UND92,96

Lennon hires ex-Augie assistant to coach db's, according to this link.

Apparently UND is supposed to keep playing NDSU until some hypothetical future time when UND starts to lose consistently and NDSU unilaterally determines that yes, the scholarship differential has officially taken effect. Then, and only then, would they consider it acceptable for UND to bow out from the series.

I can only assume that Anderson realizes that NDSU has also never even come close to filling the Fargodome except for when they play UND, either.

Nobody has speculated that there's something wrong with the SDSU women's program. I merely speculated that the only possible reason I can think why Oien would freak out over something so seemingly innocuous is because SDSU has lost at least one high-profile athlete to another NCC school. If you have another theory, please feel free to share it because as Corella correctly pointed out, athletes and coaches from opposing schools do speak with each other after games quite regularly, and without officials from those schools having a fit about it. I see nothing wrong with what Glas did, nor would I have any problem with any of the SDSU coaches talking with any UND player after this weekend's game.

Yes, that occurred after the Oien/Nagy/Glas incident. My understanding of it is that Lindsay Draayer signed an LOI with SDSU in the Fall of 2002. After that, her sister transferred from SDSU, and Lindsay apparently sought and received her Release from the LOI. She then signed with UND last spring. I don't believe it was ever explained in the Herald, but I know for a fact that she signed an LOI with SDSU (I remember reading the press release on the SDSU site), so they must have granted her request for a Release.

I almost wonder if Oien is paranoid after the Mandy Koupal transfer from SDSU to USD. I have no idea why else somebody would freak out over a coach chatting with a player after a game, especially when there's absolutely no track record by Glas of tampering with opposing players, or any history of a transfer from another NCC school to UND for men's basketball. This whole thing is bizarre. I could care less if Nagy or any other coach was talking to Lindahl, Rypkema, etc. after the game on Saturday. If you're confident in your program, it seems to me you would have nothing to worry about even in the highly unlikely event that a coach did have unethical intentions (which I'm positive Glas did not).

It seems like the women's team has gone to a lot better places than the men in terms of tournaments or "warm weather" trips over the years. In the past ten years, the women have gone to Hawaii three times, Florida four times, Arizona twice and California once. The men, on the other hand, have been to Hawaii just once, California twice and Arizona once. There have been other trips by the men to places like Washington, Oregon, Kansas and Colorado, but those don't exactly compare to going to Hawaii or Florida in December as far as weather is concerned.

I was a little disappointed that there were no questions by Swygman or Hennessy or calls regarding this incident on the coaches' show on 1440 last night. I got the impression that there may have been some colorful discussion about it during one of the commercial breaks, however. It's probably just as well that the issue was left alone since Roebuck probably would have ended up saying something on the air that he'd have regretted later.

It seems surprising now that UND agreed to play in the holiday tournament in Brookings this year considering the hard feelings I'm sure this incident caused. It makes me wonder if maybe Nagy called Rich to apologize after he talked to Jones and his parents and realized that he and Oien completely overreacted.

Considering the injuries and the lack of the "real" Aaron Austin this year, what kind of record would make this a successful season? I'm thinking that 15 or 16 wins would actually be a good season all things considered, although I know some will disagree with that. I honestly didn't think the Sioux would win more than 3 or 4 games after the Mary debacle.

I guess St. Cloud got a lot of power points by winning at Concordia-SP and USD, but realistically they have no business at third. Yes, it's all decided by the infamous strength of schedule index so I'm not accusing the committee of bias, but St. Cloud is likely going to lose by 25 at UND and NDSU and they'll plummet back to where they should be--four or fifth in the NCC and seventh or eighth in the region.

I don't think Lindahl is a savior by any means. I just think that a) he's a good player--maybe even all-NCC as a sophomore; and b) he's better than Grant. I am interested in UND Fan and Corella's opinion on this one, as well. Take this for whatever it's worth, but in a head-to-head matchup in Aberdeen this year, Lindahl out-scored Grant 22 to 4. Since both play the same position, I assume they were guarding each other for much of the game.

I can't agree that Grant is a better shooter than Lindahl. Lindahl is one of the best shooters in the NCC right now. He's also made great strides as a rebounder, and he's not quite the defensive liability he was last year, either. I'm pretty sure that Northern and perhaps one or two other NSIC schools were the only dII schools who seriously recruited Grant, whereas Lindahl was recruited very hard by UND, NDSU and others. I agree that Grant looked good at the state tournament two years ago, but that's not always the best barometer of who will succeed in college. Brandon Badding looked very good at state his junior year, too.

Grant is actually averaging 12 points a game at Northern, so I guess that makes three North Dakotans averaging in double figures at the dII level right now. However, I don't think either UND or NDSU really "missed" on him. He's essentially a "poor man's" Evan Lindahl. He's shorter, slower and less talented offensively than Lindahl, in my opinion, but he's a pretty good shooter. Nelson is red-shirting, I believe.

Was it REA management or RT who made the ultimate decision as to the capacity? All they had to do is look back about 10-12 years ago when the average crowd was just under 5000 to see that with good teams, people will come out in bigger numbers.

I completely agree. From the time it was announced that the seating capacity for the Betty would only be in the 4000 range, I kept hoping that common sense would prevail and another 2000 to 3000 would be added to the capacity, but no such luck. I think the Ralph is good in terms of a recruiting tool, but it provides no atmosphere at all for basketball.

I hate to single out players, but since you mentioned Terry, he's one of the primary culprits of a guy who looked very good in high school but who's pretty much been a bust in college. There have been at least two Mr. BB winners in the past 3 or 4 years who have been major disappointments in my opinion, and that along with the fact that there are really only three ND players right now who have distinguished themselves at all at the dII or dI level (Jacobson, Keaveny and Lindahl) prompted me to start this thread. Yes, there are others who may also do well eventually, i.e. Koenig, but it seems like this is a very down period for producing successful college players from North Dakota. I don't see kids like Mike Boschee anymore. Kids with limited athletic ability and/or size but who can shoot the lights out and who are able to carve out very successful college careers through sheer hard work.

Obviously this is a very good football schedule, although there were no real surprises since these are all opponents that have been mentioned on this board. The question I have is this: since the game with Kutztown apparently fell through, wouldn't it be better to add one cupcake opponent--other than UMC--and have an 11-game schedule instead of a 10-game schedule? I never like the idea of playing one fewer game than most other schools because it just means there's that much less margin for error.

Here's the release.

I was just thinking of how few North Dakotans there are right now who are currently averaging double figures in points at the dII level. As far as I can think of, there's only Jared Keaveny at SW St. and Evan Lindahl at UND. Obviously Nick Jacobson is doing well at Utah, and Koenig at WI-GB probably would have done pretty well in the NCC, but it seems like there should be more decent basketball players being produced in North Dakota. I don't see too many current high school players who look like they will go on to successful college careers, either. It seems that there are a lot more players who have disappointing careers, i.e. some of the recent Mr. Basketball winners, than those who actually live up to their high school hype, i.e. Scott Guldseth and Chris Gardner. Is this just a down period, or more of a long-term trend?

This has to be one of the weirdest NCC men's basketball seasons I can remember. First, you have a team in first place who has practically no margin for error to even make the post-season since they already have 8 losses overall. NDSU still has very tough games yet to play at USD and UNO, not to mention difficult home games against SDSU, St. Cloud and Mankato. Plus, there's the NCC post-season tournament. If they get to 10 or 11 losses, they would very possibly not even get in unless they won the post-season tournament. It will be interesting to see how far they slip in the regional rankings this week. Second, there's basically very little difference between the first place team, and the team in 7th. Notwithstanding the lop-sided loss in Fargo, you have one team at 12-9 overall, one at 13-8, and a split in the season series. And that's despite the fact that this is one of the weakest UND men's teams in many years, albeit due in large part to injuries. Also, other than Rypkema, there's not a single true center in the top 20 in the league in scoring. While there are players like King who post up a lot, at 6'5" he's not exactly a true center. Where have all the post players gone?

It's a turnstile count. Every ticket is scanned on the way in. I don't have any doubts that there were that many people there at one time, but as I said a lot left early. Unless you've been to several basketball games there (I have), it's very difficult to render a semi-accurate guess of the crowd size just by looking. Last night, I figured there were about 7200 to 7500, and that was about right for early in the men's game.

Obviously this can be taken with a grain of salt, but I checked out recruiting "guru" Tom Lemming's master list of college prospects on the ESPN site, and five UND signees were listed: Freund, Moe, Nicholas, Otto and Troen. Needless to say, where a kid is from plays a big role in these types of lists as I don't believe North Dakotans, for example, are ever listed. Also, it would seem players like Manke and Yilek, for example, should have been on there as well. But again, you have to take these lists for what they're worth. I mostly found it interesting that a kid from a relatively small town in northern Minnesota (Moe) would have found his way onto the list.