UND92,96

His bio is pretty interesting. I never realized he had no previous connections to Minnesota/the Dakota's (he's from Greenwich, CT) until he was hired at NDSU by Bob Babich 27 years ago. He's never really left the region since.

I think Bolte and Johansen would both be excellent candidates. But the more I think about it, I would also be pretty excited with a Schmidt hire, as nobody could have predicted he'd potentially be available less than one year ago. A relatively young coach from ND, with very recent experience coaching in the FBS national championship game under one of the biggest name coaches in the country, who was a great player at UND, and who presumably would have a lot of connections that could lead to portal additions, seems almost too good to be true in my opinion.

Different sport and different time, but when Rich Glas left, his primary assistant Randall Herbst was named interim head coach, and was ultimately named a finalist before UND eventually hired Brian Jones, so who knows? My guess is that the feeling was that Freuchte was best equipped to try hold together the recruiting class/minimize player exodus until a permanent coach is hired, which hopefully happens next week.

52.

I could be way off base here, but if Baldwin were to be hired, that might provide a major indication that Chaves isn't really on the hot seat after all. I certainly respect what Baldwin did at EWU eight-plus years ago, but I can't imagine you'd want your AD to hire a guy with no previous connection to your traditional recruiting areas, whose career seems to be on the downswing and whose candidacy seems to be mostly based on the fact that your AD previously hired him, if you really planned to can that AD soon.

I just meant that if, hypothetically, Nielson told him he was retiring after the season or even after next season, maybe he’d be less interested in moving on now due to already having the players to fit his system, not having to uproot family, etc. Obviously I agree that UND is the better job.

Along those same lines, Johansen’s interest may depend on 65 year old Bob Nielson’s plans at USD, since presumably Johansen is the heir apparent there. But if Nielson wants to coach a few more years, who knows? Maybe Johansen doesn’t want to wait and is ready to move on.

I think somebody else mentioned him in this thread several pages ago, but in terms of successful dII coaches from the region who have had done "more with less" than most of the other NSIC powers, Brent Bolte from Bemidji St. might be somebody to at least reach out to.

He was a former NDSU assistant, but was at Wyoming in 2023 so he was not an internal hire at the time.

I don't know what the actual "required" process is these days, but I know NDSU only took one week to name a new coach last December, and it wasn't an in-house hire. Hopefully UND knows who they are going to hire and just does it ASAP rather than dragging this out as long as it took when Bubba was hired.

Sounds like it just happened. Bubba steps down.

NDSU plays at a refurbished Dacotah Field. It’s a pretty nice facility with artificial turf. They won the conference this season. SDSU plays at a municipal facility well off campus with natural grass turf. It’s a fairly similar situation to when UND softball played at Apollo. They still seem to do well, finishing third this season.

You kind of have to assume that the softball situation is different due to the large donation made by one of the player's parents to fund the new facility. It's not Engelstad-type money, but hypothetically, if that player's parents are happy with the coach, it would be a bit more difficult to make a change at this particular point in time.

I realize there are several important differences in the two eras, such as the state of the program when they took over, but it's nevertheless interesting that Bubba's current winning percentage after nearly 11 full seasons (.559) is actually lower than what Pat Behrns' was at the time he was fired at the end of his sixth season (.571). Behrns was 8-3 in this second-to-last season, but followed that up with a 3-8 record in his final season, with an embarrassing 49-0 loss to NDSU to end the season, and that was enough to send him packing. But then again I'm sure Behrns didn't have three years left on his contract at the time.

Matthern is a PWO, as will be Reardon. Not sure about Hillesheim. Of the current players, the one I could see maybe having already informed the coaches that she's done after this year is VanderWal. This is her fourth year in the program, so it's quite possible she's planning to graduate in the spring. That's just a guess on my part, though.

Mark Farley of UNI is retiring at the end of the season. He's a little younger than Bubba.

I would be pretty stunned if Schiller isn't an immediate starter. I also think you can draw some conclusions about the impact she'll have by looking at what Logan Nissley did last year at Nebraska. Nissley made the Big Ten all-freshman team and scored 7 ppg. While they're obviously different types of players, Schiller was the better player in high school in my opinion. The 2023 state championship game should have erased any doubts about that. If Nissley could do that as a freshman against Big Ten competition, I'd look for Schiller to do considerably more against Summit competition.

It's a pretty strong year for ND high school quarterbacks. Parks from Red River, Schepp from Velva and Sheldon from Mandan are all quite good.

I'm dating myself a little with this comparison, but he reminds me somewhat of Travis Kraft, who played on some of those really good May-Port teams from the mid to late 1990'S, and later at South Carolina and NDSU.

Not technically a former player, but one-time UND football commit Darius Luff won the 110 meter hurdles for Nebraska at the NCAA track championships last night. He'll be running in the Olympic trials in a few weeks. Obviously he's a long-shot to make the team given how strong of an event the hurdles is in the US, but it's also not completely out of the question given that he dipped under 13.20 seconds last night.

The best womens'/girls' basketball coach in the region is already a UND employee--Kent Ripplinger, the longtime Red River girls coach. Hire him as a mentor to Mallory and let him be in charge of the defense. I guarantee things would be better than what we've seen in recent years.

As I recall, Brewster was fired around March 11, 2020, and Mallory was named interim head coach. Covid shut the world down less than two weeks later, and no national search was ever conducted. Or am I just not remembering the chain of events correctly?

I would really like to see UND talk to both Jersey Berg from Bismarck and Karly Franks from Davies as potential PWO's. I have heard that Franks will be attending UND. She's a lights-out 3-point shooter. Berg is Hunter Berg's daughter, shoots the ball really well and is a taller perimeter player at about 5'11".

I have had the opportunity to watch Schiller play every game for the past few seasons, and I don't think there was ever a game where she wasn't clearly the best player on the floor, and that includes multiple games against Logan Nissley and LeeLee Bell. She's just relentless on both ends of the floor. I have followed ND girls basketball since the mid-1980's, and I haven't seen a better or more complete guard. Not even close.

I agree. And considering the enrollments of some of the larger suburban Twin Cities high schools, it would appear likely that Grand Forks would only have one high school if it were in Minnesota. Minnetonka, for example, with a population of about 53,000, has an enrollment of 3,200 at its one public high school.