UND92,96

UND has now avenged three losses from last year by an average margin of 33.3 points. Not too bad. It was great to see Ashley Langen have a breakout game. The bad news is that her performance won't exactly encourage too many more teams to play anything but zone against the Sioux. She just can't be stopped down low with a man-to-man defense.

I could be wrong, but I think Ferris opted for another guarantee instead of a return trip.

Grand Valley won 55-20 today, and will meet NW Missouri State in the championship game. I have to think at least the top four northwest teams could have won the whole thing this year.

I have to think that's about as well as the Sioux can play. Good field goal percentage, few turnovers, and even out-rebounded a much bigger, stronger team. The problem, of course, is that we get practically no points in the paint, nor do we get much of any offensive production off the bench despite playing 10 guys. It will be very tough to win consistently without somebody who can score on the low blocks. But it's still nice to get a win over a pretty good opponent. If there's a good year to be down in the NCC, it's this year since there appear to be several teams who are in a rebuilding mode.

Since SCSU is only at about 30 scholarships for football, I would agree that them going I-AA wouldn't necessarily have a huge effect on UND (or NDSU), since I can't see them upping their scholarship numbers to a large degree anytime soon. In basketball, however, they could have a major effect on the Dakota schools' ability to recruit mid-major caliber dI players in Minnesota. They have a good coach, they draw pretty well, and never underestimate the significance of their proximity to the twin cities metro area.

1976 was definitely one of the high water marks in terms of a schedule filled with recognizable names. Just don't bring up what UND's record was that year.

I'm almost positive he was named scout offensive player of the week at least once, so presumably he practiced all year. I have to think he was medically cleared to play prior to this past season.

What will UND do about Concordia-St. Paul's number 3 (the guard who burned us last year going one-on-one)? She's the only big weapon that CSP returns. I would assume Jahner will start out on her, but Beck and Guinn will probably also take a turn, and there needs to be a lot of helping out.

From allcanadagridiron.com: C'mon, who'd want to go to school in Hawaii or Florida if you can go to UND?

According to Jeff Kolpack, NDSU is starting to turn away from the Big Sky as realistic conference option. [url="http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=110192

Good points, Sicatoka. I'm excited about the big-play potential next year with Manke playing full time (hopefully), getting Strouth's speed back, adding the speed of Chappell, and the plethora of good young receivers such as Caufield, Trenbeath, Nicholas, Wahlin and Rambeck, not to mention Mr. Dressler, Groeschl, Loegering and Tatom. There will be a lot of competition for playing time amongst all those receivers. Wahlin is a very athletic 6'3" and can be a big weapon on jump balls and fades. I'm not sure what to expect with the offensive line, but a healthy Braegelmann (hopefully) and Troen are a pair of very good sophomores to build around. Kusler is solid, and between Bauer, Bronson and some of the younger guys, I'm hopeful we can put together a solid group.

While this may seem trivial, my other beef with the NCC is why it had to make UND go to Central Washington, not to mention making Western come to Grand Forks, two years in a row. Would it really have been that difficult to reverse those two games?

Mesa State was 5-6 this year, after a disastrous 0-11 2004. If this schedule is accurate, I think we could have done better in terms of finding a team for a home-and-home arrangement. And if we have to go to a 5 home, 5 road schedule, money must be pretty tight.

With the NCAA's policy regarding Native American monickers obviously meaning UND won't be hosting any more playoff games (barring a successful appeal or litigation), does that, or should that change the way we schedule? Specifically, should we consider scheduling a game vs. a I-AA team (on the road, of course) since a loss wouldn't be that costly (see UMD's loss to Northern Iowa not keeping them out of the playoffs), and it would potentially be a decent payday? I think playing a Northern Iowa or a Montana on the road would be interesting.

Here's confirmation that Minnesota is indeed interested in Anderson. Whether he gets a scholarship offer remains to be seen.

I realize Nelson was a very good player in high school. I would have liked to see him at UND. But it would seem that he simply wasn't recruited very hard, if at all, by UND, or for that matter anybody else in the NCC. To the best of my knowledge, it was a similar story with all the other ND kids in the 90's who flourished at Northern. Perhaps the Northern coaching staff simply has a better eye for talent than most coaches, I don't know. I guess my real question is whether Northern is actually winning recruiting battles with USD, UND, etc., or whether, as speculated above, that they simply have a better eye for talent and are winning with players who may have been overlooked by bigger schools?

This is the kind of game we've struggled with in recent years. Games against good but certainly not great teams on the road in the first half of the season have spelled trouble. Fortunately, with the tremendous depth and abundance of scoring threats UND has, I don't foresee any more losses to teams like Northern, Southwest, Omaha or Augie in the near future. If there's a better team in dII than the Sioux, I'd be very surprised.

I think it's interesting that Northern has only one transfer on the roster, and he barely plays. I have always been under the impression that Northern gets mostly high school recruits thought to be not quite good enough for the NCC schools to heavily recruit, e.g. Craig Nelson and Adam Grant. Is this still the case, or were some of their better players considered to be very good prospects coming out of high school? Anybody know?

Tesch has publicly stated in the past that he's not interested in playing fully-funded NCC teams. Maybe their success vs. Mankato the past few years will change his mind, as even though Mankato isn't fully-funded, they're probably in the high 20's or low 30's in terms of number of scholarships.

Another kid who may be a prospect is Jake Krause from Moorhead. He was named second team A.P. all-state as a wide receiver. Have any of you guys in the F-M area seen him play?

Gratzek named second team all state as an offensive lineman by the Associated Press. Another kid who made the all state team and who is apparently on UND's radar is Ty Boyle of International Falls. link

I think he should get a hardship. The rule is that the injury must have occurred prior to the student-athlete playing in more than 20% of scheduled games in that season. Since the West Chester game was the second of 11 scheduled games, I don't think there should be a big problem.

With the apparent budget deficit, I wonder if paying guarantees for home non-conference games will be a thing of the past for at least the next few years? We may be looking at all home-and-home arrangements for non-conference games?

Regarding Boschee, according to this article, his final three choices were Kansas, Arizona and Minnesota.

I'm not 100% sure we can count on the location of all NCC games being reversed from this year's schedule. Somebody on the d2football.com board thought two of SCSU's games would be the same as this year. I don't know why the NCC would do that since it would be easy enough to simply reverse all NCC games from this year, and then add the two Washington schools as one home and one road. In any event, there should be just two games left to schedule for UND since Winona will be coming here, and with the two Washington schools that will be eight conference games. I wouldn't mind seeing Concordia-St. Paul on the schedule, as they'll likely finish above .700, thereby helping out our quality win index. But they seem to only want to play NCC teams they think they can beat, i.e. Augie and Mankato. They have traditionally played UMD also, but that could change now that the Bulldogs are one of the stronger NCC teams.