UND92,96

My guess, and it's just a guess, is that the one guy who would probably be in the best position to advise Faison on this situation is Steve Brekke. One, he's an assistant a.d. Two, he's a former UND basketball player, and a very good one. Finally, his son played for Jones for five years. If Brekke gives Jones a vote of confidence, it would probably go a long way. If not, all bets might be off.

At least in 2009-10, we could delude ourselves into thinking that having five or six scholarship players red-shirting was the main reason for the awful record that year.

I figured it was probably something like that, but it seems a bit unusual to give a start to a player who almost never plays.

I can't blame the players for defending Jones. I'm not saying he deserves it, but a kid is either going to go out of his way to defend the coach in the face of adversity, or say nothing at all. I take comments like this with a grain of salt.

He has two more years on his contract.

Amazingly predictable, isn't it?

Ideally, this is how I'd like to see the non-conference schedule, which is typically 10 to 12 games: 3 money games against power five conference teams (this may end up being 5 games total if one money game is a part of a tournament); 1 game against an NAIA opponent (I don't like these but they seem inevitable. Let's just keep it to one per year, please); 4 to 6 games against Summit teams, along with the occasional Missouri Valley team. These would all be part of home-and-homes, so that there should always be at least two decent home non-conference games per year. Is this at all realistic? I have no idea.

Some would open enroll into RR, and that's fine. It would take awhile for people's perceptions to change. But the reality is that a lot of parents in the present RR district went to Central, and would probably welcome the change. And a lot of others don't have long histories in GF, and therefore wouldn't necessarily have as many preconceived notions about which school their kid should attend.

I don't doubt that. She was still grossly overpaid, though.

Probably Geno. Of course, UConn women's basketball draws more than most men's programs AND he's been wildly successful. I'm just guessing that if he went on a sub-par run like Miller has, and only drew 1000 fans per game, UConn wouldn't be quite so willing to pay him seven figures. I'm still baffled how a school like UMD ever got to a point where it was paying its women's hockey coach far more than Minnesota or Wisconsin.

I don't know for sure, but I was thinking part of it would be Washington. I don't have any idea how it would work out population-wise, but I believe it's important to come up with a plan that has the Central district include some of the newer developments in town (besides Congressional, which really just replaced housing lost in the flood). There are a lot of newer developments on either side of Washington. Besides Congressional/Promenade, I believe virtually every new development in Grand Forks since at least the early 1980's has been in the Red River district. When you look at the elementary school situation in Grand Forks, there are currently two "mega schools"--Kelly and Century. A third will open next school year. All three are 100% in the Red River district. Therein lies a big part of the problem.

I've been saying for years that instead of a north-south divide, it should be east (Central) and west (Red River). Apparently nobody on the school board agrees. I get the whole "tradition" argument, but frankly you could not possibly come up with a line that is more inequitable than where the current one is while still keeping somewhat equal enrollments.

Just curious--any idea how many of those kids (overall numbers, not necessarily names) live in the Red River district, and open-enroll into Central? That seems to be a big part of the reason for much of the success Central has managed to have in the 2000's--Marto, the Lamoureux's, Luke Johnson, Simonson (?), etc. I'm not convinced that kind of thing will go on indefinitely. It certainly hasn't in other sports.

His son is graduating, so it wouldn't surprise me. I believe Central absolutely has to have a "name" coach in order to remain competitive, which generally means an ex-UND player. Without getting south end kids through open enrollment, Central hockey likely won't be much better than Central football and basketball, which have been among the worst in the state over the last five to eight years.

I think it's pretty safe to say that nobody is going to be hiring Miller again, ever. Which I'm sure she knows, and is presumably part of the reason she's engaged in such a scorched-earth policy on her way out of Duluth. I read yesterday how she thinks it's a Title IX violation that Sandelin gets paid more than she did. If a court agrees (which I highly doubt), I don't even want to think about the ramifications at pretty much every athletic department in the country.

I think Yanku from NAU and Hooker are the two best sophomores I've seen, but then again I haven't seen everybody in the conference play in person.

UND has one more chance to beat a 300-plus RPI team at home--Omaha. The bad news is that Omaha has won their last two road games.

Depends on the source. Realtime has us as 283. ESPN at 299.

This was UND's third loss of the season vs. a team with an RPI in the 300's.

I don't know how much, if any bearing this has on the current situation, but for what it's worth, Rich Glas was 13-15 in his final season at UND. Perhaps more interestingly, he was 20-10 in his second-to-last season.

She must be. I also don't know what's going on with Lauck, as she only played three minutes last night. About the only good news that came out of this weekend is that Sawatzke seems to be stepping up, as she had 10 points in 22 minutes last night.

UND loses. Finishes 2-7 on the road in the Big Sky. Not good. Not good at all.

UND struggling yet again on the road, down 36-26 at the half at SUU.

I'm not sure what Brew is doing with the starting lineups lately. At NAU, Roscoe started instead of Evers. Tonight, Szabla isn't starting.

I'm sure they'll be better, but SUU returns pretty much everybody, too. Somebody has to finish in the bottom few of the conference. Besides Idaho St., I'm not sure I'm very confident that UND is going to be better than any other teams next year, UNLESS the two aforementioned freshmen are really, really good.