UND92,96

Turnovers have been a problem this year. I believe UND averaged a little over 20 per game, which is way too many.

It seems to me that last year's Olympics pretty much showed how the Lamoureux's compare to other American college-age players. And there's nothing "second-best" about their play IMO.

Sounds like USD has replaced the Lamar game with NAIA Northwestern Oklahoma State, per a tweet from Mick Garry.

With what Oakland (currently RPI 56) loses, I would expect them to plummet next year, perhaps similar to how far NDSU fell after Woodside and co. left. That alone could tighten things up somewhat between the two conferences. What seems to be killing the Big Sky right now is that there are four really weak teams--Eastern Washington, Portland State, Idaho State and Sac. State. They are all in the 293-330 range. By contrast, the Summit has just two teams in the 290's or worse (maybe two again next year even without Centenary unless USD improves greatly). Hopefully a couple of the current bottom-tier of the Big Sky can improve to the point where they're not dragging down the conference's ranking as badly as they currently are.

Even though I freely admit that it makes no difference in the scheme of things, I look at it this way: Houston Baptist has two rather good wins--Middle Tennessee St. (213) and Texas State (231). Centenary has one win total, and it was against Western Illinois (337). So even though I realize strength of schedule plays a big role in the computer rankings, and the Great West teams all have low strengths of schedule, it really seems that common sense suggests that Centenary has far more of a claim to the coveted "worst dI team in America" title than does Houston Baptist.

I understand that, but my point is that realistically, a good case could be made that Centenary is in actuality the worst team in the country, even though using RPI as the sole measuring stick, they are not. It's difficult to conceive of a dI team losing to a team with three scholarship players, but obviously Western Illinois managed to do so.

It's certainly not a great win, but any road win is something of an accomplishment for this program considering how few such wins there have been in recent years. HBU does have the worst RPI in the country right now, although they did recently beat Middle Tennessee St. from the Sun Belt, which has an RPI of 213. I'm still not sure how Centenary, with only one dI win (not to mention just three scholarship players), isn't the lowest-ranked team right now.

Just watched part of the first half of North Star's first round game at the Class B state tournament. Lindahl has 21 points (including five 3's) at the half.

On paper, this could be the most talented group of young receivers we've had in a long time. Really looking forward to seeing how much Hardin and McGill will improve from last season, and how much of an impact Townsend, Ivery and Carrasco will have in their debut seasons.

UND seems to match up well with Cal Poly. The Sioux won two years ago, and lost by just one on the road last year. With competent quarterback play, I think UND has a very good chance to beat Cal Poly at the Alerus.

Sioux lose 59-52.

53 NJIT 50 UND 39 seconds

53 NJIT 48 UND 2:58

50 NJIT 38 UND 7:40

42 NJIT 32 UND 10:32 to play

36 NJIT 29 UND 14:40 to go

24 NJIT 23 UND half If records were kept for lowest combined first half point total for a doubleheader in UND history, this could be a new record (women's teams combined for 40 first half points)?

Halftime score was UND 23, NJIT 17.

The good thing about UNC's success the past few years is that it shows what is possible. They were one of the lesser programs in the NCC back in the day, and struggled badly during the transition. I doubt anybody expected they'd ever be a legitimately good mid-major program, but that's exactly what they are right now.

I didn't get a chance to listen to the game last night's game, but if you would have told me before the game that Brekke and Mitchell would combine for just seven points, and that UND would still be in a position to win late in the game, I wouldn't have believed it.

I actually think--or at least hope--that the ridiculousless of UND-NDSU and USD-SDSU not playing each other for so long in most sports will result in the powers-that-be at UND and USD not wanting a repeat of that with each other. Particularly so long at UND and NDSU are not playing each other in football, I think we will see UND and USD play every year. As for basketball, volleyball, etc., it seems like such a no-brainer to play every year that I have a hard time believing it won't happen.

There has been a fair amount of speculation about when, or if, SDSU will be making a return trip to Grand Forks. In the Herald's live chat on Wednesday, Wayne Nelson stated that he didn't expect to see it any time soon. However, according to Terry Vandrovec, SDSU will be playing at UND in 2013: http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PluckPersona&U=69144e41448a46579a2772abd68f472c&plckUserId=69144e41448a46579a2772abd68f472c&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog:69144e41448a46579a2772abd68f472cPost:a1a3c43d-cdd3-4cfa-83fb-da702a737214

Here's confirmation of Freund's hiring: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/193866/group/homepage/

Uncomfortable to say the least. But I suspect that the more objective NDSU fans can see that UND does have a good young nucleus, and that the difference between the two programs next year, on paper, appears pretty slight at best.