire a new coach.

From what I understand, things are going quite well. This should, in theory, be the most difficult recruiting year due to the fact that there won't be any additional scholarship money until 2008. I still hope some scholarships are used to get a few immediate-impact transfers on defense, but in terms of the high school commits so far, I think things are going well.

Although the Sioux never seem to get blown out on the road (except the exhibitions against IU and Purdue), they seem to always find a way to lose. It's a little frustrating. I wonder what the deal was with Little last night? He didn't start, and played just 16 minutes, although he managed to score 18 points in such a short period of time.

I don't want to spend too much time discussing a hypothetical UND-NDSU matchup this year, since obviously it's a moot point, but I think NDSU would have a chance for the same reason many other teams have a chance when playing UND--sit back in a tight zone and hope UND isn't hitting the outside shots. The Langen-Kimbrough duo would have a huge advantage over their NDSU counterparts in the post, but a zone can negate that advantage to an extent. The problem for NDSU is that they are a rather poor shooting team (under 40% as a team), so even if UND wasn't hitting, there's no guarantee that NDSU would be able to score enough to take advantage of UND's periodic outside shooting woes. NDSU's poor shooting, particularly from 3-point range, tells me that a zone should be played against them. The problem is, UND never plays zone. In Grand Forks, I think UND would win pretty handily. In Fargo, it would be hard to say what might happen.

That could be it. Lennon was quoted in a Herald article about a month ago as saying that there were a couple of prospective recruits with ND ties from outside the normal recruiting area. Evidently Ankenbauer was one of those kids.

I think both games this weekend are very winnable, although I'm kind of expecting a split. I'm not yet sold on the Sioux as a road team, and it's hard to predict how the layoff will affect them.

Two more commitments for the Sioux--Kris Ankenbauer, a Plano, Texas defensive back, and Tru Nguyen, a Burnsville linebacker. [url="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=22079

I guess I'm not sure what you're talking about. I, for one, don't believe I've disrespected NDSU's program at all--I've just pointed out the obvious with regard to their past year and a half, and their recruiting struggles which have stretched from the signing of Katie Lorenz to the present (I'm not familiar with their most recent signees). By the time UND and NDSU play again, it may very well be back to being a fairly even matchup. Right now, there is a talent disparity, particularly on the interior, in favor of UND. Nobody's denying that NDSU had great teams in the late 80's through 1997. Since that time, UND has clearly had the upper hand with regard to accomplishments (national titles, conference titles, etc.)

No, I don't think NDSU fans expected their women's program to struggle as much as they have in transitioning to dI, but in retrospect perhaps they should have. If you read what NDSU grad posted above, you would see that he acknowledged that NDSU recruiting had started to slide even before the announcement of the dI move. UND's recruiting has been very good of late, and the oncourt success has been as good as it's ever been, at least during the regular seasons. I think most objective observers would expect the UND women's program to more closely replicate what SDSU has done rather than what NDSU has done.

I love to compare scores? What are you talking about? On second thought, never mind. You're on my "ignore" list, anyway, although I couldn't help but see your most recent post since it was quoted in sultan's post. As for what the UND women have done recently--just about everything except making it back to the Elite 8. If that's the sole measure of a program, then I guess it's been a disappointment. By any other measure--an incredible success. Since UND's last trip to the Elite 8 in 2001, the Sioux have gone 151-25 (.858). Not too bad.

Per wisconsinpreps.com, UND has received a commitment from Cody Rose of Elmwood (WI). link. He's 6'4", 190 lbs. and Erik Lofdahl, who runs the site, calls him "one of the most highly-recruited athletes in the state." His father is an ex-NFL player.

I agree that making it into the men's tournament is very tough. But on the women's side, which is what I believe NDSU grad was talking about, it should be a much more achievable goal. The caliber of play in women's basketball in the Mid-Con and/or the Big Sky is not particularly good. I expect that the SDSU women will immediately be the class of the Mid-Con, and frankly, I think UND would have a very good chance of winning either the Mid-Con or the Big Sky this year.

I agree that Ruley doesn't have the horses. But the reasons for that aren't clear to me. Some ignorant people cling to the notion that NDSU's downturn in fortunes is somehow the result of UND swooping in and "stealing" all the good area recruits due to NDSU's impending period of post-season ineligibility. However, if that were the case, then it would seem USD and Augie should have been doing the same to SDSU. But that hasn't happened, which seems to blow that theory out of the water. That theory also ignores the fact that UND has traditionally gotten a good chunk of the area talent well before division I was even on the radar for NDSU (Heisler, Kleinsasser, Richards, Boll, etc.). Maybe Ruley just doesn't have the desire to recruit as much anymore? Maybe her assistants aren't doing a good job recruiting? It's hard to say what the reasons are.

He tries to push buttons. But who cares? There are lots of writers/posters out there who I don't agree with, but instead of getting myself all worked up over them, I just don't bother reading their columns/posts. Bakken is getting exactly what he's after, and a group of NDSU fans is apparently more than happy to oblige him. It's not worth getting upset over. With all that said, would you acknowledge that NDSU women's basketball definitely is well behind football and men's basketball in terms of having a successful transition into dI? And further, that they're clearly behind SDSU in women's basketball? The question is, why? I don't believe a win over a struggling Minnesota team at home erases the struggles in recruiting and in the on-court results of most of the past season and a half. I don't know what the problem(s) is/are, but I don't necessarily expect UND to experience similar struggles.

Bakken's latest blog entry. I guess I don't necessarily agree that UND will start to get lesser recruits. The reason being is that there really won't be any top-flight dII programs within several hours of GF. The state of ND produces a fair amount of good girl basketball players, and of course northwest MN has been a goldmine over the past several years. Most of those players are probably not going to choose to leave the immediate area, or choose Northern State or Mary or Moorhead (for example) over UND or NDSU. They may choose to go to a major conference dI program if offered, but it's rare that those offers are made to area players. It MAY affect twin cities recruiting to an extent, but most of the better UND players over the years haven't been from the cities, anyway. As a side note, it's interesting how many NDSU fans seem to be faithful readers of Bakken's blog.

The vast majority of women's basketball coaches are, in fact, women, so it's certainly ironic that the NCAA would essentially say that it knows better than female basketball coaches what is good for female student-athletes. My guess is that influential coaches like Pat Summitt (who I believe was one of the first coaches to use male practice players) get this proposal shot down.