UND92,96

UND recruit Rion Rayfield led his team to the Wisconsin division 4 state title: link. Rayfield was also named third team all state (all classes combined) by the AP. Under the right coaching, he and Bledsoe could be an outstanding backcourt combination in a few years.

It's certainly no surprise, but both Alys Seay and Jossy Bergan were named first team class A all state: link.

I have no doubts that REA management hasn't been very helpful, particularly under Berning's regime, but from the outside looking in, UND's athletic budget seems to be growing exponentially the past few years. I have to think RT had at least some responsibility there. I question how often he ever said "no" to a request for more money from the various programs? For example, I posted a few months ago a comparison of all the men's basketball budgets in the NCC and NSIC, and UND was by far the highest-spending. Assuming those numbers were even remotely accurate, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by the deficit? I don't mean to be too critical of RT because again, I have always liked him very much. The bottom line is that being a.d. is more akin to being the CEO of pretty big corporation than it is to being a coach, and being a coach doesn't necessarily qualify a person to be a good a.d. I believe as time goes on, you'll see it less and less often for somebody to go directly from being a coach to the a.d.

As much as I like Roger as a person and appreciate what he did as football coach, he was in over his head and needed to go. Per the minutes from the September IAC meeting, the 2005-06 budget was projected to result in a $680,000 deficit. That's absolutely inexcusible, and the buck had to stop with RT. I understand all the challenges the a.d. faces with REA management and having all revenue producing sports being played in non-UND-owned facilities, but the a.d. needs to have a much better handle on the budget than that. He also made some curious hires, and was evidently unwilling to ever make any tough decisions in terms of getting rid of coaches in under-performing sports.

Maybe either Mac or Ben will hire Rich Glas as one of their assistants.

This was in the minutes from a recent iac meeting:

Presumably Jahner will have to play a lot of point guard next year. Jossy Bergan will likely be the backup. I would hope that Roebuck doesn't try to convert somebody else into a point guard (e.g. Bagaason or Guinn), because that very rarely works. Jahner was a point guard in high school, so that's not a huge stretch.

I thought it was interesting that despite the fact that UND has a limited number of scholarships available for next season (2 or 3?) and will be actively looking for juco players who can play immediately, they are still supposedly in the running for Mr. Basketball Travis Mertens. link. I thought he was going to Lake Region?

New coach named: link.

My guess would be Langen, Kimbrough, Guinn, Maffin and Jahner.

He's only been at UND for six years, so to me his whole career is considered recent. My understanding is that ex-assistant Riley was responsible for getting Beasley, and he's the one really good recruit over the past several years. True, Allen and Lolar were uber-talented, but I'm not sure whether they were Riley or Herbst finds, and they didn't pan out, anyway. Herbst has/had the reputation as a recruiter, but I'm not seeing the results. I will agree with you that the buck stops with Richie, but I'm not willing to give the guy who's supposedly the primary recruiter a free pass when it comes to how terrible the program is right now. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter how much of the blame is Richie's, and how much is Herbst's. The whole staff need to move on, and the sooner the better.

Looking back at Richie's career, it's my belief that his success and failure have been mostly a function of how good his assistant coaches are/were. With Mac, Richie looked like a coach who was on the fast track to at least a mid-major dI job. With Herbst, Richie looks like a guy who 90-something percent of UND basketball fans want gone. Herbst either hasn't produced in terms of recruiting, or if he has gotten the players, he and Richie haven't been able to cultivate the talent they had into good teams. Either way, Herbst has to shoulder much of the blame for the recent ineptitude of the program.

You probably have to make a choice--would you rather have Glas move into Bollinger's old job, or would you rather we have to endure another season of he and Herbst running the men's basketball program further into the ground? All signs point to him being back for another season unless he moves over into administration, so I'm definitely hoping for the job change.

I'm a little surprised nobody has mentioned this until now, but Chris Mussman was apparently a candidate for the vacant Wisconsin-Eau Claire head coaching job, but he dropped out for some reason. link.

Unfortunately, I forgot to listen to the coaches' show last Wednesday, but apparently Roebuck mentioned the need to possibly play some zone next year.

Kamille Wahlin has scored 46 points through two games to lead Crookston to the AA state championship game. It will be on KMSP (channel 9 in GF) at 2:00 today.

I'm just curious, are you saying that based on a negative impression of Glas's coaching ability, or for some other reason? Regardless of what one thinks of Rich Glas as a basketball coach--and I'm as big of a critic of him in that regard as anyone--people do like him as a person. That's what I would think you want in somebody who would need to do a lot of fund-raising. I have no idea whether he and/or Buning are even considering this possibility, but it could be a win-win situation. I see no possible way Rich will be coaching basketball at UND until retirement age, and it's difficult to conceive of a better non-coaching job for him at UND. This may be the last, best chance for him to leave his current job under positive circumstances.

Here's a nice article on Rion Rayfield: link.

Very true, but it is interesting that one of the rumored candidates to replace Glas within the hopefully not-too-distant-future is Montana assistant and ex-Jamestown College head coach Brad Huse. link.

That's pretty much exactly how I feel. I think it's imperative that somebody with strong UND ties be hired to replace Rob.

It started on March 30 last year, so I assume it will be starting in roughly two weeks.

So, assuming Rob's position isn't going to be eliminated, how about Rich Glas as his replacement? Seriously, I think this would be right up his alley. Thoughts?

link

One thing that struck me this year was that NOBODY played man-to-man against the Sioux. That was presumably because coaches knew that there was really no way to handle players like Langen, Boese and Kimbrough one-on-one. They were much better off sagging off, and forcing UND to beat them with outside shooting. In other words, they adjusted to give themselves the best possible chance to win. UND, on the other hand, played nothing but man-to-man, regardless of the opponent. In theory, that's fine, as I believe most coaches would agree that playing man-to-man is preferable, if you have the talent to do so. However, I believe that there are times that you need to have the willingness to switch up defenses if the situation calls for it. Two times that come to my mind are, not coincidentally, our two most recent losses (SCSU and Concordia-St. Paul). What do these two teams have in common? A guard who was very skilled as a one-on-one player. Obviously, in the two regional games we lost, Carlisle and Hansen went off for big points. It seems to me that maybe it would have been prudent to try a little zone, which would have made getting to the basket more difficult. If I had one piece of constructive criticism of Gene Roebuck, it's that he feels his team has the most talent (which it does), and therefore he's not willing to adjust to what other teams do. I've heard him say on the radio that he feels that playing zone is tantamount to admitting that you don't have the ability to defend certain opposing players, and presumably he's completely unwilling to "give in" by playing any zone whatsoever. I don't think there's any shame in adjusting when you have difficulty in stopping certain kinds of players, particularly when you're in a lose-and-you're-done situation. I'm certainly not suggesting that UND lost because of poor coaching or anything of the sort--merely that adjusting defenses isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that Gene may be a little too stubborn sometimes.

It's certainly obvious that Wayne Nelson doesn't want to step on certain people's toes. There's an "ask the expert" section in the online version of the Herald where you can ask him questions regarding UND basketball and football. A few weeks ago, I asked him about as diplomatically as possible about how patient he thought Buning would be with the men's basketball program considering its struggles, and especially considering all the fans who leave right after the women's games, but he apparently felt the question was too "controversial" to answer. If that's not a legitimate issue to address, I don't know what is.