UND92,96

NDSU plays at a refurbished Dacotah Field. It’s a pretty nice facility with artificial turf. They won the conference this season. SDSU plays at a municipal facility well off campus with natural grass turf. It’s a fairly similar situation to when UND softball played at Apollo. They still seem to do well, finishing third this season.

You kind of have to assume that the softball situation is different due to the large donation made by one of the player's parents to fund the new facility. It's not Engelstad-type money, but hypothetically, if that player's parents are happy with the coach, it would be a bit more difficult to make a change at this particular point in time.

I realize there are several important differences in the two eras, such as the state of the program when they took over, but it's nevertheless interesting that Bubba's current winning percentage after nearly 11 full seasons (.559) is actually lower than what Pat Behrns' was at the time he was fired at the end of his sixth season (.571). Behrns was 8-3 in this second-to-last season, but followed that up with a 3-8 record in his final season, with an embarrassing 49-0 loss to NDSU to end the season, and that was enough to send him packing. But then again I'm sure Behrns didn't have three years left on his contract at the time.

Matthern is a PWO, as will be Reardon. Not sure about Hillesheim. Of the current players, the one I could see maybe having already informed the coaches that she's done after this year is VanderWal. This is her fourth year in the program, so it's quite possible she's planning to graduate in the spring. That's just a guess on my part, though.

Mark Farley of UNI is retiring at the end of the season. He's a little younger than Bubba.

I would be pretty stunned if Schiller isn't an immediate starter. I also think you can draw some conclusions about the impact she'll have by looking at what Logan Nissley did last year at Nebraska. Nissley made the Big Ten all-freshman team and scored 7 ppg. While they're obviously different types of players, Schiller was the better player in high school in my opinion. The 2023 state championship game should have erased any doubts about that. If Nissley could do that as a freshman against Big Ten competition, I'd look for Schiller to do considerably more against Summit competition.

It's a pretty strong year for ND high school quarterbacks. Parks from Red River, Schepp from Velva and Sheldon from Mandan are all quite good.

I'm dating myself a little with this comparison, but he reminds me somewhat of Travis Kraft, who played on some of those really good May-Port teams from the mid to late 1990'S, and later at South Carolina and NDSU.

Not technically a former player, but one-time UND football commit Darius Luff won the 110 meter hurdles for Nebraska at the NCAA track championships last night. He'll be running in the Olympic trials in a few weeks. Obviously he's a long-shot to make the team given how strong of an event the hurdles is in the US, but it's also not completely out of the question given that he dipped under 13.20 seconds last night.

The best womens'/girls' basketball coach in the region is already a UND employee--Kent Ripplinger, the longtime Red River girls coach. Hire him as a mentor to Mallory and let him be in charge of the defense. I guarantee things would be better than what we've seen in recent years.

As I recall, Brewster was fired around March 11, 2020, and Mallory was named interim head coach. Covid shut the world down less than two weeks later, and no national search was ever conducted. Or am I just not remembering the chain of events correctly?

I would really like to see UND talk to both Jersey Berg from Bismarck and Karly Franks from Davies as potential PWO's. I have heard that Franks will be attending UND. She's a lights-out 3-point shooter. Berg is Hunter Berg's daughter, shoots the ball really well and is a taller perimeter player at about 5'11".

I have had the opportunity to watch Schiller play every game for the past few seasons, and I don't think there was ever a game where she wasn't clearly the best player on the floor, and that includes multiple games against Logan Nissley and LeeLee Bell. She's just relentless on both ends of the floor. I have followed ND girls basketball since the mid-1980's, and I haven't seen a better or more complete guard. Not even close.

I agree. And considering the enrollments of some of the larger suburban Twin Cities high schools, it would appear likely that Grand Forks would only have one high school if it were in Minnesota. Minnetonka, for example, with a population of about 53,000, has an enrollment of 3,200 at its one public high school.

Jaiden Haile, Lakyn Donnelly and Jordan Christofferson.

If you factor in the girls U-15 team, there likely would be enough 14 to 18 year-old girls players in Grand Forks to field two teams. But I think the problem in Grand Forks is that the overwhelming majority of players reside in the Red River district. It's the same with boys, but with the "open enrollment" situation (it's not really open enrollment in that anybody can attend Central, but you have to reside in the RR district to attend RR) it tends to work itself out with a lot of players choosing to attend Central despite not living in the district. Central would probably struggle to field a competitive boys team most years without this "open enrollment" policy. Unfortunately, the "open enrollment" policy has traditionally not worked at all in terms of girls sports in Grand Forks. To fix that glaring issue, which would even out things in terms of girls basketball and volleyball, along with probably allowing for two girls hockey teams, would require a significant boundary change, and I've all but given up on that ever happening.

Wrestling and cross country, too. Maybe swimming? I am pretty sure some Crookston swimmers have competed for Central in the past.

UND now has offers out to THREE current Horace players, as the 9th grade daughter of ex-UND player Jenny Boll was also reportedly offered recently.

Crookston co-ops with Sacred Heart for hockey. While of course Sacred Heart is located in EGF, it has a lot of students from GF.

Two more years after this season.

Kotelnicki?

I have never heard of either UND or NDSU actually offering Felchle. Maybe they did but the offers just weren't publicized, but that's pretty rare these days. I suspect both would have eventually offered her, though. Both have offered junior post Jaiden Haile from Horace, as did Central Michigan while Motherwell was on staff there. Having watched both of them play, I'd say Felchle is the more polished low post scorer, whereas Haile is a bit stronger, probably more athletic and a better rebounder. I also think NDSU offered Johnson from Mandan some time ago, but to the best of my knowledge UND has not.

Regarding Paye, the thing to keep in mind is that prior to last season, I don't think he'd played football since 7th grade. So yes, he's raw. But if you watch him play basketball, you'll quickly understand what football coaches can see in him. Freakish athlete and extremely strong. Reminds me of Jimmy K on the basketball court in high school. The fact that he's gotten two college football offers this week (MSU-Moorhead being the other) leads me to think he's been pretty impressive at some football camps. I think GFC was at a UND camp this week.

One good thing that will come from this is the increased ability of crossover games between EDC and WDA schools. With the addition of Horace this year, EDC teams were limited to one non-conference game. Next year, assuming the EDC AA schools play each other twice, that should leave open the possibility of five non-conference games.

Speaking of local players, I hope UND is watching Jocie Schiller from Red River closely. She ranked first in assists, second in scoring and second in steals this year in the EDC as a sophomore, and has excellent speed, quickness and ball handling ability.