UND92,96

I believe that 2 or 3 other North Dakotans have announced plans to walk-on at UND (their names escape me), but to the best of my knowledge no other recruits have signed letters of intent.

It was a huge choke. I haven't been that disappointed since...well...last year's choke to Southwest State in the tournament. It's hard to believe a good home team can shoot well over 50%, out-rebound the opponent by 12, have four players in double-figures scoring, have an 11-point lead with 4:52 remaining, and still find a way to lose. On the other hand, the men seem to be coming around nicely. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually think the men have a better chance of making noise in the tournament (if they make it) than the women do. If Brandt can ever regain his 3-point touch, this team will be extremely difficult to beat. I just wish Glas would stick with a lineup of Beasley, M. Johnson, Walker, Brandt and Porter. Very few NCC teams have more than one big guy on the floor at one time so I don't think the lack of a true power forward would be a problem.

I have come to the conclusion that the committee can do pretty much whatever it wants. With at least 6 different criteria for them to consider in no particular order of priority, they can probably somewhat justify their rankings no matter what order the top 6 teams are in. For whatever it's worth, according to my calculations UND has the advantage over Kearney in overall s.o.s. even factoring in last night's game, but Kearney has the advantage within the region at present. It's unknown whether overall s.o.s. counts for more than that within the region. They are both listed as factors to be considered. Kearney's problem overall is that they are fairly heavily penalized by the fact that two of their losses are pretty bad. I don't believe they get any points for a loss to a non-division I or II team, and they have a loss to a sub-.500 division II opponent (3 points). Kearney's three losses therefore count for a total of nine points, compared to UND's three losses counting for 21 points. UND still has the opportunity to earn big points with a possible win over USD (14 points), a possible road win at NDSU (17 points), plus possibly two games in the NCC tournament against teams with a greater than .750 winning percentage. If by chance UND were to run the table (I'm not necessarily saying they will), the Sioux would appear to have a fairly substantial advantage over Kearney in both overall and within the region s.o.s. even if Kearney doesn't lose again.

I certainly wish Dykema well, but I really hope he didn't commit to Mary just because his girlfriend happens to go there. I don't ever recall a kid from North Dakota who was heavily recruited by either UND or NDSU choose to go to a DAC-10 school instead.

A few other points regarding the NCC vs. the RMAC in womens hoops: NCC is 15-5 against the RMAC this season, with all 5 losses by league also-rans UNC and UNO; NCC all-time NCAA tournament record is 94-59, with 8 championships; RMAC all-time NCAA tournament record is a stellar 3-14, including Kearney's all-time record of 3-7. One of the problems is that due to the location of the RMAC, they don't play many non-conference intra-region games other than against UNC. Obviously, UNC is not indicative of the strength of the NCC and this skews the head-to-head records between the respective conferences. Unfortunately, the futility of the RMAC in past tournaments is apparently not held against them although it probably should. There was absolutely no way to justify allowing Mesa St. to host last season, and there certainly was no way the RMAC should have gotten three teams in the tournament compared to the NCC's two. Mesa hadn't beaten anyone outside the pathetic RMAC and they promptly lost at home against the first non-RMAC team they faced in the tournament. It's the same this year with Kearney. They haven't beaten anyone of note either. Who cares if they go undefeated in the league if the league isn't any good? Let's see how they would do going to GF, Fargo, Brookings and Vermillion. They would go 0-4 and probably all would be blow-outs.

Nice wins by the Sioux last night--particularly by the women. They really took it to the soon-to-be-former-number-1 team in division II. What a difference two weeks makes. To go from losing by 16 to winning by 24. And the game really wasn't even as close as the final score would indicate since about 10 points came off the lead in the last few minutes when UND put the deep reserves in. Although it is run-down and decrepit, you can't argue with the home-court advantage that Hyslop provides. After last night, that's a combined 62 games in a row won there by the men and women! As much as I love Engelstad and watching hockey there, playing basketball there isn't a great idea in general because there isn't the same familiarity by the Sioux players and because 3,500 people sound a lot louder in the smaller venue. It's like giving away the home-court advantage. Just my opinion.

That's what I'm assuming. I haven't seen anything about it in the Bismarck paper. I'm not sure when NAIA schools announce their signings.

That's technically true, but it's safe to assume that at least for the better recruits NDSU signed the deal was that for one year they'd get a partial with more money to come the following year once there's more scholarship money available. It would probably be a little more accurate to compare NDSU's recruiting class to UNC's or maybe SDSU's rather than to other NCC schools whose exit from the league isn't imminent and who couldn't make a similar promise regarding increased scholarship money in the near future. With that being said, I'm quite satisfied with UND's recruiting class. Time will tell.

What strikes me about this year's recruiting class is how many of them not only compete in other sports, but excel at them. Bauer, Thomas, Ott, Turgeon, Wenzel and Alexander are all very good track and field athletes. Ott, Bauer, Thomas, Stewart, Austin (obviously), Presthus, Reiff and White are all good basketball players. Bonnet and Cadwell are outstanding wrestlers. And in what may be a first for UND football recruits, Meek is a lacrosse star. The one stat that really jumped out at me was Andy White's 18 sacks as a senior. Wow! Considering how seldom many high school teams throw the ball--particularly in the weather of the upper midwest--that's an incredible number. At 6'6" and with good athletic ability, he's got a lot of potential as a pass rusher.

Roebuck said Jenny is feeling much better and will play. Plus, he said the rest has been very good for her knees. The other positive from Boll's absence was that Kristi Boese got considerable playing time and has been showing improvement lately.

I think what the kid was saying was that if a player has pro aspirations and has enough ability, a scout will find you whether you're dI, dII, dIII or NAIA. Scouts tend to visit pretty much all the NCC schools yearly. Plus, especially since the kid is Canadian, I'm assuming he's aware that former UND player Scott Schultz was the top pick in the CFL draft a few years back.

It was BRIDGES. Hard to believe, huh? Apparently they haven't gotten enough press lately from the Heraldo so they're looking for publicity elsewhere.

Jenny has had a few concussions over the past 2 or 3 years, and I can recall a few games she has missed because of them. I'll listen to Roebuck tonight on the radio and post what he says about Boll's status.

Here's a link to an article about UND signee Donovan Alexander: Alexander The article says he was offered a scholarship by Nebraska late in the recruiting process so he's evidently a very good prospect. This was the other interesting statement in the article: "Lennon came to Winnipeg and had dinner at the Alexander household. He also told his recruit that the blueprints for an indoor practice facility have been drawn up and a move up to Division I could happen within the next three years." It appears that between Alexander, Duane Wenzel, Jason Hoffschneider, Tom DeSautel and others, UND has done extremely well the past two seasons in recruiting defensive back prospects.

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth if you think Lennon is mediocre and that Rocky was somehow better. Let's review Rocky's last four seasons at NDSU: 1993 7-3 (lost to UND) 1994 9-3 (lost twice to UND) 1995 10-3 (1-1 against UND) 1996 6-4 (lost to UND) Looks like pretty Babich-like numbers, don't they? Even you would have to admit that 1-5 against UND over his final four years wasn't sitting too well with Bison fans. Had he continued to lose to the Sioux for another year or two, he may have been canned even if he hadn't been feuding with Entzion. For whatever reason, some Bison fans seem to forget that by the end, Rocky's teams weren't overly successful, and were downright bad against the Sioux.

Just out of curiosity, when was the last year that NDSU fans DIDN'T think they had a great class, at least at the time? Obviously not all of them have panned out--the class of 2001 in particular was pretty poor--but every year that I can recall we have heard from Babich and read in the Forum about how great the class supposedly was. Since the success has been relatively modest since the last NCC title, it kind of makes you wonder whether the talent was just overrated, or the coaching was just that deficient.

Mike Martz has hired Bob Babich as linebackers coach of the Rams, according to the Rams website. I imagine most NDSU fans are glad to be rid of him, but announcing it the day before signing day is not exactly ideal.

I'll say 21, with the following breakdown: 8 from ND 6 from MN 3 from WI 1 from SD 2 from CO 1 from MB

As a follow-up on the some of the potential recruits from Colorado, Bierbach (lb), Craft (db), Marsh (rb), Kennelly (ol) and Weeks (ol) were all named all-Colorado by the Denver Post and/or the Rocky Mountain News. Since I believe these teams are picked from all the combined classes of high school football in CO, these players are evidently in pretty elite company. The other players mentioned by star2city were either all-state in 5-A (the largest class) or honorable mention in the cases of Johnson and Kluever. Bierbach, Craft and Marsh in particular sound like outstanding prospects. If UND can sign any of these guys, they will have done very well in Colorado in my opinion.

Offensive lineman Andrew Pratt (Platt?), who had been considering UND and others, is apparently going to the Air Force Academy. Also, UND is still in the running for all-state linebacker Brad McCamy from Mahtomedi. update from Star Tribune on MN h.s. players

Three more recruits have verbally committed to the Sioux according to the Milwaukee Journal. Andy White, an OLB-DE from Arrowhead, Duane Wenzel, a safety from Janesville Parker, and Andy Soll, an offensive lineman from Fon du Lac. UND recruits from Wisconsin I haven't found much on White, but Wenzel and Soll have very good credentials. Wenzel was named to at least three different all-state first teams, and Soll to two. Wenzel is also a very good hurdler and triple jumper in track.