UND92,96

It looks like four UND recruits will be playing in this game--Nolte, Andy Miller, Nate Wayne and Tyson Heiser.

"The play" against Grand Valley State in 2001, Mooney's stripping the ball and taking it in for a td against NDSU in 1993 and Riendeau's hit on UNC receiver Grable in 1999. Also, Glas's 52-yard field goal with 3 seconds left against SCSU in 2003 to complete a huge comeback was one of the most clutch plays I can recall.

With Bledsoe now in the fold, that means that UND got the two highest-ranking Minnesota players out of this top 30 list who didn't go division I. Bledsoe is ranked 10th, and Andy Wills 13th. With Blackwell also being pretty highly-regarded, and Probst perhaps being a project but one with a very accomplished high school career, this has the potential to be one of the better groups of high school recruits UND has had in awhile. Probably the best since the Mustard/Reinke/Travis group. Now if only a couple of talented big guys could be found next year...

This is kind of old news, but I see where one-time UND recruiting target Kori Vernon decided to stay close to home and attend Wisconsin-Whitewater. link.

Does anybody know whether Shawn Swan will be back this season? Have there been any personnel losses other than Wells?

Todd Olson has been hired as the new a.d. according to the WDAZ sports tonight.

I don't personally know whether Bruggeman does a good job or not. But when you consider that a big part of his job is understanding NCAA regulations and overseeing UND's compliance with them, you have to wonder how he got the job with the credentials he had at the time he was hired in 2001. link. There's also the question of whether it's really a good idea to have the spouse of a head coach at UND in such a position.

Apparently, Bruggeman DID get an interview, according to today's Herald. link.

If memory serves me correctly, it was something like $5,000, although I like ESPNInsider's answer better.

I hadn't heard about Wells--that's too bad. Regarding Probst, I'm definitely not expecting too much out of him, but my point was that a good case could be made that a 6'5"-6'6" wing player who is apparently a very good 3-point shooter, who averaged over 20 ppg during both his junior and senior years, and who scored more than 1,800 career points should be considered among the top-30 players in Minnesota's class of 2005. Any news on Bledsoe?

If you really think that, perhaps you should re-read this entire thread. Nobody has said anything about NDSU not playing quality opponents. I'm sorry I even brought up the issue of overpaying the Dragons, even though it's probably indisputable that paying anything over about $1.99 would have been too much. It's pretty sad when even Bob Entzion can't be criticized without somebody taking offense.

It's just one person's opinion, but here is a list of the top-30 players from the class of 2005 in Minnesota. I'm a little surprised that Probst didn't make the list.

Are you sure Bruggeman even got an interview? I've heard West, Todd Olson and Todd Selk (Brainerd a.d.--from EGF), plus two others whose identities I don't know.

I wouldn't consider him a particularly reliable source, but Frank Fee of KROX radio in Crookston had this to say:

Do you suppose it was entirely a coincidence that a Moorhead State grad decided that his alma mater merited a $50k guarantee (twice)? I hope he got a nice thank you letter from Moorhead State for his generous "donation."

I can't help but wonder how Grandall has been spending that $2,500? So long as he's the coach, maybe that money should be re-allocated to baseball and swimming, since those coaches actually recruit. I don't mean to belabor the point, but the idea of a coach who apparently does very little (if any) recruiting really irritates me.

I applaud Gene Taylor if the Arkansas-Monticello guarantee is in the $30k range. I seem to recall a few years back when NDSU was reportedly paying guarantees in the neighborhood of $50k for games against some pretty bad teams, e.g. MSU-Moorhead, which seemed like a huge waste of money considering the quality of the opponents. I don't recall whether that was the work of Taylor or Entzion, however.

I don't mean to be argumentative about this, but is it really possible to predict what the net proceeds of this game (Arkansas-Monticello) will be? Did the season ticket price go up as a result of this 6th home game? What was the guarantee given?

The class A all-star team, including Kimbrough and Bagaason, won the annual tournament of all-star teams from Minnesota's four classes of basketball. link

I agree that the women alone should be a big draw, and now that the men will likely be better than was perhaps expected immediately after this past season, I wouldn't expect the quality of the team in and of itself to cause any sort of attendance dropoff. As for whether the non-conference schedule will likely cause a drop in attendance, I don't really expect that it will. The reason is that non-conference games don't really draw all that well regardless of how good the competition is. Take last year as an example. Probably the biggest name non-conference opponent we've had in many years was Nebraska-Kearney (even though they were a bit down last year by their standards). That game drew 2515. UND's season average for home games was 2791. The hard-core fans will go to games pretty much regardless of who the opponent is. The more casual fans will tend to go to conference games. And it's the conference game attendance which essentially makes or breaks the season in terms of ticket sales. There is another variable which may affect attendance next year. Obviously no more games will be in the Ralph, and those games tended to have larger reported attendance. Whether that was due to more people actually being there, or perhaps the use of a different method of counting, I don't know. In any event, with the relatively small capacity of the Betty, there probably won't be any more of those 4000 to 5000 crowds to offset some of the smaller crowds, and that may very well make a difference in the overall average.

I went back and found legend's post regarding scholarship numbers. He stated that men's track/cross country is at 3.5 scholarships. Compare that to 1.8 for swimming/diving. Now think about what Stromberg and now Sampaio have accomplished with their 1.8, compared to what Grandall has done. Again, where is the accountability? Does anybody have any doubts that the swimming coaches have been recruiting for all these years, despite having so little scholarship money? Unless the information offered by siouxrunner and legend is way off, and again I have no reason to dispute it, Grandall's job performance is at best sub-par, and at worst downright incompetent.