UND92,96

The weird thing is that Jones actually did a pretty good job of finding bigs early on when it should have been more difficult due to the transition (Mitchell, Wilmer, Brekke), but he really struggled to find replacements for those guys when UND was coming out of the transition and it should have been easier to recruit.

I think it's been an issue of not having much quality depth. Lloyd, Evers, Lauck, Dyer and Szabla can all score, but nobody else has shown much of an ability to put up points on a semi-regular basis, and the outside shooting has been pretty erratic. The good news is that there does appear to be a very good recruiting class coming in. But there will be pressure on several of them to step up immediately, because frankly from what I've seen, there are a lot of freshman and sophomore scholarship players who have a long way to go, particularly offensively, before they can be counted on to be part of the regular rotation.

IMO, UND's Big Sky performance in 2012-13 was better than 2013-14. In 2012-13, there were two legitimately good teams, and then everybody else. In its first year, UND managed to be the best of everybody else and finished with a 12-8 conference record. I felt like that was a reasonably successful debut, although there may have been some disappointment given the fact that UND had beaten Montana, the conference champion, in 2011-12 but was winless against Montana and Weber in 2012-13. Last year, the league arguably didn't have any really good teams, and UND returned essentially everybody (although obviously Brekke was lost early on). I would argue that UND really should have been able to improve upon its 12-8 record from the year before, but it did not. And at worst, UND should have managed to finish the regular season alone in second place, rather than being part of a three-way tie. And it would have, but for the end-of-the-season loss at SUU--a team that finished 1-19 in the league.

Is Ahelegbe considered the number one assistant at USD? I had just assumed it was Hansen, based upon their respective years of coaching experience. I believe Hansen was the number one assistant under Nagy at SDSU, before moving on to Northern Colorado and then USD. He also worked for several years under Margenthaler at Mankato (during which time Ahelegbe played there) prior to SDSU.

I agree that he would be a nice candidate for any midwestern low to mid major head coaching job.

Austin Hansen seems like a future head coach somewhere. I suspect if Nagy left SDSU, Hansen would be high on their list of candidates.

My feeling is that the best argument of all for Jones staying at least one more year is that hopefully Faison will have announced his retirement by then. Let the next a.d. judge Jones' overall body of work and if necessary, make a change. While Faison deserves credit for several things he's accomplished as a.d., does anybody really want to watch the infamous "process", or at least his interpretation of it, play out again? I don't.

When you also add in the Craig Smith factor--a UND grad and grew up 50 miles from Grand Forks--it will be extremely odd if USD isn't on the schedule within the next year or two.

With regard to the non-conference schedule, we seem to play the xDSU's every year, with both being on the same rotation, so that they are either both at home or both on the road in any given year. Ideally, it would be nice to have the opposite rotation with USD and UNO, so that every year we know there will be at least two non-conference home games against division I opponents.

His current deal runs through 2016-17.

Chad Walthall reportedly makes around $77k right now, and had to take a big pay cut when he took the Moorhead job, as Todd Lickliter and his staff had just been fired at Iowa. Walthall was Lickliter's top assistant. MSU-Moorhead is currently 27-2.

Dyer and Szabla combined for just 20 points on the weekend. And today may have been Lloyd's worst game of her career. Lauck also really struggled. Just too many players having off games all at once. UND has now suffered road losses against the 7th, 9th and 12th place teams.

UND went from being up 7 with 7 minutes to go, to down 9 with just under 2 minutes to go. I give credit to the team for fighting back to tie it up, but man, that was a terrible 5 minute stretch of basketball...

Ladies have not been very good on the road this year. Brew is now a somewhat inexplicable 2-4 in his career vs. Montana St., including losing three of the last four.

If losing to the last-place team in the conference to fall to 1 and 6 at home isn't rock bottom, I'm not sure where rock bottom is.

This has to be the most blocked shots I've seen in a UND game in years. Nice job by Cashman and Shanks protecting the rim.

Anybody know Hooker's status for today after that ankle injury late in the Montana game?

The really frustrating thing about this season is that UND has had five opportunities at home to knock off a team ahead of them in the standings, and has failed each time. Losing at home to the top few teams is one thing, but the 5th, 7th and 8th place teams? That's not good in any season.

I give Jones credit for doing a pretty nice job of replacing the lost production of last year's senior class. But let's be honest about UND's 9th-place predicted finish--it was likely because the other coaches could not give UND the benefit of the doubt when it comes to players like Tyler, DeRouen and Shanks, whom most were probably at best vaguely aware of. Not to mention the massive improvement of Hooker. And who even knows if they were aware of Nash's sixth year when the voting was done. The point being, I don't believe UND's talent is only the 9th-best in the Big Sky. And if UND actually does finish 9th, while I don't necessarily believe that should mean Jones should be fired, neither should it mean that it was O.K. to finish that low merely because that's where the team happened to be picked pre-season.

I agree. For all the questioning as to why Shields didn't red-shirt, he's quietly emerged as one of the two primary backups, along with Cashman, at the 4/5 positions. Both appear to have a lot of potential.

If you'd have told me before the season that UND would be sitting in 9th place, I would not have been particularly surprised, and truth be told, probably not all that disappointed given the personnel losses from last season. But now, I can't seem to shake the feeling that this team is underachieving.

Montana trying to give this thing away.

Montana kind of reminds me of a good NCC team from back in the day--an active 6'7" post and several good 3-point shooters. They're not going to dazzle you with athleticism, that's for sure.

Turnovers are killing UND right now.

I expect Brewster will shorten the bench considerably for this game if foul trouble can be avoided. If UND can shoot reasonably well, including knocking down an occasional 3, keep the turnovers to a reasonable number and stay out of serious foul trouble, I think there's a real shot to win.