UND92,96

Unless tonight's game was just a big fluke, it would appear the Sioux would have to be considered an underdog next week. I don't think St. Cloud State really has much of a defense, but it's probably not that much worse than Augie's.

I guess my question after this offensive performance is whether Bowenkamp at 80% (or whatever he is) is better than Belmore at 100%. Obviously the Sioux are going to have to score more points than this to win next week considering how SCSU's offense has been performing up to now. Since Bowenkamp was evidently the number 2 quarterback for this game, according to Lennon on the coach's show on Wednesday, he must be feeling well enough to play.

In addition to announcing that Belmore will again get the start this week, Dale Lennon mentioned on his radio show last night that Ross Brennan will be playing for the first time this year on Saturday, which should further bolster the defensive line depth. I believe he had some type of foot injury.

I'm sure most of us know the relative struggles the Sioux have had against Augustana over the years. During the period from 1990 to present, UND is 10-4 against Augie, and has had four or five pretty close games in the victories. Considering Augie's overall record during that period of time, it seems to defy logic that they've done as well as they have against the Sioux. The obvious concerns for this game, aside from the fact that UND hasn't typically played that well against Augie, are that it's the first road game of the year, and that Augie is apparently decent, at least by their standards. The biggest positive may be that UND now has two ex-Augie coaches and/or players on the staff, so that should be a pretty big benefit. Also, Augie's syle of offense--a lot of short passes--is a lot more common these days so presumably the Sioux defense shouldn't be seeing anything it hasn't faced already this season against both Delta and CW. In fact, Delta St. and even possibly CW both probably have more talent at the skill positions and had only modest success throwing the ball, or at least getting into the endzone. The fact that Concordia-St. Paul won at Augie earlier this year is also evidence that the Sioux should be able to win this game. Concordia simply isn't very good judging by their blow-out loss at Mankato last week. Similar to Delta St., Augie has a pretty small front seven, particularly at linebacker where they're only in the 200-pound range. That should make them susceptible to the power running game. However, I would hope that the offense isn't too conservative because if the Vikings start bringing up a safety to stop the run, they need to be made to pay for it with the deep ball to Weber, Johnson, Grossman, et al. With two other very difficult road games this year, the Sioux really need this one. I'm hoping for an undefeated home schedule and winning at least 2 of 3 on the road. Prediction: UND 31, Augie 13.

I also see where Jim Kleinsasser is out for the year, according to the Star-Tribune. He's really had some bad luck with injuries, especially in the past couple of years.

Minnesota has three pretty talented frontcourt players who are freshmen this year, plus two verbals for next year, so I have to wonder what the potential playing time situation for Kimbrough would be there. In any event, I certainly wouldn't begrudge her for going to Minnesota if they offered. However, while I have no inside info, I still think that Roebuck has a decent chance if it comes down to UND and one or two mediocre dI programs hundreds of miles away.

Speaking of UNA-DSU, it seems some people never learn about the quality of midwest football compared to the south, at least as it pertains to dII: Give me a break.

A couple other games of interest were UNO getting handled by a traditionally average Western Washington program in a game that perhaps wasn't even as close as the 10-point margin of victory would suggest. It's interesting that the talk out of Omaha coming into the season was that this was perhaps the best defense they've had in the Behrns era, but they've been lit up twice in four games. The other game of interest was MSU-Mankato hammering the supposed second-best team in the NSIC--Concordia-St. Paul. That should pretty much end the chirping from certain NSIC fans that occurred after Concordia beat Augie and UMD. It certainly appears right now that UMD is the worst team, perhaps by far, in the NCC. How they only managed to beat Moorhead, who appeared through three weeks to be making a bid for the worst team in all of dII, is beyond me. Bubba can't be having much fun right now.

My understanding is that he is hurt, although I don't know to what extent. It may not happen this year, but eventually he could be a very good receiver with his hands and height. I understand he was impressive last year as a red-shirt.

This is going to be an extremely young team. Assuming Beck red-shirts, 8 of the 12 available players will be freshmen or sophomores. It will be interesting to see who steps up to be the second and third scoring options behind Boese. Judging by her high school credentials, I have a feeling Guinn may be an immediate impact player.

I am pretty familiar with the situation in St. Cloud as my sister has lived there for several years. What always strikes me when I visit is how St. Cloud has no local television stations, due to its proximity to the twin cities. That means no highlights or features on SCSU sports on the local news. Also, while it does have a newspaper, I assume a lot of people read the Star-Tribune instead. What this means, in my opinion, is that a lot of people in St. Cloud are completely ignorant about what is going on with SCSU sports unless they were already big fans. I think that it's this media void, rather than all the other entertainment options in the cities, which really hurts SCSU's visibility even in its own community. It probably follows that this lack of media coverage, and fan support, is used against SCSU in recruiting by other NCC schools. With all of that said, I still think it was very short-sighted of SCSU to have built a new football stadium with essentially the same capacity as Selke, which was the smallest in the NCC by quite a bit (I know UMD's is pretty small, too). I don't know what the answer is with regard to increasing fan support, but I don't think the problem is necessarily unfixable. Unless there simply wasn't any more money available, I have to think it's easier to build a 7000 or 8000 seat (roughly) stadium to begin with rather than having to add on later. It certainly won't get any less expensive as time passes.

The women's basketball roster has been updated at fightingsioux.com, and a notable omission is Jami Glick. Does anyone know whether she's just sitting out the year to rehab her knee, or whether she's permanently done?

And I have no doubt that UND will be moving up within a few years. My point is more that SCSU's or UNC's traditionally meager attendance figures are their own fault, rather than a byproduct of being in a particular NCAA classification. St. Cloud in particular is a pretty big community, and the school has a bigger enrollment than UND. It also draws well for both hockey and basketball, so it's a little hard to understand why it shouldn't be able to draw 8000-plus for football, obviously assuming that it had built a facility that could have handled those types of crowds.

Division II football has its issues, to be sure, but I'm not sure I'd make that kind of a generalization. If I'm not mistaken, the UNC-NDSU game wasn't exactly a huge draw despite the fact that it was a good matchup, but I wouldn't use that as an indictment of I-AA football as a whole.

To put things in a little different perspective, at least we didn't build a football stadium that only seats a little over 4000, like a certain one of our NCC/WCHA brethren!

That's really disappointing since I think a lot of UND fans were planning on going to this game. If ever WDAZ or the FSSN would consider televising a regular season road game, this would appear to be the ideal one considering it's relatively close and it looks like a great game on paper.

I would say it's a list of all the division I teams/meets/tournaments on UND sports schedules this year.

I read that quote with some amusement, also. I give them credit for not letting the Sioux just run over them between the tackles like I thought would probably happen, but that's small consolation when you give up well over 400 yards of total offense and 34 points.

He didn't play much until the game was in hand. In the fourth quarter, he played quite a bit with the second team offense. He's one of the two deep guys on kick returns, but of course there haven't been many kick returns yet for the Sioux. On punts, he's the second deep guy on those relatively few punt returns when there's more than one guy deep.

Does anyone else think Dressler should be the primary punt returner? To me, it seems pretty clear that not only is he faster and quicker than Groeschl, but I believe he probably also has more experience fielding punts from his high school days than does ex-quarterback Groeschl. Groeschl had one bounce off his face mask yesterday for a turnover, and he just doesn't look that comfortable back there. I've been impressed with Dressler from the few times he's handled the ball so far, and it would seem that in order to make it worthwhile to have taken his red shirt off, he should at least be utilized the fullest extent on special teams.

Not surprisingly, the CW coach was really ticked off about the fake punt according to the Herald. I'd say it was probably something that shouldn't have been done. UND has a reputation as one of the classier programs around and there's no point jeopardizing that. Could it have been an audible? It will be interesting to see if Lennon addresses it on the show tonight.

Austin Pennick was evidently in town for a visit yesterday. I saw him with some of the Sioux players at the football game.

It's probably not a big surprise to anybody, but according to both Sweeney on the channel 8 sports last night and today's Herald, Bowenkamp didn't take any snaps at practice yesterday so it looks like Belmore will again get the start tomorrow.

According to the blurb in last Thursday's Herald, she is going to take an official visit to UND, along with Iowa St., Northwestern and possibly Minnesota. I don't think Minnesota will offer her but you never know. UND offers the opportunity to play close to home, for a very strong program and in very nice facilities. At UND she knows she'd be playing for a winner, whereas Northwestern is terrible and Iowa St. seems to have fallen off since the Megan Taylor, et al. days. As long as she's interested enough to visit, I'd say there's still a chance.