UND92,96

I believe there was also a Vito Perrone, Jr. It was well before my time, but I know he was a very good track athlete at Grand Forks Central. According to the football media guide, he lettered in football at UND in 1976.

I had assumed that baseball was similar to basketball or hockey in that the regular season champion was viewed as more of a "real" champion, whereas the tournament champion was more for getting an auto bid to the NCAA's (in the cases of basketball and hockey, anyway). However, based upon the fact that nowhere in the Herald was there any mention of UND being considered the NCC champion (only the number one seed in the tournament), am I correct in assuming that there is no such thing as a regular season champion in baseball? If not, is there any particular reason for the completely different level of importance seemingly being placed on the regular season compared to basketball?

Game 1--UND 4, Mankato 1. Congrats to the Sioux--NCC champions!

The UND women's programs have had a very solid year. Excluding hockey which, of course, did not play in an actual conference but did finish above .500 in its second year of existence, all but one of the women's teams teams thus far have finished in the top-4 in the NCC. Swimming and tennis won the NCC, soccer was second, basketball (which did win the conference tournament) and golf were third, and volleyball, cross country and indoor track were fourth. The one exception is softball which is clearly the one program which is in serious need of an upgrade. I'm not sure what the problem is there, but there's not much excuse for finishing last. In the men's programs, there's a pretty big gap between the programs which had a very good year, i.e. football, hockey, swimming and baseball, and the remainder of the programs which struggled, i.e. basketball, golf, cross country and track. With any luck whatsoever, basketball should be back near the top next year, and golf has been very good in the past. Track and cross country will likely always struggle until there's a decent indoor track. As much as I personally love track, unless it's contemplated that an indoor track will be built within the next 5-10 years, the men's track program may just as well be dropped. You simply cannot be successful in this climate without a decent indoor track.

Not to belabor the point too much regarding Dressler's speed, but according to a list published in the Star Tribune today, his top 400 time is nearly a full second faster than what anybody in Minnesota has run so far this spring.

Is there any news on recruiting--good, bad or otherwise? The silence is deafening! I see where USD just signed a juco from the Mon-Dak conference. They seem to be the only NCC school who has signed several players this spring.

I'm sure Bellmore can play, although statistically he struggled on Saturday--6-10 for just 35 yards, 2 int's and a fumble. Manke's stats were greatly helped by the long completion in the last possession, but he did have two fewer turnovers than Bellmore, and one fewer than Carney.

So I guess we can add track and field to the ever-expanding list of things you are an expert on, huh? Incidentally, the fact that he runs sub-49.5 in the 400 shows that he has some pretty serious speed for a high school kid, wind or no wind, unless it magically changes direction as he's rounding the track. Dressler is the fasted kid in North Dakota this year, by quite a bit, and he was an outstanding high school football player. Time will tell as to whether he'll be a good college player, but there's no reason to think he can't be.

It looks like UND signee Weston Dressler is having an outstanding track season. After being primarily an 800 meter runner last year, he's dropped down to the sprints and has the top times in the state in the 100, 200 and 400. He's run 22.08 in the 200 (wind-aided, but impressive nevertheless) and 49.49 in the 400, which is outstanding, especially this early in the year. He has shown time and again to be extremely elusive in the open field, so the fact that he's also showing excellent speed is very encouraging.

A few thoughts on the spring game: -it looked like the starting offensive line was Smith and Hoffelt at the tackles, Kuper and freshman Braegelmann at the guards, and Hendrickson at center. I'm not sure where Buisker fits in since he sat out with an apparent injury. Overall, I thought the line played pretty well considering who they were going against. Hopefully some depth can be developed since it will likely be needed at some point. -as has been said by others, the defense looks loaded. Most positions look like they're legitimately 3-deep with very little drop-off. In particular, the competition at corner is going to be very interesting since I believe there are, at a minimum, five guys who look like they can play. -as far as I could tell, there were only two defections from last fall, aside from Miller and Irvin not coming back for a 6th year. I didn't see Jordan Muro or Shane Wise on the roster. I know Muro was pretty highly thought of coming out of high school, but with Duchscher and Wolff and the return of Ross Brennan, he wasn't going to play much for a few years anyway. -each of the quarterbacks made his share of mistakes, but I like Manke's ability. He seems to throw a very catchable ball, and he's a proven winner. I assume it's pretty close between he and Bellmore right now, although obviously I don't get to see what happens in practice. Presumably, Bellmore has played better this spring than what he showed on Saturday. -I'm not overly worried about the offense. For one thing, I don't believe they will need to score 30-plus points a game if the defense does what I think it will. For another thing, this is by no means the least amount of experience returning UND has had, and the offense always seems to be pretty decent. As good as last year's receiving corps was, for the most part none of them had put up any big numbers prior to last year. There always seems to be at least one receiver who rises to the occasion, particularly in his senior year. Johnson will be fine as the number one option, and there's enough talent and competition behind him to round out a solid receiving corps. If the line holds up, this team will score points.

I would respectfully disagree that geography isn't a predictor of success or failure of basketball, whether it be NDSU, or UND if we were to move up. How likely is it to be able to recruit legitimate dI caliber basketball players to North Dakota? I'm not talking about good dII players, but guys who are actually being recruited heavily by schools from the Missouri Valley or other decent mid-major conferences. Let's face it, the odds aren't good. And without getting those players, the actual caliber of play you'll likely see from NDSU is not going to be any better than what it's been. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for NDSU to sign its first recruit who actually turned down a scholarship offer from a tournament-eligible dI program in favor of NDSU. I'm guessing it may be many years. Geography also works against obtaining a conference affiliation. I agree that making it to the tournament would be a huge accomplishment and more prestigious than winning a dII title, but the theoretical ability to make it and actually making it considering the geographical disadvantages we have in North Dakota are two very different things.

You are correct that it's not unusual for there to be different winners for Ms./Mr. Basketball and the Gatorade player of the year. What surprises me is that one group (Gatorade/the coaches?) picked Beck as the top female high school basketball player in the state, and another group (the media) believed that there were at least four girls who were better than Beck. I'm not saying that Beck necessarily SHOULD have won Ms. Basketball--although I believe she was as deserving as anyone--but for her not to have been one of the four finalists was kind of a joke.

Karla Beck has officially signed with UND according to www.fightingsioux.com. What is interesting is that she was named the North Dakota Gatorade player of the year, and yet was not one of the Ms. Basketball finalists! I'm not sure how that's possible. In any event, she is a heck of an athlete and could very well turn out to be a very good player even though she was apparently not all that heavily recruited by too many other dII programs.

I noticed that one of Mike Gutter's high school teammates had a very nice freshman year at Williston State. Point guard Jahi Craig averaged 16 pts. and 7 assists per game while earning all-conference first team honors. He's on the small side at 5'9", but is supposed to be very quick and was a 4-year starter at Milwaukee King, which has been the top high school program in Wisconsin recently. He might be a name to watch for after next season if he continues to progress.

A new coach is probably a step in the right direction, but I'm sure you'd agree that UNO has a long, long way to go before they're competitive with UND in women's basketball. Roebuck's .850 winning percentage since the '87-'88 season is one of the more impressive coaching accomplishments I'm aware of, and UND is not showing any signs of dropping off anytime soon.

Oien pleads guilty to two misdemeanors according to this link, but it doesn't look like he's losing his job unless he screws up again. It's interesting to contrast Oien's situation with what happened to Bob Entzion and Larry Eustachy.

Good question. My best guess would be during the 1993 season in which Roebuck led the Sioux to the dII world series.

I don't mean to seem as though I'm arguing with you, or that I'm putting words in your mouth. I am just skeptical that signing 7 high school players and no transfers is the way to win in division II basketball in this day and age when you're coming off a 6-21 season and you have practically nothing coming back in terms of proven talent. Even IF this class turns out to be good, they will likely struggle badly for at least two more years. I guess I'm also a little skeptical that some of their guard recruits are as good as their 20-something per game scoring averages would suggest. It would be interesting to know what other schools offered them. Typically, I don't think Augie wins many recruiting battles in basketball over more prominent basketball schools, although they do in football sometimes since they are far more likely to offer full rides than most other NCC schools (which of course really hinders their depth). The real question is this: if UND were coming off a season like Augie had and was in need of a complete rebuilding job, would you be satisfied with this class? I would not be, but that's just my personal opinion.

You are correct with regard to '88-'89. I missed that one. I'm not saying that Augie will finish last each and every year, but obviously somebody has to finish last in every league, and among UND, SCSU, MSU-Mankato, UNO, UMD, USD and Augie, who would be the odds-on favorite to be last in any given year, at least judging by what has transpired over most of the past dozen-or-so years? I know I would vote for Augie. If Augie rises to the top of the NCC, which team(s) will take their place as the doormats of the league? It's kind of like with MSU-Mankato and UNO in women's basketball. I know they aspire to get out of the basement, but the hard part is that that would mean that one or more of the stronger programs would have to falter. Who? Again, somebody has to be last. I guess some of you guys have a higher opinion of Billiter's coaching ability than I do. I don't mean to say he's a bad coach--I just don't think he's going to turn Augie into something any better than an average dII program. As of now, they're well below average.

We'll see. Augie has been poor for so long in men's basketball that it's almost a foregone conclusion that they will finish near the bottom of the NCC every year. They haven't had a sniff of a conference title since 1977-78. They're likely always going to be, at best, the fourth-best college basketball program in the state of South Dakota (after SDSU, USD and Northern St.), which makes it awfully difficult to be any good since SD is obviously not a very big state. Billiter has shown an ability to win with all or nearly all-transfer teams, but that's apparently not an option with the administration at Augie judging by his first couple of recruiting classes. If we at UND have had trouble winning with mostly high school recruits even with our facilities, fan support and tradition, I don't see how Billiter can do it at Augie, even if their geography is a little more advantageous, unless he's getting the pick of the litter of regional dII players. Again, considering Augie's reputation as an also-ran among South Dakota college basketball programs, not to mention the rest of the NCC and NSIC, it would appear unlikely that they'll ever be in a position to be getting the best dII talent from the SD/MN/WI/IA region. Is Billiter a good enough coach to win with inferior talent? I'd say no, but time will tell since I have a feeling that's what he'll have to do.

Thus far, it doesn't look like any of the seven schools who will be playing NCC basketball next year has had an especially successful late signing period. USD probably has the top high school recruit among the late signees with the Becker kid out of Osseo (MN), plus a couple of transfers including one of the Greens from NDSU, but without Tommie King they don't look very strong on paper, especially since the Sioux were able to beat them twice last year even with King.

Here's a list from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ranking the top Wisconsin senior basketball prospects. Harkins went from being ranked 10th as a junior to 11th as a senior. Considering his stats were up this year, I'm not sure why he "only" got 4th team A.P. all-state after earning the same honor as a junior, considering how few returning all-state players there were this year. He appears to be the top-ranked Wisconsin player not going division I (or to a juco in order to become eligible for division I). Mr. Basketball winner Michael Nelson was ranked 7th.

I would think that it's something of a surprise that MSU-Mankato would hire as its head coach an assistant coach from a program which generally is no better than middle-of-the-pack in the NCC. It will be interesting to see if she can keep more of the top southern Minnesota girls closer to home. UND and NDSU have done quite well recruiting down there over the years.