UND92,96

Has anybody heard anything about what prompted the Southwest State women's coach to resign? He was quite successful, and you very rarely see a coach resign from his or her current job without having another job lined up. Presumably, he was forced out, but I have no idea for what reason(s).

Since there was an article in the Herald, we know Miller and Gutter signed. What I don't understand is why there still hasn't been a press release on www.fightingsioux.com. There's typically a release by the middle of the afternoon of the first day of a signing period regardless of which sport it is. Also, was there ever anything in the Bismarck Tribune regarding Miller's signing? I never saw anything in the online edition, but perhaps I missed it.

Here it is: link This link probably won't work for very long, however.

It looks like the DAC-10 has been in contact with UMC about a possible move back to that conference according to the Minot paper:

April 23. I'm not sure what time, however.

As RD17 pointed out in a different thread, this would potentially be bad for the NCC in terms of non-conference scheduling--particularly for basketball. The NSIC adding three teams would mean six more conference games for them, and correspondingly that would mean far fewer regional dII opponents for the NCC to play in basketball. Such a move could possibly make Winona St. re-evaluate their situation, however. Based upon what I have been able to gather from Winona fans on the d2football.com board, they realize that as things stand now, they're only going to potentially be challenged a couple of times a year in the NSIC in football. As such, they enjoy the idea of being able to play stronger opponents in non-conference games. An 11-team NSIC would presumably mean a 10-game conference schedule, meaning there could only be one non-conference game per year. Maybe this would be the nudge they need to go into a far more competitive football conference. Even though they would be giving up a virtual guaranteed playoff spot, the flip side would be at least their fans would have a much more interesting schedule.

Would the NSIC realistically be looking to expand beyond 10 teams? I suppose if nothing else, Minot St. would give them an insurance policy should one of the better NSIC programs look seriously at joining the NCC.

2005: 6-6 2004: 5-9 2003: 11-5 2002: 12-6 2001: 9-9 2000: 11-7 total: 54-42 (.562)

You are correct--that would make for a pretty small lineup. However, it seems more and more teams are going to a true three-guard lineup. For example, Illinois had a perimeter of 6'0", 6'3" and 6'3" with Brown, Williams and Head. Before anybody jumps down my throat, I'm NOT comparing Doyle, Nobles and Harkins to those three in terms of ability! I suppose for teams which had more size on the perimeter creating a big matchup problem, either Jacobson, Miller or another juco transfer could be inserted into the starting lineup.

Here is a Herald article on the signings of Gutter and Miller: link. It also confirms that the women are done recruiting for the year. With the addition of Koenig, Gutter and Miller, plus hopefully another immediate impact juco and the addition of Harkins coming off a red-shirt season, hopefully all the freshmen can red-shirt. There should be a lot of competition for playing time between Nobles, Doyle, Harkins, Miller, Jacobson, Lindahl, Koenig, Wells, Gutter and whomever else is signed over the next month or so. Anybody know whether Swan will return? His playing time and performance level really diminished as the season went along. I'll predict a starting lineup of Doyle, Nobles, Harkins, Lindahl and Koenig. But if Lindahl's shooting doesn't return to his sophomore year form, perhaps it would be better to start Koenig at the 4 and either Wells or Gutter at the 5 for defense/rebounding purposes.

I was of course aware of Koenig, and I had heard about Gutter, but I hadn't heard about Miller. He averaged 25.8 ppg, and had 117 3-pointers on the year! Thanks for the info.

The first day of the spring signing period is Wednesday. Anybody have any recruiting news? Should we expect any signings on Wednesday?

Here's a Herald article on the Sioux kicking game: link. As the article points out, UND's special teams should again be a big strength. A return combo of Dressler and transfer Anthony Longe should be excellent.

There were at least 4-5 dI guys who applied, but aside from Purpur who withdrew, all were eliminated prior to the list being narrowed down to the final three. It would be hard for an NDSU fan to knock Molde, the dIII guy, too much considering he was also a finalist for the NDSU a.d. job in 2001, and he was a long-time dI head football coach. As I recall, the three finalists for the NDSU job were Molde, a then South Alabama assistant a.d. (now the a.d. at North Alabama) Joel Erdmann, and Taylor, who was then an assistant a.d. at Navy. I don't see any real difference in the quality of the candidates for the UND job compared to the NDSU finalists from 2001. Clearly Bollinger could have gone into administration years ago had he wanted to, but just as he left coaching so as to have more time to follow Brooks' and his other kids' athletic careers, being an a.d. would have made that more difficult. I believe his youngest is now a senior in high school, so obviously the timing was right for him to seek the a.d. job at the school for which he's worked for many years. McCarthy is still quite young at 34 so the fact that he's risen to a head a.d. at a dII school already is pretty impressive. And Molde has a lot of experience as both an administrator, and as the head football coach at Western Michigan.

Although Gwozdecky isn't the most popular person these days from a UND perspective, I did like this quote from him in the SI article regarding REA: I was also pleasantly surprised that SI actually refrained from taking any potshots at Ralph.

The last of the three planned on-campus interviews occurs April 20-21. Most likely, a decision will be made shortly thereafter.

RD17 or star2city (or anybody who has any "inside info")- Which school or schools are the most likely next additions to the NCC? I think we've all touched on the schools that are potential candidates, and a lot of people have opinions as to who they'd like to see join, but I'm interested in who you think are realistic candidates? I don't really think any more NSIC schools will leave soon because they don't have to the money to fund football scholarships at a higher level and they're content where they're at for other sports. The u.p. Michigan schools are apparently not looking to leave. That pretty much leaves Kearney, who has repeatedly denied interest in the NCC (probably for the same reasons as the NSIC schools), and perhaps the Washington schools, MSU-Billings (except for football), some current NAIA school(s), or perhaps we just wait for SDSU to bounce back after a few more years of not being able to find a conference.

Mary should do fine, but Upper Iowa? I'm not so sure about them. They were a combined 15-49 this season in the three most popular dII sports (football, and men's and women's basketball) for a winning percentage of .234. The school only has approximately 700 students on campus, and the town of Fayette has a population of 1300. It would appear that Upper Iowa almost makes UMC look like one of the "have's" of dII by comparison. Aside from it being reasonably close to Winona, I'm not really sure what they bring to the table for the NSIC.

A nice letter to the editor by St. Cloud St. coach Lori Ulferts (scroll down to the second letter):link

It sounds like Webb is probably going to Minneapolis Community and Tech. College for a year, and then he'll give dI ball another try at a mid-major.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has come out with their annual list of the top 20 seniors in Wisconsin: link. Jesse Blackwell is at 20, and Kori Vernon is at 17. According to the list, St. Cloud St., Concordia-St. Paul and Lewis, in addition to UND, have offered Vernon. Also, this was Blackwell's all-area bio from the LaCrosse paper:

Graham--were you at the protest outside REA prior to the dII basketball championship game? I'm curious, why is it that despite the fact that there are approximately 400 Native American students at UND, plus numerous caucasion faculty members whose politics are considerably left of center, only about 75-80 people total (including non-Natives and people from outside the area) showed up to protest? That's essentially identical to the number that showed up to protest when REA opened in 2001. I would think that if a large number of people on campus were truly passionate about changing the status quo, they would show up for events like these, particularly considering CBS was present.

This part of the article was interesting to me: I can only assume that Four Winds (Indians), Belcourt (Braves), Fort Yates (Warriors), Solen (Sioux), etc. qualify as educational institutions. I've been waiting for years for a compelling argument as to how a name can be considered honorable on a reservation, but "racist" and "demeaning" everyplace else.