UND92,96

This was from the UND press release last week:

The status of Sather is obviously a huge issue with regard to player retention, but I think it's a positive that the Curtises, Smith and Moore were all AAU teammates. I highly doubt Moore would have signed here if he thought those three were planning on leaving after a year.

I have no idea, but in this case it should be pretty easy to draw a distinction between the players he was personally involved in recruiting, and those he inherited. There are currently no open scholarships for next season, and UND is losing about 25 ppg from a team that can't seem to reach 50 in a game. He's going to need to make some tough decisions or else things aren't going to get better for at least two or three years.

USD is currently 5-0, including a win at Kansas State, and they actually returned less scoring from last year's team than UND did. The difference is that USD's portal additions have been extremely productive. Their top seven scorers are from the portal, all averaging between 8 and 16 points per game. Aside from Ava Miller, we're just not getting close to that kind of production from our portal additions. Ultimately, I think high school recruiting dictates how successful long term a program is going to be, and that's going to take awhile for a new coach. But assuming there's another major roster shakeup after this season, he's going to need to do better in the portal to turn things around in the next few years.

Izzo's latest prediction. I guess he thinks SDSU will beat UND next weekend.

I highly doubt there would be mutual interest anyway. But that is the type of player Hutter is going to need to add in the near future. We desperately need scorers. Need to maybe take a run at Bergan Kinnebrew from Mary, if she's willing to leave Bismarck. Not recruiting her out of high school was a major mistake. She is every bit as good as her high school teammate Logan Nissley (now at Nebraska) in my opinion.

I would not be surprised if Kiera Pemberton is back in the portal after the season. She's playing three minutes per game for Baylor. Their game against UNLV was on CBS sports network last night, and she had one brief appearance late in the first half, but that was it as far as I could tell.

Looks like Evanson, Hanson and Moore all signed today.

Who knows how many currently valid offers he has, but this is from the Strib last year (note the mention of Eli King towards the end):

The shooting has been horrifically bad so far. All but two players are shooting 30% or worse. Demers and Aumer have done about what I thought they'd do in terms of scoring, and Ava Miller has been a very pleasant surprise. But you're not going to win many games scoring less than 70 in a game, and right now UND is not even averaging 50.

I don't see UND and Illinois State playing in the first round. That would presumably require SDSU to beat the Redbirds this weekend, which seems doubtful with the way things have been going for the Jacks the past month. I think ISU-red finishes 9-3 and gets a seed.

A Tom Miller article on the status of a number of injured players was just posted on the Herald webpage. Here's the latest on Ziebarth:

I agree. And for anybody questioning whether Schmidt is willing to make difficult personnel decisions, keep in mind that he chose not to retain two or three defensive assistants from last year despite having pretty long histories with them. I'm sure that wasn't easy, but it looks to have been the right decision.

I think we want USD to lose. It would give them a fifth loss, so if we win out we are not in a position of being tied with them overall record wise with a head-to-head loss. As for SDSU, you could argue it either way. If they lose, they are going to be completely deflated when they come to the Alerus with four straight losses and probably zero confidence. If they win, they probably start feeling good about themselves for the first time in about a month, but it would make a UND win against them look better.

Obviously this team has shortcomings, and criticism is warranted, but with regard to last night's game, this has to be kept in mind (from Alex Faber's Herald article): Marley Curtis was barely able to play, and of course Micah is still out. If nothing else, it's going to be interesting to watch the development of Uelmen, Smith and the Curtises over the course of the season.

I feel like the real question is whether SDSU gets in at 7-5. Because I don't see them winning another game this season.

It appears that with both Demers and Ava Miller starting, that means there's going to be a lot of small lineups when one or both are out. I am assuming Ohnstad is backing up Ava, but she was in immediate foul trouble last night, so that created a problem since the options off the bench at the 4 are limited. Demers doesn't really have a backup, and she generally only plays 18-22 minutes per game, so that's an issue. VanderWal, the only other 5 on the roster, only played one minute, so I can only assume she's not going to play much again this season. Hanna Miller was the only player on the roster (aside from Klosterbuer who we know is out for the season) not to play, so I don't know if that means she's also injured. She's really the only other option on the roster to play at the 4 or 5.

Played 11 minutes in first half. No clue as to why she didn’t start.

Much like the men’s game last night, there are two very surprising starters.

I'm really interested to see who starts at the 3 and 4, and how deep the rotation is going to be.

Even in UND's best seasons under Lennon, there was always a highly disappointing loss to a team the Sioux should have beaten fairly easily. In 2001, it was the home loss to Omaha. In 2003, it was the season opener loss at Mesa State. It's all about how the team responds after the disappointing loss. We'll know a lot better what this team is made of after Saturday. I won't guarantee a win on Saturday, but I think Schmidt will have the team ready to play its best game of the season.

I skimmed the SDSU message board after Saturday's game, and they don't seem to think their o-line is very good this year. If true, regardless of who the QB is I'm not sure they're going to make much noise in the playoffs. The defense obviously also has some issues, even throwing out the NDSU game, judging by how many yards Murray St. gained two weeks ago. My guess is that they were a lot better early in the season (see Montana St. game as exhibit A), but once the inevitable injuries started piling up, they just didn't have the depth to withstand it, which is completely understandable under the circumstances.

Schmidt was quoted in Tom Miller's Herald article as saying it didn't appear serious.

I don't think a lot of thought went into these projections. I suspect they simply assumed that any future games would be won by the higher ranked team based upon the most recent polls, regardless of where the game is being played. For example, they are likely assuming that SDSU will win out, including at UND, which appears to be a pretty questionable assumption at this point.

Starting lineup today vs. Minnesota is Uelmen, King, Anderson, Marley Curtis and Natsvlishvili.