UND92,96

Hopefully no news is good news, as this Herald article on the start of the men's and women's basketball seasons specifically mentions Koenig's knee injuries, but doesn't mention anything about any women's player injuries--not even Maffin.

I think Augie and UNO are the only two NCC schools who actually do use the Fighting Sioux name in their releases. SCSU, UMD and MSU-M don't, and I'm almost positive that USD doesn't, either.

Mankato has apparently played pretty well at times this year, but it's also hard to ignore that they've lost to Bemidji State and Concordia-St. Paul, and they somehow managed to give up 166 yards rushing to Duluth, which seems impossible to believe given how anemic the Bulldog ground game is. USD rushed for over 300 yards against them. I hope Beatty is ready for another game of over 30 carries, because I think he'll be a workhorse again. They do have some quick defensive linemen who are pretty good pass rushers, so given our relative difficulties with pass protection of late, I suspect the running game will take center stage on Saturday.

I'm not sure what the deal is with the link I posted earlier, but after awhile, it seems to change from a link to the UND page to a link to the NDSU page. I've changed it twice already, and it has eventually changed back to the NDSU page each time. So I guess instead of changing it again, I'll just give a heads-up that this is an ongoing problem. Sorry for any confusion this has caused. EDIT: The link seems to be working again now, but don't be surprised if it isn't later in the day.

I just looked at the reported gross revenue of $10,021,643 compared to the reported gross expenses of $9,958,728. It's on the yellow highlighted portion of the linked page.

Here's the new information for the fiscal year ending in June of 2005: link. I'm not quite sure what to make of this since the minutes from the May IAC meeting indicated there was an expected budget shortfall of over $250,000 for fiscal year 2005. Maybe more money than expected came from REA?

Central Washington would have to get into the top 6 to get in. The GNAC doesn't quality as a conference for earned access purposes.

Next week's poll should really be interesting considering 3 of the top 5 teams lost today. UND will almost certainly remain 1, and Grand Valley will move to 2, but after those two it's anyone's guess.

With today's 4 of 4 performance, Glas has now hit 22 of 26 field goal attempts on the year. The kicker with the second-most field goals in the NCC has 7. What an amazing season Jeff is having.

This win gives UND three road wins over teams with a .700 or better winning percentage, which give the highest strength of schedule point total possible. I doubt any other dII team in the country can make a similar claim. Now we just need UMD and Central Washington to finish with no more than three losses. I'm pretty sure Winona State won't lose more than one more, so that one seems safe. That fact that West Chester keeps winning is also a nice bonus.

They've included the UND game in some weeks, although obviously not every week. It seems like a rather odd and glaring omission all things considered, but the Forum's views of UND are pretty well-known.

This game pits the top rushing defense in the league in UND against the worst rushing team in the league in UMD, which leads me to believe Bubba will try to pass 40-50 times, just like they did last week. The difference is, UND's pass rush is outstanding and UNO's is anemic, and the UND defensive backs are probably the best in the league and UNO's are the worst. You're going to have a 5'11", 180 pound freshman quarterback who will be fortunate to come out of this game in one piece considering how many times he's going to be hit.

I'm assuming at this point that there's not going to be any midnight madness since there's been no mention of it on fightingsioux.com. I was hoping that with the 15th falling on a weekend, there would be one.

I agree with you. It took UND years to build the program into being one of the top in dII. Even though Bubba is a great coach, I don't think he can realistically take an average team like they were last year and turn them into a national power in a year. They have some good players, but man for man UND has the advantage at nearly every position, and has much better depth. To me, the keys are not giving up big kick returns, as that's a UMD strength and the kickoff team has probably been the weakest of all UND special teams, and not turning the ball over in our own territory. Make them have to drive 75-plus yards, because I don't think they'll be able to do that strictly through the air. I doubt they'll bother trying to run much at all, so similar to Ferris, getting in the quarterback's face will be key. I like the fact that the UND defensive line has done such a good job of applying pressure. Peterson, Brennan, Enger, etc. have been very difficult for opposing offensive lines to handle.

Yes, if it were based on anything other than strength of schedule, it would make very little sense. UNO is getting a lot of mileage out of their wins over NW Mo. State, Central Washington and Nebraska-Kearney early in the year. SCSU doesn't have wins of a similar quality yet. It seems strange not to penalize UNO more for their lop-sided loss at USD, but since margin of loss isn't a factor in the strength of schedule formula, it wasn't very costly.

Wow, as if I needed another reason to have a strong dislike for Northeastern besides the fact that the infamous Rocky Hager is their football coach!

Congrats to the UND women's golf team for winning the NCC title. link.

New regional rankings are out:

Although Belmore is a good quarterback and has put up very good numbers, I'd really like to see him improve on his pocket presence. He has a tendency to stand in the pocket too long when it should be abundantly clear that things are caving in around him and he needs to either throw it away or take off and scramble. There was a play yesterday where he avoided a defender, and then stood there looking for a receiver when he should have realized that the guy he had just avoided was going to hit him again. He's a very effective runner, and I'd like to see take off a little more often, and do more roll outs where he can either throw or run. Maybe he's not very good throwing on the run, I don't know, but I just hate to see him stand in the pocket on obvious passing downs, because he's been sacked a few too many times this year, and several of those sacks have been at least as much his fault as the line's.

SDSU played their home game against UC-Davis yesterday at Sioux Falls. According to an article in the Argus-Leader earlier in the week, they apparently had high hopes in terms of attendance--somewhere around 10,000--but only drew a little over 7200. That would have to be considered a disappointment all things considered.

I think Duluth has a good team, but frankly, beating Omaha right now, particularly at home, is not that big of an accomplishment. Omaha's defense is horrible, and with Denney out and Day severely hobbled, their offense is not particularly strong, either. A lot of pressure will be on Duluth's freshman quarterback to produce, because they won't be able to run the ball at all against the Sioux. They couldn't run the ball today, and Omaha's defense is not even close to UND's. I'm glad Duluth won, but in all honesty, with UNO's injury situation, the Omaha team Duluth beat by 3 in Duluth would likely have been beaten by about 28 had they played the Sioux at the Alerus today. It will be a tough game next Saturday, but a game UND should definitely win if they play the way they have through the first seven games. Duluth is not as good as St. Cloud State, in my opinion.

Here's confirmation from the Herald of the Youngblut commitment.