UND92,96

Doubt it. I believe the lesson was learned from the Idaho State debacle, i.e. the extremely low buyout the previous a.d. agreed to.

I recall last off-season when it sounded like UND would have a 10-game schedule (before the SDSU game was added late), Mussman sounded comfortable with it. It would seem Faison doesn't feel the same way, as IMO a 10-game schedule with one fewer NAIA/transitional dII opponent would have been preferable to playing three of those opponents as part of an 11-game schedule. And maybe you get lucky and add a good home-and-home at the last minute like what happened last year.

I believe Black Hills is transitioning to dII--not sure if they're on the same timeline as Sioux Falls, or one year behind.

Must keep reminding myself--this is the last year of this kind of schedule...this is the last year of this kind of schedule...this is the last year of this kind of schedule...

Is Haugen not getting many minutes due to sickness or injury, or is it just due to coach's decision?

I expect this could be a tight game. Mayville gave a pretty good Northern State team all they could handle, and likely will be a better 3-point shooting team than what UND has shown thus far. If there's one thing I've learned about UND men's basketball in the past decade, it's that there aren't many gimme wins against DAC teams, whether we're dII or dI.

I've really come to hate that expression--"we went toe to toe with them". At least Wayne was referring to the first half, and not the whole game.

There's one player from Fargo South on the roster, and one signee, so I'm not sure where you're getting three. This is the first season a Roebuck team has really struggled badly, so I don't see how that can be used as an example of expectations being low, or that poor performance is tolerated. Has recruiting been sub-par for three or four years? Yes. I don't know whose fault it is, but certainly a coach of Roebuck's stature isn't going to be fired at this juncture of his career for that. He'll go out on his own terms. He's earned that. Had you used men's basketball as an example, you may have actually had a point, as that's the one major sport at UND which has struggled for more than a season or two. And I highly doubt it will be tolerated much longer if it continues.

It was on the road. USD is having a fairly nice season so far. Their schedule hasn't been as difficult as UND's, but they're 6-5 and have four dI wins, including two on the road. Northern Arizona has an RPI quite a bit higher than UND, so that was a pretty good win for the Yotes.

It's obviously good that this series is starting up again. I'd just feel a lot more enthusiastic about it if we had a stronger team. I feel a little like I did before the football games in the mid-to-late-1980's in terms of the apparent disparity between the two programs right now.

Miami?

Aye.

It appears the final scholarship will be going to shooting guard Shane Benton from Iowa: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/recruiting/player-Shane-Benton-119969

It's been confirmed--Kill is the new Gopher coach: http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/blogs/111355544.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU1yDEmP:QMDCinchO7DU

I hope Horton gets a decent job. I wonder if Lennon will get any consideration for Kill's old job?

No kidding. I wonder if Chryst wasn't interested? He was my pick the second Brewster got canned.

Rumor has it NIU coach Jerry Kill will be the next Gophers coach.

I believe UND has just one road win over a non-transitional dI team under Brian Jones (UMKC to open the 2008-09 season). And NDSU has an RPI of 157, compared to UND at 337. If UND stays within 15, I would be pleasantly surprised. Mitchell and the three freshmen would probably all need to have really good games for UND to be competitive.

To the best of my knowledge, UND hasn't gotten a single double-figures scoring game from a member of the red-shirt sophomore class yet this year. By comparison, the three true freshmen have each had multiple double-figures games. There are a lot of scholarships tied up in the sophomore class. Needless to say, production needs to be better than what it's been so far.

UNI lost at home to Lehigh today. Western Illinois won at Coastal Carolina.

It's still surprising that they would get smoked by a program with 20-something scholarships and no history of playoff success.

I know they have a new head coach this year. Other than that, I'll have to defer to RD17 to explain why they seem to have fallen so far compared to the past decade.

A few key transfers would certainly help, but I don't think a program should rely on them in great numbers. For whatever reason, UND simply hasn't had much luck with transfers. There have been a handful of them over the years, but have any been impact players in the Alerus era other than Jared Enger and Travis Lueck? Not that I can recall. Generally speaking, the transfers UND has had haven't even developed into starters, let alone impact players.

I don't have a link or anything, but I'm about 90% sure this was a home-and-home deal.

USD, Cal Poly, Valpo, Sioux Falls and...probably a low-level dII team? The frustrating thing is that we weren't able to get more home-and-homes for the road games we played in 2008 and 2009, i.e. SE Louisiana, SFA and SIU. That was where USD did a better job scheduling-wise, as they managed to get UNI, UNC and SE Louisiana to travel to Vermillion in the past couple of years. I guess we will still eventually get Central Arkansas and SDSU, but now the Montana game would have happened anyway, so that doesn't quite seem like as big of a coup as it did when originally scheduled.