UND92,96

This is not meant as a knock on Cal Poly, but the reality is that UND probably couldn't ask for a much better matchup for a must-win road game. That's not to say it will be easy by any means, but at least if UND loses it's going to be because Cal Poly ran the ball effectively against the strength of the UND defense. I could deal with that much more easily than the Idaho St. or Weber St. or Montana games, where it felt like UND's injuries and lack of depth in the secondary made it ridiculously easy to throw the ball.

Kid's having a monster game.

Bolinske has been impressive tonight in the state championship game. I think he could play safety at UND.

Jones is under contract through the 2016-17 season. I believe it would be pretty unusual for a division I coach to actually work into the last year of a deal. For that reason, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it would take a complete meltdown to cause Faison to make a change after this season.

I think he has one more year. Kind of hard to believe that he's only managed to hover around .500 after doing really well in his first two years.

UNC--pretty good at home; pretty bad on the road. I'm guessing the pattern will continue next week.

It's not even close. 2013 was as bad as it's ever likely to get, especially once Kuksa went down. Reyes is legit, and the corners have talent but are inexperienced.

I am guessing Freund was referring to Toivonen. Maurice will generally tweet about any new commit, and he hasn't, at least not yet.

Agreed. The corners are fine talent-wise, and are pretty much all very young so I'm not really worried because in time, they should be solid. I still would have liked to have seen Seibel switched back to defense once Arnell went down. He's a natural safety who switched to receiver last year out of absolute necessity. But now, we don't pass much anyway, and the depth at receiver is better than the depth at safety.

Anybody know why Cerriteno didn't play today? I didn't see him listed on the injury report earlier this week.

Bump: http://www.grandforksherald.com/opinion/our-opinion/3870314-our-opinion-red-river-central-show-troubling-disparities-sports

As I recall, a survey was given to all UND coaches regarding Buning's job performance, and the results were very negative. The leave of absence allowed for time to negotiate the terms of the buyout of Buning's contract, and probably to raise the funds necessary to pay it.

Just curious--did anybody else besides me receive the e-mail from the alumni association last week indicating that they would receive another e-mail with voting instructions within the next few days, and then not receive the second e-mail? And yes, I did check my spam folder, also.

I certainly agree that the first recruiting class was challenging given the very short time-frame. The fact that so many of them are playing and playing a lot is a tribute to the job the staff did under difficult circumstances.

While I too am disappointed that we failed to finish off the last two games, ultimately I really can't be too upset about the way the season has gone. Considering what Bubba inherited, two recruiting classes are not enough to built the depth necessary to withstand such a slew of injuries on defense. People can call that an excuse if they want, but this program does not have much depth right now and that should not be a huge surprise. If it's still this way after three or four years, then criticism is probably warranted. Now? Probably not, IMO. About the only real criticism I have--and I'm not even sure whether this is entirely fair--is that I would have liked to have seen the addition of at least one receiver by now who could have made an immediate impact.

I believe this breaks a 14-game conference losing streak for USD.

I watched USD's 31-3 loss at home to Youngstown a couple of weeks ago on TV. Would have never guessed this result in a million years.

IMO Bartels could be successful in the right situation. But in this particular offense with this particular group of receivers, I'm not sure it's going to work. It appears UND will struggle to throw for much more than 100 yards per game regardless of who is playing quarterback. So we really need somebody who can run for 50-100 yards like Studsrud can. If we still had receivers like Hardin and Golladay, then maybe it's a different story.

I realize it would take some time, but would Seibel potentially be more valuable to the program at safety than receiver? I believe he was actually recruited as a safety.

I believe UND blitzed on the play Idaho St. had a screen called, which resulted in a touchdown. It was just one of those days. The bottom line to me is that with Reyes out, UND's offense needed to win the game yesterday. And despite committing too many turnovers, it was well on its way to doing so...until Studsrud got hurt.

Also, what if Cam Kuksa hadn't suffered a career-ending injury his true freshman year? He and Reyes would have been quite a tandem at safety.

It might be the kiss of death, I don't know, but Izzo has UND making the playoffs: http://bisonmedia.areavoices.com/2015-bracketology-version-1-0/

I agree, but this is more or less the same formula used under Lennon, and games with under 100 yards passing were very few and far between. I guess my point is that while I'm certainly not displeased with the overall record with Studsrud under center, throwing for so few yards is not really something that can continue if we expect to win more than another game or two this season IMO.

Somehow UND is 3-2 in games in which Studsrud throws for less than 100 yards going back to last year. That's got to be one of the stranger statistics you're going to find for a team not running some form of option offense.

Schnepf using UND's game against Weber State--last year--without mentioning the circumstances (UND qb injuries), as some sort of basis of comparison with NDSU's game last week. Really? Maybe one of the dumber uses of comparative scores I've seen in awhile.