UND92,96

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.

I have not seen her play, but she was a two-time all state selection, was offered by Minnesota when she was a 9th grader, and committed during her sophomore year. She was a high school teammate of current UND player Josie Dillon.

Normally you'd probably be correct with regard to Jacobson, but given where the NDSU women's basketball program has been the past several years, I would never concede a recruit to them if I was Brewster.

All I can really speculate is like UND-1 said. Winning at home is great, but when you end up right around .500 for the season during the good years, it apparently isn't enough to make the non-hardcore fans stand up and take notice.

It's kind of interesting to look back at the attendance numbers for Rich Glas's last season. Officially, UND averaged 2285 that season--more than any season under Jones. But in reality, by halftime of most men's games, the actual number of people in the seats dwindled to 1000 or less.

I had never seen footage of Bobby Clarke's slash of Kharlamov in the 1972 Summit Series before. That was really bad.

I am certainly open to any and all ideas/explanations. As Yogi Berra said: "if people don't want to come to the games, how are you going to stop them?"

10 years ago, UND basketball had an average attendance of 2791 per game. A game at the Ralph against NDSU certainly helped that average, as did doubleheaders with the women's team, but nevertheless 2500-plus per game was achieved many times over the years at Hyslop. This year, the average is 1717. It has ranged from around 1600 to around 2000 for several years now. Obviously the transition really hurt things, but aren't we getting to the point where the transition is far enough in the past that it's not really an excuse anymore? Is the inability to get back to 2500 or more per game mostly the fault of Jones, Faison or both? Or is it not realistic to expect UND basketball to draw as well as it did 10-plus years ago?

Here's Brewster's tweet:

I don't think UND basketball has had a guy like him since--somebody who could jump over you OR just physically overpower you.

The Big Sky coaches have been very accurate in predicting how Jones will fare in his three years so far. In 2012-13, UND was picked to finish fourth, and actually finished third. Last year, UND was picked second, and actually finished in a three-way tie for second. This year, UND was picked ninth, which as of right now is right on the money.

I'm not even sure if this whole weather discussion is supposed to be serious or not, but assuming it is, I don't understand the point behind making excuses for something, i.e. recruiting, that hasn't seemed to be much of a problem in the last five or six years. I have no complaints about the talent level in the program--recent past, present or immediate future. With what will be returning, and if Crandall and Seales are even close to being as advertised, I actually think UND will probably be top three in the Big Sky next year in talent. In spite of weather, hockey, Jones' salary, etc.

Last night was my first women's hockey game, and I was quite impressed. It's pretty cool that UND has three women's sports that average more than 1000 per game. I don't think there's many schools, particularly outside of the power 5 conferences, that have that.

I'm assuming Kuntz is Mike's son. Mike played at UND from 1988 to 1992 or 1993.

It's brutal for many, and less so for others. I don't think there's any way to predict how a given program is going to fare. 20 years ago, who in their right mind would have guessed that perennial NCC middle-of-the-pack programs like UNC and NDSU would have made it to the NCAA tournament early on in division I?

In the interest of full disclosure, Nagy had a track record of nine years, four NCC titles and a .781 winning percentage at the time SDSU started their transition. I don't pretend to know exactly why they struggled so badly for awhile there, but he clearly had earned a fair amount of slack given that pre-transition record.

I think UND will have a new a.d. within two to two and half years. Faison is under contract through June of 2017, and at his age I kind of doubt he's interested in working beyond that.

Some weird things happened during the transition. SDSU went from being a power in dII, to being really bad for several years. They finally recovered when Wolters was signed. NDSU went from being largely irrelevant as a dII program, to suddenly becoming strong. Actually, NDSU men's basketball and SDSU football have a lot in common in that regard.