UND92,96

An inability to win meaningful games away from Hyslop has become a disturbing trend the past few years for the UND women. With tonight's loss to USD, that makes four straight losses in Vermillion, three losses out of the last four games in Brookings, and three straight losses in Fargo. Obviously, the NCC will change a lot next year with the departures of NDSU and SDSU, and the likely fall back into mediocrity by USD with the graduation of Koupal, but nevertheless the UND women had better figure out how to win on the road if another national championship is going to be won any time soon.

UND Fan: Do you know whether there has ever been any discussion between the basketball coaches and Carney about playing hoops? I believe he was first team all-state and was considered one of the top three or four players in SD his senior year, and at about 6'7" and 230 pounds or so, he would provide a big body in the paint. Of course, not having played competitive basketball in several years probably means he would be very rusty, but he might be worth a look. Keaveny at SW St. showed that a guy can start off playing a different sport and still have a nice basketball career.

Yes, Rick is Paul's son.

I don't disagree with you that such a scenario is unlikely, I just thought it was interesting that after numerous Forum articles and/or local sportscasts over the past couple of years mentioning possible Big Sky expansion, this was the first time that NDSU's name came up with a potential partner (Idaho) other than SDSU. In case you didn't see it, it was was mentioned by Jeremy Jorgenson on Fox at 9:00.

If last year's start time is any indication, we're just over a month away from the start of spring football. One thing I will be interested in is who emerges as the backup quarterback. If I'm not mistaken, Bowenkamp can't take part in spring ball since he'll be a sixth-year senior next fall. That means that Carney, Bellmore, Manke and possibly Groeschl should all have ample opportunity to show what they can do with the first-team offense. Also, who will be the four primary receivers? Johnson and Grossman have the most experience, but Groeschl (if he's not playing quarterback), Weber, Ranson, Presthus, Van Dyke, Loegering and Ott should all contend, also. Finally, who will emerge at corner? Obviously Manke and Hoffschneider return as starters, but Franklin, Alexander and Greenwood, among others, should also be serious contenders for playing time.

somebison: You have to admit that it would be pretty funny if NDSU managed to get into the Big Sky (along with Idaho) and left SDSU to fend for themselves after all the talk about being travel partners. That might actually be enough to create a REAL rivalry between NDSU and SDSU.

I think 99% of the reason that there even was a press conference was to field all the "why isn't NDSU on your schedule" questions at once. Some people seem to have misconstrued the reason there even was a press conference as if it was to tell the world "heh, look how great our schedule is." True, it's a very good schedule, but if it weren't for the whole NDSU issue, it would have simply been announced via a press release like every other year. If an 11th game is added, great, but I don't think they wanted to delay the inevitable any longer, i.e. to confirm that NDSU would not be on the schedule.

There had been some talk earlier about NDSCS and ex-NDSU linebacker Tyler Morrow transferring to UND. Does anybody know whether he decided to play another year at NDSCS? I didn't see his name on any school's list of signees, and I believe he does have another year of juco eligibility.

This was just posted on allcanadagridiron.com:

While it's not that big of a deal in the scheme of things, the fact that Marissa Leighton only got co-NCC player of the week despite scoring 64 points on the weekend is a joke. Some freshman from USD whom I've never even heard of and who scored 24 fewer points than Leighton somehow warranted equal billing in someone's estimation. For whatever reason, the conference seems to have a very hard time awarding the player of the week honor to just one player in a given week.

I agree. I'm almost positive the actual crowd was more like about 3000. But let's face it, I don't think they have exactly the most accurate methods of counting at Hyslop. At REA, you know the figure should be pretty exact, but at Hyslop, who knows where they get the numbers from?

SDSU has actually won three of the past six games in Brookings between the two teams. It's the recent games in Grand Forks that have all been complete blow-outs, with UND winning the last six games by an AVERAGE of just under 27 points.

I have a feeling that any attempt by the legislature to get involved in college football scheduling may end up in Sports Illustrated in their weekly "This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse" segment. For those unfamiliar with that particular segment of SI, here's an example of a recent one: a Catholic high school in Pennsylvania recently ran an ad for exotic dancers in its girls' basketball program.

Rypkema and Lindahl are really headed in opposite directions right now. When he's not in foul trouble, it doesn't look like anybody in the league can guard Ryp one-on-one once he gets the ball on the low blocks. If he could make free throws, he'd be unstoppable. Granted, the post play in the NCC is really down, but Ryp appears to me to be by far the best offensive post player in the league. Lindahl, on the other hand, has completely disappeared the past two or three weeks. I have no idea what happened to him since he was on his way to being an all-NCC selection at the halfway point of the conference season. Between Lindahl, Jacobson and Jahner, I'm not sure who played the worst last night. The best lineup right now would appear to be Ryp, Wells (for defensive reasons only), Johnson, Austin and Dahl.

In another interesting matchup last night, Kimbrough out-scored NDSU signee Ali Sonstelie of Sacred Heart 33-17 in an easy B-G-MR win.

It was definitely a great performance by the women last night. Leighton and Boese are the best one-two punch in the league. There are also some definite parallels between UND's home games with SDSU in both football and women's basketball. On the road, it's almost always going to be tight, but at home, the games are nearly always blow-outs. It's been 7 or 8 years since SDSU has come within 12 points of the Sioux at Hyslop, and many of those games have been very one-sided, including a 24-point win last year and a 38-point win two years ago.

Kimbrough out-scored Langen last night 19-11, but Kittson Central won the game by two. Langen had been consistently scoring 25 per game over the past several weeks, so evidently Kimbrough must have played quite well defensively.

And now this little gem from Jeff Kolpack: Weenie? Nice word, Jeff. Somebody get this guy a thesaurus, and quickly.

He's still listed on their web page as being on the football coaching staff.

This was in the Herald recently:

As long as we're talking about mythical, pre-1973 "championships," we can't forget about UND's 1966 midwest region college division title. Quick, somebody tell Roger Thomas to get that banner ready!