UND92,96

Does anybody know whether UND is recruiting Sydney Boike from Crookston? She's a junior, 5'11", and one of the leading scorers in the state at 23.5 ppg. I have not seen her play, but my understanding is that she is a very versatile player.

I agree Weber represented the Big Sky well. But most of the rest of the schools need to start winning more non-conference games. The Big Sky's non-conference winning percentage was among the lowest of all division I conferences this year, and obviously we know first-hand how much UND has struggled in that regard.

It's possible, but they were paying Buzz Williams $2.8 million a year. I have to think they'll be looking for, and can afford a bigger name.

Strand scored 45 points in the third place game today.

NDSU certainly got caught a bit of a break being in the region they are. If you have to play a 4-seed, better San Diego St. than Michigan St. Louisville or UCLA.

If I were a school considering a move to FBS, I'd take a long, hard look at what UMass has experienced. And that's a school with a long history of basketball success (and the money that goes with it).

The last two years, UND is 0-14 vs. non-conference opponents away from home (includes neutral court games). In that same stretch, UND is 13-12 vs. Big Sky opponents away from home. Does UND just play that much better away from home vs. Big Sky opponents, or is the Big Sky just not very good after the top team or two?

And DOWN goes Duke! 14-seed Mercer pulls the big upset!

I believe where the ball was dropped was the almost total failure to add high school recruits between the Huff-Anderson-Webb class, and the class coming in next year. I assume this was not part of a plan, but rather a reaction to not being able to sign the players they wanted, but it's hard to keep bringing in transfers year after year and expect it's going to work out. I have no idea how the staff failed to even take a flyer on a project big man in the past four years. Sometimes it works out (Wilmer).

Opinions will probably differ in terms of whether this info has any potential bearing whatsoever on UND, but I understand USD is possibly targeting Craig Smith as its next coach.

I would argue that UND should never have been invited to or accepted an invitation from a post season tournament based upon what players were actually available to play. And I would say that after Weber St., the top few teams in the Big Sky were down, and maybe way down from past years. Both Weber and Montana were far better in 2012-13 than anybody in the Big Sky this season IMO.

I'm not sure whether this was previously posted or not, but another UND recruit, Josie Buckley, suffered a scary injury this season: http://www.leadertelegram.com/sports/prep_basketball/article_7983e872-775a-11e3-932f-001a4bcf887a.html I know the article indicates that she still plans to play college basketball, but considering the severity and nature of the injury, I have to think her status may be in question.

Strand scored 23 points today to lead Fergus Falls into the MN 3A semi finals. UND recruit Grace Sawatzke will be playing later today in another 3A quarter final. Both players have a chance to contribute next year IMO. Strand averaged about 21.5 ppg this year, while Sawatzke averaged 16.5 ppg and over 4 assists per game. Both have over 2000 career points.

It's crazy how one freak play can change a team's fortunes for the worse. Think back to the UND-NDSU game from December of 2012. Brandon Brekke takes an elbow to the face, gets a concussion and is never the same. Prior to that game, Brekke had something like 24 double-figures scoring games. After that injury he had one, and couldn't play at all his senior year. What a shame. In case people forgot what he was capable of when healthy: http://www.undsports...TCLID=205363657

I would probably go with a starting lineup of Anderson, Hooker, Huff, Stefan and Traylor, and rotate in Antwi and Calcaterra. Anderson and Huff will probably both play very close to 40 minutes. If fouls or injury necessitate, Benton and Salmonson may also need to play some minutes.

So it appears UND may be without four of what were expected to be its top six players coming into the season--Brekke, Webb, Schuler and Nash. Since I'm positive the trolls will be coming out of the woodwork should UND lose to the Summit's sixth-place team on Wednesday, let me ask this--who would you expect UND to be favored against, on the road, in the Big Sky with this short-handed lineup? Anybody besides possibly SUU (and there's no need to even bring up the result of that game from earlier this month)?

I'm happy for him (and for UND, since it reduces the buyout), but the destination seems a bit surprising. I don't really understand why he didn't go to SIU, unless he just didn't want to move that far away.

I acknowledge there's probably not much downside, but I doubt there's going to be any real practice time, either. Maybe a walk-through today, and another tomorrow night in Omaha. It's just a bit hard to get too excited about playing in the same tournament for the fourth year in a row, and with a severely depleted and fatigued team, to boot. But for a team like UNO, who wasn't even eligible to play in its own conference tournament, and who hasn't played in two and a half weeks, it's probably a great thing.

I tend to agree that IF Webb, Nash and Schuler are all out, it may be have been prudent to simply decline the invitation. There is speculation that both UNI and Montana may have turned down invites.

Yes.

That seems to be a popular sentiment, and I understand it to an extent given the history of 12's vs. 5's, but NDSU hasn't beaten anybody with an RPI of higher than 67 this year, and OU is at 25, so it's going to probably take their best game, plus an off game by the Sooners.

I hesitate to even contribute to this thread, but what has been difficult to accept is that two years ago, UND beat Montana (Big Sky tournament champion), SDSU (Summit tournament champion) and NDSU (with four of the same starters as this year's Summit tournament champion). The future looked very bright given the fact that the team was nearly all sophomores. But for a variety of reasons, most notably the loss of Brekke for most of the last two years, an inability to ever really replace Patrick Mitchell, a series of in some cases freak injuries (Huff's jaw last year, Schuler missing a total of 16 games in the past two seasons, Webb going down in this year's Big Sky tournament, etc.) and other various unfortunate circumstances (Traylor missing most of last year due to academics and Nash having to sit out a year when many other similarly situated players were given immediately eligibility upon transferring), UND was really never able to be at full strength. So now we're left to wonder what might have been.

That seems pretty unlikely, having USD as a higher seed than UND. UND's RPI is presently 89, whereas USD is at 136.

UND's rash of injuries the past few years has been borderline absurd.

Official capacity is 3300. There is absolutely no way the place was only about 60% full. It was at least 80% full, and probably more.