UND92,96

Jeff Kolpack of the Forum is apparently pretty interested in Lennon's career plans. link

I'm not going to name names because I don't think that serves any purpose, but when you have so few pure shooters on the team, I don't know what other conclusion one can come to other than to say there were some recruiting miscalculations (probably a more diplomatic word than "mistake"). Even role players should be able to knock down shots when they're open. I'm not going to panic about this year because we all know full well that help is on the way, but it does disappoint me that even without Guinn, Sannes and Glick, we don't seem to have 7-8 players who can shoot AND play defense AND not turn the ball over constantly.

Nice win for the men tonight. Northern is a good team. Now the big test will be whether the Sioux can follow up some good home performances by going on the road and beating a team they should be able to handle in Moorhead.

What can you say? Tonight was one of the all-time collapses by a UND women's basketball team. Roebuck's a great coach, and the season's still young, but I just don't believe there's enough offensive ability on this team to have the kind of season we're accustomed to seeing. Having 15-20% of the scholarships invested in players in street clothes (Guinn and Sannes) obviously doesn't help matters, either, and that's not anybody's fault. But I think it's fairly clear that there have been some recruiting mistakes in the past few years, and that, combined with the injuries, has resulted in a team with very little depth and very little margin for error--kind of like last year's men's team.

I agree, but I don't really see much demeaning of NDSU in this thread--just some of the ignorant fools who post on the Forum site. If we really need to demean an NDSU fan, we already have an easy target in the always lovable JBB.

Not to mention that it's lucky to get 20 events per year, and that it's "barely profitable."

I know it's a moot point, but it appears both UND and NDSU missed on a local player in Karna Plaine from Hatton, now at UMC. Last year, she scored 27 against the Sioux, and last night she dropped 32 on a pretty good Augie team.

Roebuck confirmed on the coaches' show last night that Guinn isn't expected to play again this year.

Comparing this year's attendance to last year's is kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison due to the facts that this year, there are so many more home non-conference games, and many of them are in the middle of the week which doesn't help with attendance. However, with that said, attendance for men's games is actually up so far as last year's non-conference games (excluding Bemidji St., as that attendance number isn't included on the UND athletic site anywhere I could find) averaged about 1600, while this year's average thus far is a little over 2000. Attendance is down when compared to last year's overall average, but that's not a valid comparison due to the fact that conference games typically draw far better than do non-conference, and of course the conference season is still about month away.

Wow, I didn't realize the injury was serious enough to be season-ending. Depth is going to be a big problem. The starting five is good, and Maffin and Glynn have played pretty well, but there seems to be a pretty big drop-off after that.

Does anybody know when Danye Guinn will start playing again? Also, is Sannes ever expected to be healthy enough to play?

It's a little hard to get too excited about transfers, particularly somebody whose name isn't actually on the roster, since there have been a number of those guys who ultimately never played a down. One example was current Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith's son, who had stops at both NDSU and UND after having some legal problems at Arizona. I believe he practiced with UND for the entire 2000 season, but I don't know what became of him after that.

I'm actually pretty confident that UND will win all the remaining home games, with the possible exceptions of Mankato and UNO. But as stated before, the road may be a real adventure...

Believe me, I want to believe that the program is on the right track. But I was kind of shocked when listening to a post-game interview with one of the players after the Colorado-Pueblo game, I believe it was Ryp, and he said something to the effect that the team was a little over-confident going into the Bemidji game. How can that be after we lost to them last year, and considering all the struggles in recent years against teams not considered heavyweights by any means? UND is not in a position to be over-confident against anybody, and the coaching staff needs to make sure they remind these guys that they're not good enough to just show up and expect to win, particularly on the road. When they actually show up and want to play, they can sometimes beat good teams on the road, i.e. at USD and Northern St. last year. But far too often, we seem to just sleep-walk through road games against poorer teams and lose. I realize Bemidji brought in a bunch of jucos, some of whom I'm sure can play, but it's still essentially a brand new team, playing against a comparatively veteran team in UND. Plus, with presumably well under 10 scholies, if the jucos really are talented, how in the heck is Bemidji getting them?

I don't know, but the fact that Illinois is really, really bad may have had something to do with it. I have to assume he's a decent kid or Lennon would not have wanted him on the team.

Another local kid has gotten some recognition. Kenley Wahlin from Crookston was named all-state as a safety by www.minnesotapreps.com. I would think UND would be recruiting him as a wide receiver. He's 6'3" and about 180 pounds with decent speed. Mertens was named all-state at quarterback, not surprisingly.

It's a pretty sad commentary on the basketball program when we're legitimately concerned about losing to a 2-2, traditionally terrible, 4-scholarship program, in an empty gym, having to travel for all of a half hour. I'm really not a pessimist by nature, but that Bemidji loss has absolutely killed my enthusiasm for the season. I'll still go to all the games, but the excitement just isn't there since the team doesn't have any fire or emotion. No matter how loyal a fan someone is, you can really only take so many of these losses to programs with a fraction of the talent, scholarships and resources that UND has. Thank God for the women's program. Even though I expect this to be something of a down year by Roebuck's standards, they'll still probably win close to 25 games.

I think what happened is that all spectators who weren't UND students, children or senior citizens ($18 per ticket) counted as one spectator. Children and seniors ($11 per ticket) counted as 11/18ths of a spectator, and UND students ($5 per ticket) counted as 5/18ths of a spectator.

I guess I didn't know they were missing anybody. It seemed to me like Kearney would have struggled against a zone since all they seemed to do was go one-on-one on every possession. I know some coaches (Glas and Roebuck in particular) really hate to play zone, but it has its place. God knows the UND women will face it a lot this year with their wildly inconsistent outside shooting.

I too was very disappointed in yet another loss to Bemidji. It appears that this year's team will be talented enough to beat anyone on a given night, particularly at home, but will also likely lose a lot of road games. I'm afraid that there could be another really embarrassing loss on the horizon since we play at Crookston again pretty soon, and that usually seems to be an adventure despite the fact that UMC is never any good. Even though beating Kearney was a nice accomplishment, it seemed as though the Sioux tried very hard to blow that game after building a 17-18 point lead in the second half. Twice down the stretch UND failed to even get off a shot on key possessions, and there were a number of missed free throws.

Regarding Mertens, he's a 4.0 student so you would think that he would end up getting a full ride between a partial football scholarship and academic scholarship(s). My understanding is that that was more or less the situation with Rory Manke last year, although I could be wrong about that. Regarding Chappell, I would think he should be in line for some track scholarship money, even though I know there isn't a lot of track money at UND. Again, hopefully between football and track he'd be close to a full ride. I had thought that Mahmoud got some track scholarship money in addition to football so this would not be unprecedented.

Just think, if the regions consisted of the same conferences they used to, UND-Pitt St. likely would have happened two weeks ago in the region semi-finals. UNO would likely have made the playoffs as the 6 seed. Grand Valley St. likely makes it to at least the semi's, and quite possibly the championship game as nobody in the current northeast region would have beaten them, and I think they would have had a good chance of knocking off Valdosta. If you're in the MIAA or the PSAC, you probably love the new alignment. The best team from those conferences has a virtual guaranteed spot in the semi's every year. Unless TAMUK gets really good again, it's hard to imagine anybody but Pitt St. or NW Mo. St. ever winning the southwest region. In the northwest, it's going to be a dogfight every year among UND, UNO, St. Cloud St., possibly USD, Winona St., Grand Valley, Saginaw Valley, Northwood, Tech, etc. It will be interesting to see how long the current region make-up lasts considering the vastly different number of quality teams in the northwest and southeast compared to the northeast and southwest.