UND92,96

Thanks for the info. Regarding Koenig, it's interesting that this article from the Green Bay paper from about a week ago certainly gives the impression that they fully expect him back. It would obviously be great to get him. If the staff could somehow land Koenig, Winkelman and a high-scoring juco wing, along with Harkins, this could be an outstanding group of newcomers next year.

I see where Moormann from Dickinson won Mr. BB last night. In kind of a weird statistical quirk, this is the second year in a row where Mr. BB was won by a class A player who failed to lead his team to a state tournament berth (Koenig won last year). In most states, that wouldn't necessarily be too unusual, but in ND, making it to state in class A is not exactly difficult considering there are only 17 schools contending for 8 spots in the tournament. Based upon what I saw, Glasser from Trinity was probably the best high school player in the state, but he appeared a bit cocky which probably didn't endear him to many voters. Overall, it didn't appear to be a particularly strong class of seniors, but that seems to be the case more often than not lately.

While it's fair to be skeptical considering UND finished at .500 overall and in 7th place in the NCC, I see only UNO and Mankato as even arguably returning as much talent as the Sioux. And UNO loses Graham and Dada, and was only marginally better than an injury-depleted UND team this year judging by their two head-to-head matchups. The difference in talent between the top seven teams in the league this year was very marginal, as far as I could see, and between schools leaving the conference and other teams losing key players, UND is sitting pretty well. Ryp is probably the most dominant scorer returning in the NCC. His roughly 25 ppg average over the second half of the conference season was very impressive. Lindahl is a returning all-NCC player. MJ was not all-conference, but his stats were every bit as good as Tola Dada, the supposed mvp of the league this past year. Austin struggled this year, but I still have to think it was mostly due to missing 2 1/2 months. He proved himself as a very good NCC player two years ago, and he was probably one of the top two or three players in the Minnesota juco league last year. Nobles is probably going to be a significant upgrade in terms of talent at the point guard position. Parks clearly can shoot the ball, which was something the team lacked this year. Hopefully Jacobson and Stoute improve because they both have talent. Doyle has a lot of potential. More than likely, one or two other players will be added who will hopefully contribute immediately. While I wouldn't go so far as to say UND WILL win the NCC next year, I don't think there's any question that they have as good of a chance as anybody. Barring a slew of key injuries, I see no excuse for not winning something close to 25 games next year.

I'd say Carr has the basketball skills and the size to be a division II wing player, but his athletic ability, especially his quickness, would be a big question mark in my opinion. I'm sure he'll get the opportunity to play somewhere. Northern State would seem like a decent possibility since they have a history of recruiting North Dakota kids who weren't heavily recruited by NCC schools and having success with them.

Wow, I thought that Guiot was a jerk after his comments following the UND-Bemidji game in Grand Forks, but if he takes half of the current Bemidji team with him to Southwest Baptist, it really confirms that he's a jerk. I guess when your entire team is made up of transfers, loyalty to the program is too much to expect. I doubt very much Glas would be interested in this job. It's been open several times during his UND tenure and he's apparently never shown interest, and he's got the talent returning next year to finally win the league for the first time since the mid-90's.

From the Star-Tribune: Any comments, doclenz?

Has anyone heard any news/rumors regarding recruiting? I watched most of the Class B tournament yesterday, and I didn't see anybody who looked like a high level division II prospect.

By the same token, if Simonson and the Lamoureaux's had been playing for Central instead of a junior team, South is likely never in a position to win the game, so it's all a matter of how you look at it. The fact of the matter is that Central has generally made it to state far more consistently than has South. When comparing Central to Red River over the last 20 years, the main difference is the fact that Grand Forks has grown almost exclusively to the south (aside from the Congressional developments to the west), and Red River traditionally has been the school where south-end kids go. With open enrollment, the south end advantage has lessened some, but in general south end kids are still going to go to Red River, and I would guess that there are far more hockey-playing kids on the south end than the north end.

I was just thinking that next season may be the first time in a long time where the women's basketball team may have the most question marks among the "big four" UND teams--hockey, football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The other three teams should all return a very solid nucleus, whereas the women will probably need to rely pretty heavily on newcomers. And yet, I would still probably give the women the best odds among the four teams of winning a conference title due in large part to the fact that there's really no team that appears better on paper.

Danye Guinn has been named one of the five finalists for Minnesota Ms. Basketball.

UND signee Danye Guinn was named second team all-metro by the Star-Tribune. I would have thought she had a pretty good case for first team, but she missed about a month with an injury, and her numbers weren't quite as good after she came back. She does need to seriously work on her field goal percentage, though. link

The reason I don't think it's that big of a deal that UND hasn't won a road playoff game is because generally speaking, if you're on the road for the playoffs, you are an underdog to begin with assuming the seeds are relatively accurate. Couple that with the homefield advantage in general, which often makes a home team play better than what they otherwise would, and it's very tough to win on the road in the playoffs. I believe that at least four of UND's road losses have been to either the defending champions or the team who ended up winning the title--Pitt St., North Alabama, NW Mo. St. and Northern Colorado. While the losses were disappointing, it wasn't as though UND was losing to cupcakes, either. The one other road loss in the past 10 years was to IUP, and that was on a field that was all but unplayable due to an abundance of rain. Obviously road teams do sometimes win, but last year's Grand Valley team is probably not the best example due to the fact that they were seeded lower than where they should have been due to the strength of schedule index not being a very accurate barometer of how good a team is. I don't think too many people really looked at Grand Valley as much of an underdog in any of their three road games. With all that having been said, I'll be the first to admit that traditionally, UND has been far better at home than on the road, especially when it comes to playing good teams. The one exception has been UND's success in Fargo over the past decade.

I recall reading earlier this year about how Metro is considering dropping its athletic program altogether. Even if that's not necessarily going to happen soon, their coach would be crazy to not be looking to move on to a more stable situation soon. I doubt they draw too well considering its a commuter school in a major metropolitan area with a lot of other sports going on. It would be hard to believe Metro pays very well, either. But they have certainly done very well in men's basketball for most of the past 15 years.

What I find so comical about this guy is that he's all up in arms about 3 or 4 people on this site pointing out the obvious--1) that the Gangelhoff Center is not a very nice facility at which to host a regional; and 2) that a true number one seed shouldn't lose by 35 points at home. Because he can't handle us pointing out the obvious and the indisputable, he jumps on the NDSU and SDSU bandwagons, as if that's some sort of punishment to the UND team. What he apparently fails to realize is that it's not too hard to find at least 3 or 4 fans from each of these schools who would wholeheartedly agree that 1) the Gangelhoff Center is not a very nice facility at which to host a regional; and 2) a true number one seed shouldn't lose by 35 points at home. I guess we were just "lucky" in that he found this site before he found the NDSU and SDSU sites.

Even though SDSU has obviously done very well the past three seasons, the good news is that UND has had very good success against them, going 7-3 over the past three seasons, and having won 18 of the last 21 going back a few more years. All three losses have come in Brookings, so that's a positive as well considering this game is obviously on a neutral court. I'm not making any predictions, but the biggest keys in my opinion will be: 1. Stay out of foul trouble. Both SDSU and NDSU have had a tendency to get the Sioux into foul difficulty, and obviously UND doesn't have much depth so it will be critical to keep the starters on the court as much as possible. 2. Keep the turnovers to a reasonable number. In two of the three losses UND has had to SDSU in the past two years, a big reason has been committing more than 20 turnovers. 3. Rebound. It's not even necessary to actually win the battle of the boards, but UND can't be badly out-rebounded and expect to win. Ironically, the one loss this year came despite out-rebounding SDSU, whereas in the two wins the Sioux were actually out-rebounded.

BisonMav- I take it you were at the game? Was it full? Could it have held any more? I thought about going, but there was no way I was going to risk not getting in after a 5-hour drive.

I see where Zubke scored just 7 points against Crookston last night. A name to keep in mind for the class of 2005 is Sam Sussenguth from Willmar. He's 6'8" or 6'9" and has put up some very good numbers this year. He led Willmar to a win over a pretty good Thief River Falls team last night. I have no idea whether UND has looked at him at all, though.

And the correct answer is...2506. Since the championship is on a Monday, I doubt that there will be more for that game. The UND-NDSU game had about 700 more than the Concordia-SDSU game.

If you would have told me before the game that Leighton and Boese were only going to combine for 20 points, I would have thought the Sioux would lose by 20. Nice effort by the other three starters to all exceed their scoring averages. I certainly expected SDSU to beat Concordia, and I'm not surprised that it wasn't even close, but a 35-point margin of victory? Wow, talk about a number-one seed laying an egg. I'm sure Concordia isn't as bad as the score would indicate, but still, that must have been a very poor performance. I've never heard of a number-one seed losing quite that bad. I'd like to think that everybody's-favorite-regional-committee has learned a lesson, but I doubt it.

There have certainly been some games in which turnovers have been a huge issue. Overall, however, UND has averaged about 17 to's per game. Not great, but not too terrible considering that the Sioux are trying to get into transition at every opportunity. UND ranked third and fourth in the NCC in turnover margin and assist-to-turnover ratio, respectively. Interestingly, Leighton is by far and away the biggest culprit when it comes to turnovers. Quite honestly, I didn't even realize this until I looked at the stats.

Langen evidently had a heck of a game last night, as she had 25 points, 16 rebounds, 5 blocks, 4 assists and 3 steals to lead Kittson Central to a relatively easy win over Fosston. It will be interesting to see what the UND strength and conditioning program will do for her. I'm sure she's never going to be particularly quick, but if she gets into a little better condition, with her size and strength, I would think she could be an effective low-post scorer, especially considering at the college level she'll be single-covered most of the time. Hopefully Kittson Central makes it to the finals so we can see her play on tv.

I meant no disrespect by use of that term. Heck, I'm born and raised in Grand Forks, and have never lived in the twin cities. My point was more that I am not as familiar with what players played at which twin cities schools, whereas I have more familiarity with non-metro schools (is that a more p.c. term? ), and I believe that the number of WCHA players Grand Forks has produced recently compares very favorably to what the better non-metro schools have produced. Probably most metro schools, too, but as I mentioned, I don't really follow who's coming from Edina as opposed to Apple Valley, etc. All the suburbs are pretty much the same to me.

Actually, the UND women's team has a similar problem to what the men had--not enough outside shooting and too few consistent scorers. At least the men had three guys who generally would score in double figures, whereas the women have just two. Lately Mahlum seems to either score in double figures, or else she doesn't score at all. Perrizo and Demaine have struggled their entire careers with poor field goal percentages. When the UND women are running and shooting a decent percentage, they're very difficult to beat. But in the handful of games each of the past few seasons where they shoot 30-35%, as has unfortunately happened in the past three regionals (counting this game today), we aren't going to win very often. I am in no position to question Roebuck's recruiting as his success speaks for itself, but I have to admit that I'd like to see more scorers than what we have right now.