UND92,96

Based upon the fact that Boese, Mahlum, Jahner, Hausauer, Maffin, Glynn and Glick return, that there were three red-shirts this year (Draayer, Sannes and Werdell), one medical red-shirt (Elias) and that there were two early signees (Langen and Guinn), plus presumably Beck, I am doubting that anyone else will be signing next week, but that's only a guess on my part. With at least two very talented local players who will be seniors next year (Kimbrough--probably a longshot, I know--and Baageson), and only Hausauer being a senior next year, I hope that at least a couple of scholarships are available for next year's class.

Any word as to which of the young quarterbacks has been looking the best? And which offensive linemen look like they will join Smith, Kuper and presumably Hendrickson in the starting lineup?

With Koenig apparently staying at Green Bay, I would think it's imperative to sign another low post scorer soon. Ryp is obviously gone after next season, which will leave a huge hole in the middle. Gutter would be the only inside player remaining, and he's completely unproven. Have any big guys visited recently? Is the plan to either hope for an incoming transfer or sign some juco big guys next spring when more scholarship money is available?

I am basically in agreement with everything UND Fan said, but a couple of things keep perplexing me: 1. The UND men's basketball program has a tradition which is better than virtually everybody in the NCC, save maybe SDSU, and even in comparison with them UND has a significant advantage in the all-time series. So have things really changed that much in the past 10 years with regard to recruiting challenges so that UND went from being perennially one of the top programs in the region to one that is stuck in the middle? You need to change with the times, and I'm not sure we've done that very successfully. 2. When you look at the long list of sports in which UND has won conference titles in recent years, there doesn't seem to be any particularly compelling reason why the men's basketball program has not. Each sport is unique, of course, but I don't believe the situation with the men's basketball program is so different from all other sports that we should just accept mediocrity, either. The resources are in place, the tradition is there, the fan support is among the best in dII, local media coverage is extensive, and while REA has its flaws as a basketball facility, it has to be absolutely jaw-dropping to a kid in for a visit. I have to think that those things should more than offset the fact that we are geographically remote, or that it's a little colder here than South Dakota or southern Minnesota. Those obstacles have always been here, and they've been overcome many times. I have blasted Rich in the past, particularly after losses to Minot St., UMC and Mary. I know many others have felt the same way. With that said, I would like to see him succeed again, but I really think this upcoming year is a make-or-break situation.

I would think Rich needs to have a pretty good season next year considering what he has returning and the fact that UND hasn't won a share of the NCC title in about 10 years. I have no idea how much, if any jeopardy his job would be in if the Sioux have a mediocre season next year. Roger Thomas has fortunately not had any difficult decisions thus far, at least that I'm aware of, with regard to the firing of coaches. In other words, whether RT has the stomach to fire somebody for simply not winning enough is an unknown.

I read somewhere that he's going to transfer to a juco, and then hopefully catch on with another dI program the following year.

Looks like the woman made up the whole thing, according to this article. What a nut.

Here's a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article regarding the recruitment of Wisconsin high school players this year and how it's a bit of a down year. Speaking of Wisconsin Mr. Basketball winners, does anyone remember Greg Timmerman who played for UND back in the mid-90's after transferring from Wisconsin? Wasn't he a former Mr. BB?

I give NDSU credit for a nice group of high school recruits. I would have liked to have seen a couple of them sign with UND. However, with that being said, I believe that for the most part, these were all players who didn't receive offers from any NCAA tournament-eligible dI programs. In other words, NDSU was recruiting against dII's for these guys as opposed to Missouri Valley or other mid-major conference schools. For example, if the Nelson kid from Wisco were a true dI caliber player, wouldn't you think he'd have been offered by UW-Green Bay or UW-Milwaukee? I would think so. Also, it looks like juco recruiting may be a thing of the past. And I don't believe it's by choice. With the far more stringent eligibility requirements for juco players at the dI level, the odds of a fledgling dI program signing a juco player capable of making much of an impact are next to none. The vast majority of the 300-something dI programs recruit the juco ranks, and are eligible to play in the NCAA tournament which is what 99% of kids are looking for if they have a choice. Once they get the players they want, and subtracting out all of the players who aren't eligible to play dI, the pickings are likely pretty slim.

While it's not a big deal in the scheme of things, what frustrates me is when players' weights aren't updated from their freshman year--even when that freshman year may have been 3 or 4 years ago. Some examples of erroneous information on last year's roster: Hermes listed at 200 Gagner listed at 185 Anderson listed at 210 Maier listed at 210 Halstenson listed at 210 Nordick listed at 210 Kuper listed at 280 Duchscher listed at 237 Most of those weights are off from 15 to 30 pounds. I just think that a roster should contain relatively accurate information.

Still no official word on Winkelman as far as I could find. Might he be having second thoughts? Holding out for a last-minute dI offer? If he has decided on St. Cloud St., you wouldn't think there would be much reason to delay his announcement any longer. On another board, somebody asked about SCSU recruiting, and the guy who normally seems to know what's going on didn't mention Winkelman's name--not that that necessarily means anything.

I'm afraid that whomever is responsible for compiling the official roster has really dropped the ball. Not only are the weights grossly inaccurate in many cases, but they never even bothered to change it when players left, i.e. Aaron Austin. Austin's and Franklin's names were promptly dropped from the basketball roster when they left (temporarily in Austin's case). Why the football roster isn't updated and corrected once in awhile, I have no idea.

I believe you get a maximum of 10 semesters in which to use your four years of eligibility. Bowenkamp has already used a total of 9 (including a red-shirt year AND a medical red-shirt year), so he must sit out spring ball this year in order to maintain his eligibility for next fall.

According to the media guide, the record was 370.

Koupal is a great player, no question about it. I still think Jenny Crouse was the best women's basketball player I've seen in the NCC since not only could she put up big scoring and rebounding numbers--on teams that didn't need her to do everything unlike what USD needed Koupal to do--but she could also control a game defensively with her shot-blocking ability. Defense was an area where I don't believe Koupal particularly stood out.

This article on spring ball was in the Herald today. Erik Ahlstrom has been moved from tight end to the offensive line, which was probably a good move since he's already nearly big enough, and with Mielke, Kusler and Drew Thomas at tight end, there's still very good depth there. It's pretty impressive that Hermes broke Jim Kleinsasser's power clean record.

I'm not necessarily surprised that a fairly experienced team like SDSU would beat a team with many newcomers like Kennesaw in an early season game. It takes awhile for a group of new players to learn to play together, and having a quality coach certainly helps in that regard. But no matter how good a coach might be, you need to have the kind of talent to win a title that is extremely difficult to recruit from the high school ranks by a dII program. Aside from getting transfers, whether juco, division I or otherwise, or perhaps foreign players who are either ineligible for dI or overlooked by dI schools, I see no way to accumulate that kind of talent.

I know that opinions are mixed with regard to whether UND should be concentrating its basketball recruiting more on high school as opposed to junior college players, but I think it's significant that Kennesaw St., the team which won the dII title yesterday, has a roster made up of 10 transfers from either a juco or another 4-year program, with just four high school recruits. Of those four high school recruits, I believe most if not all were deep reserves. I believe last year's champion, Northeastern St. of Oklahama, had a very similar make-up to that of Kennesaw. Kentucky Wesleyan has been doing this for years. It seems clear that regardless of whether people necessarily agree with it or not, juco/transfer recruiting is the way you need to go to win titles in men's dII basketball. Since the high school talent pool around here simply isn't very good, I don't think there's much question that if we as fans want to see a team which has much of a shot at reaching the Elite 8, and perhaps even winning it, junior college recruiting will need to continue, and perhaps even increase. The odds of ever accumulating a group of high school recruits talented enough to compete with the better mostly-transfer teams is not good, needless to say. Particularly considering our geographic disadvantage. It would be interesting to see what would happen to dII basketball if the NCAA enacted similar juco player eligibility requirements for dII as exist for dI. Does anyone know whether there is much of a chance that this will eventually happen?

Even taking the computer rankings completely out of the picture, my opinion is based upon: 1) the NCC was pretty strong last year; 2) SDSU was quite competitive in the league and finished 7-4 overall; 3) I believe that the top five teams from last year's NCC (UND, NDSU, UNO, St. Cloud St. and SDSU) would probably have had a very good chance to beat virtually any unranked I-AA team (and probably some ranked ones), at least on a neutral field, and 4) I believe Northwestern St. was unranked in the final poll, and received no votes. Now, who knows what next year's teams will be like, but based strictly on last year's results, I think a good faith argument can be made that Northwestern St. is no better than an average NCC team. Yikes, I can't believe I just defended SDSU!

What?! You dare to question the computer? Unfortunately, as I said it's nearly impossible to accurately measure how teams from different levels compare.

Actually, I would argue that SDSU belongs in the top five instead of Northwestern St. Again, computer rankings are all we have to go on when comparing teams of different classifications, and SDSU ranks far higher than NW St. (or Southern Utah). If you are comparing the top end teams on the respective schedules of UND and NDSU, I would give the nod to NDSU since UNC, Weber St., Cal-Poly and UC-Davis are all pretty high-quality opponents. For UND, I'd say that UNO, Delta St., St. Cloud St., Ferris St. and Mesa St. would be the top five based upon last year's results, although UMD and Central Washington have also had very good teams in at least one of the past couple of years. I don't think the top end advantage is particularly large for NDSU, but I will give you that one. The problem with NDSU's schedule is, aside from the top four, I don't believe anybody on their schedule would have a particularly good chance of even making the division II playoffs. By contrast, UND has anywhere from five to seven legitimate playoff contenders on its schedule. So in terms of the top half of the schedule, I'd give NDSU an advantage. In terms of the bottom half of the schedule, I'd give UND an advantage. UND also has the advantage in that three of its probable top five games (and five of the top seven) are at home, whereas four of NDSU's probable top five games are on the road.

I don't believe anybody has said that this schedule is as good as it gets, but it's clearly a very solid division II non-conference schedule. Heck, a pretty good argument could be made that it would be a very solid I-AA non-conference schedule if you were simply judging the teams by their caliber as opposed to the label they have affixed to them. Let's face it, for the forseeable future there will still be plenty of talk about UND on your board, and about NDSU on this board. Mostly dealing with the alleged shortcomings of the other. That's no big surprise. I don't believe NDSU's schedule would be as big of a topic of conversation as it is but for the fact that some UND fans have heard the Crookston smack enough times to see this as an opportunity for a little payback.

Obviously, you are certainly entitled to your opinion as to the relative strengths, or at least the name-recognition, of the respective non-conference opponents of UND and NDSU. I'd say that Weber St. was a good get for NDSU, but the rest of the non-conference games range from pretty good (Nicholls St. and NW St.) to horrible (Valpo and Montana Tech). UND's are all pretty solid, at worst. While I'm not a big fan of computer rankings, there's probably not any other way to compare opponents from different classifications. Here are the Massey rankings from the end of last season for anyone who's interested: 107 UND 111 Weber St. 113 NDSU 151 Delta St. 164 Ferris St. 165 Nicholls St. 181 Mesa St. 184 NW St. 225 Central Wash. 325 Valpo 461 Montana Tech People can draw their own conclusions as to which team has the better non-conference schedule on paper. I, for one, wouldn't want to trade schedules with NDSU this year.

And by the same token, all we seemed to hear from certain NDSU fans for the past few years regarding UND's schedule was Crookston, Crookston, Crookston. Never mind the fact that UND still managed to win the NCC and advance to the national championship game in two of the four "Crookston years." It should come as little surprise that some UND fans are going to give a little of that grief in return in response to NDSU scheduling an NAIA opponent and a non-scholarship school.