rochsioux

Great minds think alike

My keys to winning the regional: 1. Powerplay - special teams The PP has to be much better than it has been the past few weeks. I would like to see an occasional variation on the PP, something that is not on tape...maybe putting Finley in front of the net, no way anyone will move him out and it would be difficult for the goalie to see with himthere. I would also like to see Kozek on one of the wings once in a while. The few times he is used on the PP they put hime in front of the net which doesn't give him the chance to use his best asset which is his laser wrist shot. Whatever we do I don't believe we can just stand pat and continue what we are doing. It is not working and right now looks like it is easy to defend. If we win the special teams battle we greatly increase our chance of winning the game. 2. Aggressive play IMO, we seem to play our best when we are aggressive and hitting everything in sight. I don't feel like we are hitting as much lately, maybe it is due to injuries but if we don't hit we won't win. 3. Adapt to the game If a few players are below par don't hesitate to change things up. With all the tv timeouts there is no need to roll four lines all game. If some players aren't getting it done then let them sit. Can't be quite so patient now that it is one-and-done. Play and coach the entire game with a sense of urgency. This team can win the regional but to do so we need to play our best two games of the season. 4. No more brain farts Cannot see anything that comes close to the screwup that cost us the first goal against UMD. Can't happen or we lose. No defensive breakdowns or turnovers, no cheating on the offensive end that leads to odd-man rushes. We need Finley and Genoway to play at the top of their games. 5. Passing Quick tape-to-tape passing with speed. Helps in all facets of the game. Seems like too many passes are just off or bouncing which destroys any flow to the game. It is really noticeable on the powerplay. 6. Goaltending Obviously we need Eids to be on top of his game. He is no longer a freshman. I am guessing he has played in as many or more games as a freshman than Lammy did in his first two seasons combined so he has had considerable experience. 7. No excuses After the games, win or lose, we need to be able to say we played and competed to the best of our ability at this time. I don't want to hear about heavy legs, etc. At this time of the year there can be no excuses. If someone is battling an injury and that limits what they can do then maybe they should be sitting. Play Toews or Davidson, shorten the bench, whatever it takes. This senior class is special to me. It may be a long, long time till we get another freshman class with as much talent as that group of 13. They have gone to three frozen fours and a fourth is not out of the question. I have had the pleasure of meeting most of them and getting to know many of the parents. Without exception they are some of the nicest people I have ever met in my 40 years of following Sioux hockey. It doesn't seem possible that these four years are coming to an end. The only proper ending for their college careers is to win their final game of the season. Finally, if I could say one thing to the team it would be this: "Play smart, play aggressive, and leave it all on the ice". I am heading out to Manchester on friday and I am not ready for the season to end. Go Sioux !!

The only chance I see for UND in msp: Northeast - Manchester 1 - BU 15 - OSU 7 - UMD 10 - UNH Midwest - Grand Rapids 2 - Notre Dame 16 - BSU 6 - NE 12 - Princeton West - Minneapolis 3 - Denver 13 - Miami 8 - UND 11 - Cornell East - Bridgeport 4 - Michigan 14 - AF 5 - Yale 9 - Vermont That would fix attendance in msp if it is a concern.

I doubt they would make the #1 overall seed travel to msp when it is 60 miles to manchester.

My guess if UMD wins: Northeast - Manchester 1 - BU 15 - OSU 8 - UND 10 - UNH Midwest - Grand Rapids 2 - Notre Dame 16 - BSU 7 - UMD 12 - Princeton West - Minneapolis 3 - Denver 13 - Miami 6 - NE 11 - Cornell East - Bridgeport 4 - Michigan 14 - AF 5 - Yale 9 - Vermont

I would agree on BU. Not sold on Notre Dame, their schedule was pretty weak. Notre Dame is 29-5-3, an excellent record. A more detailed look shows some weakness. They did win the games they should win, going 19-0-3 against teams that were not TUCs. Can't do much better than that and there certainly is something to be said for winning games you should win. Their record against TUCs was 10-5, still sounds pretty good except that 6 of these wins are against teams #23 and #24. Their record against the top 16 in the pairwise is only 3-5. Most, if not all of their games in the NCAA tourny will be against these types of teams. I think Notre Dame is a pretty good team, just not sold that they should be given any more consideration than UND, DU, or Mich. Here is the breakdown of their record (pairwise ranking given when appropriate): UMich 1-1-0 #3 Denver 0-1-0 #4 UMD 1-0-0 #13 Miami 0-2-0 #14 OSU 1-1-0 #16 BC 1-0-0 #17 NMU 4-0-0 #23 UA 2-0-0 #24 Sacred Heart 2-0-0 Prov 1-0-0 LSSU 2-0-2 BGU 4-0-0 WMU 1-0-1 FSU 2-0-0 Union 1-0-0 UNO 4-0-0 MSU 2-0-0

I don't understand these types of claims. The selection process is an open book and is easy to understand. Prior to the actual announcement the teams are already known based on the pairwise. There is no conspiracy, no hidden agendas. The pairwise formulas are well known, they are not modified once the season starts to try and favor any one team. Now, I don't agree with the pairwise method as there are serious flaws as I have gone into in other posts but there is nothing sneaky about it. If the gophers make it, it will be because they were high enough in the pairwise rankings after the autobids to get selected. The 6 conference tourny winners get autobids, the remaining 10 teams are the highest ranking teams in the pairwise. Now, if the NCAA selection committee were to diverge from this then you might have a valid claim. But they haven't in the past and I don't believe they will this year.

In a best of seven series I might agree. In a one game elimination, especially in hockey, the best team does not always win. In fact, more often than not it probably doesn't. Therefore I would prefer playing a team where we might win 70-80% of the time versus 60%. I want the path of least resistance. To win #8 we need to string together 4 wins. If each game we played we had a 70% chance of winning, then we would have approx a 25% chance of winning the title. If we had a 60% chance in each game then we only have a 13% chance of winning the title. In as one game elimination it takes skill and some puck luck to win a title. It also greatly increases your chances if you get a favorable draw.

Here is the final standings in the Summit and their RPI rank: North Dakota St. #87 Oral Roberts #143 Oakland #122 IUPUI #247 IPFW #228 Southern Utah #266 South Dakota St. #283 Western Ill. #328 Centenary #291 Mo. Kansas City #309 To get the Summit autobid, a team has to finish in the top 8 then win 3 games in the conference tourny. Everyone can make their own judgement on how difficult this is. I don't mean this as a putdown of the Summit. I would be happy if UND joined the Summit and am realistic about their future in BB. They will never win a national championship, the best you can hope for is to make the tourny then win a few games and make the sweet sixteen. That will never give me the same satisfaction that winning a national championship in hockey does. And I am a big BB fan, there was a period of 10-12 years where I rarely missed any home UND hockey, BB, or football game. I have also been a big fan of UNC, mainly because I loved the way Dean Smith coached. I hope NDSU can give Kansas a good game, maybe even pull off the upset. I don't need NDSU to fail to make me feel good about UND, we already have more hockey championships since 1980 than any other D1 school. My problem is the hype surrounding just making the "dance", I just don't get that, it is not THAT difficult to just make the tourny...it is much more difficult to win a few games.

To win #8 we need to step up our play in all areas. Our PP has been poor lately and at times downright horrible. Same with the penalty kill. Our passing looks like we are playing on choppy ice, we need much sharper tape to tape passing. I knoiw we can do this because I have seen us do it this year. Based on recent play you could make the argument that the team has already peaked. I hope not. In too many of the recent games the team has come out with "heavy legs" (even Hak has mentioned this a few times). Not sure why when every game we have played recently has had significant meaning. How many guys are playing with injuries that are affecting their play? IMO, Trupp and Gregoire have been off a bit and both have missed some games recently with injuries. Last year we seemed to slip some after the Duluth series when we lost Trupp and Genoway to injuries. Although Genoway made it back for the playoffs he definitely wasn't the same, I believe he was playing with a cast on his hand. We won the regional in Madison but we really didn't play that well, and in hindsight it shouldn't have been a big surprise that we got beat handily in the FF. I wonder if there is a mental/physical toll that happens to the players/coaches in the second half of the season when we have to battle so hard to make up for the slow starts? Sometimes when you have to battle back to make up a large deficit, the natural reaction once you "catch up" is to relax for a minute. Once you do that it is hard to recapture the momentum you had. Having said all this, I am hopeful the team will pick up their play and we can get #8. A lot will depend on the tourny draw and how healthy we are. Also, a little good luck wouldn't hurt.

Please explain how these stats represent more parity in BB than hockey ?? 19 different teams in BB represents 6-7% of the eligible teams. 14 hockey teams represents 20-25% of eligible teams. Seems to me there is more parity in hockey than in BB. Has there ever beeen a #1 seed that lost in the first round of the BB tourny ? Not yet. I think we all know that a #1 seed has lost in hockey. I think it is great that NDSU is in the NCAA BB tourny. IMO, it is not a great accomplishment, not yet. If they get to the sweet 16 then it is. But winning the Summit conference tourny to gain an auto-bid is not a great accomplishment. In fact, if they lost in the conf tourny but got an at-large bid I would consider that to be a bigger feat. I would feel the same if it was the UND basketball team and I would be happy they made it. When it is all over and they go home after the first w/e it would be pretty hard to be excited about the appearance. In reality, the ultimate goal for both UND/NDSU in D1 BB is to someday make a sweet sixteen, I would consider that feat to be on the same scale as winning a D1 hockey championship.

Personally I would take a game against any ECAC team over having to play BU, NE, Notre Dame, Mich, Denver, NH, BC, Vermont, MN, UMN, Wisc, or Miami. Not that it would be a sure win, cause they could definitely could lose a game. But the teams in the WCHA and HE and to a lessor extent the CCHA play a much more difficult regular season schedule which makes them tougher in the post season. Yale is the highest ranked ECAC team. They are #7 pairwise, #14 KRACH, #8 RPI. I'm sure they have a good team. Their strength of schedule is #44 in KRACH and #44 in RPI. I would be fine with Yale a #1 seed and UND a #2 seed in the same bracket. Does that guarantee another Frozen Four ? Nope. But I would much rather play Yale in a regional championship than BU, ND, Mich, or Denver.

It's not just the ECAC, coaches cannot be publicly critical of officials in any sport at any level. If you are then expect to get suspended and/or fined. As far as officiating in the WCHA getting better in the second half, I couldn't disagree more. The first half they were doing a better job enforcing the rules, the second half they reverted back (for the most part) to calling things the way they have in the past (which means they let lots of hooks, holds, slashes, and obstuctions go uncalled).

A ridiculous statement, not even close. A championship in hockey is a much greater accomplishment than just getting to the "dance" in BB. The Summit conference gets an auto bid to the tourny. In addition to NDSU, the Summit is made up of the following teams: Oral Roberts Oakland IUPUI IPFW Southern Utah South Dakota St. Western Ill. Centenary Mo. Kansas City Not exactly the top of D1 BB. Not even mid-majors. To get a bid to the tourny they needed to win 3 games against these teams which they did. My congrats to the team and coaches, but it is not a monumental task. Had they received an at-large bid that would have been much more impressive. I would compare NDSU's winning the Summit and getting the auto-bid at best to UND making the frozen four. If they make it to the sweet sixteen then I would put it on par with winning an NCAA hockey championship.

If you rank the top 50 or so defenseman in the WCHA by +/-, McBain is #47. The only three below him are from Michigan Tech. I would even cut the Tech guys a break before McBain because Tech is not a good team, their overall +/- is terrible. Their team +/- is by far the worst in the league. There is just no way I would give any award to a defensman that is that far down on the list. He is by far the worst +/- even on his own team and he is the worst in the entire wcha if you throw out Tech. How can that be if he is a good defensive player ? And if he is not good on the defensive side, how can we consider him for an award ?

That's pretty sad. This is a guy with the worst +/- on the team for all players. Wisco has 5 d-men that have played 30 or more games. McBain is a -12 the other 4 are +2, -2, -1, +7. The only d-men in the WCHA that have worse numbers play for Tech, they have 3 (-15, -14, -13). McBain is at the bottom of the league for d-men in +/- and also has lowest rating on his team by a large margin. Before you start promoting a defenseman for Hobey/All-American, shouldn't the player at least be doing a good job on the defensive end?

With a win today we should take two more comparisons (Yale, NH) and move up to #7. With a loss or tie we will stay at #9. CC will move to #13 with a win, #17 with a loss, #14 with a tie.

The current pairwise from SS.com: 1 Boston University 24 0.5967 23-5-4 0.7812 2 Notre Dame 22 0.5830 25-5-3 0.8030 3 Michigan 22 0.5706 24-10-0 0.7059 4 Denver 20 0.5595 19-9-4 0.6562 5 Vermont 20 0.5584 17-8-5 0.6500 6 Princeton 18 0.5545 20-7-0 0.7407 7 Northeastern 17 0.5677 20-8-4 0.6875 8 Cornell 16 0.5508 17-6-4 0.7037 9 New Hampshire 16 0.5506 16-9-5 0.6167 10 Miami 16 0.5477 18-9-5 0.6406 11 North Dakota 15 0.5486 20-11-3 0.6324 12 Yale 14 0.5476 19-6-2 0.7407 13 Minnesota-Duluth 12 0.5424 16-9-7 0.6094 14 St. Lawrence 11 0.5305 17-11-4 0.5938 15 Ohio State 10 0.5386 19-11-4 0.6176 16 Colorado College 9 0.5333 16-9-8 0.6061 17 Wisconsin 8 0.5298 16-13-3 0.5469 18 Air Force 8 0.5297 22-8-2 0.7188 19 Minnesota 6 0.5284 13-11-6 0.5333 20 St Cloud St 6 0.5257 17-13-2 0.5625 21 Mass.-Lowell 4 0.5254 15-13-2 0.5333 22 Boston College 3 0.5257 13-12-5 0.5167 23 Alaska 2 0.5219 15-11-6 0.5625 24 Massachusetts 1 0.5098 14-15-3 0.4844 25 RIT 0 0.5087 20-10-2 0.6562 UMass has entered the top 25 this w/e. Should UMass be in the top 25? I realize that their RPI is in the top 25 but this year the NCAA also added: Selection Requirements. To be considered during the at-large selection process, a team must have an overall won-lost record of .500 or better. UMass is currently 14-15-3 and thus ineligible to be in the tourny. If they can't be in the tourny should they still be a TUC ?

Time for my yearly complaint against the pairwise rankings This system needs to be scrapped or at least modified to fix some of the problems: 1. It is possible that you would be better off losing a game than winning it. Has to do with the TUC cliff. This was Wisconsin's situation a few years ago in the first round of the WCHA playoffs against AA. It should never be beneficial to lose a game. Why should one team get to keep a 4-0 record against team #25 while another team would lose a 4-0 record against team #26. Needs to be some kind of weighting system. 2. TUC criteria. If one team in the comparison has not played 10 games against TUC then there is no point awarded. Look at the UND vs Alaska comparision right now. UND is 9-6-2 against TUC while Alaska is 3-5-1. Since Alaska has only 9 games than there is no point awarded. If Alaska played one more game against a TUC than UND would win the point...doesn't even matter if Alaska wins or loses. They need to modify this. If one team has 10 or more games against TUCs then go ahead and award the other team wins in every game they are short of ten. If the team with 10 or more games still has a better record than they get the point, otherwise there is no point awarded. 3. COP. There needs to be some minimum number of games. Look at UND vs Miami. UND is 0-1-0 while Miami is 3-1-0. Since UND lost the one game then Miami only had to win or tie one out of their four games to get the point. Conversely, if UND had won the game then Miami would have had to win all four games to avoid losing the point. Should be a minimum of two or three games in COP to award anyone a point.

VandeVelde (Duncan, Genoway)

So, do we know if Sensor's in Bloomington will have the games this w/e ?

Consistently inconsistent, the hallmark of the clowns running the WCHA. As far as suspending the player immediately or waiting for the next conference game, I think it would be a fairer suspension if they had to miss the next conference game. I suspect it would be advantageous in the pairwise for UND if other WCHA teams won their non-conf games. By suspending him for the UNO game it may actually hurt UND slightly as this should help UNO beat Mankato. By suspending the player for a conference game you are helping your own conference while also putting the team, in this case Mankato, at a disadvantage in the conference race for home ice in the playoffs. Since the incident occured in a conference game the punishment should also occur in a conference game if possible.

We had 10 this year because there were two exemptions, the Alaska games and the Icebreaker tourny. We only get 6 non-conference games as a standard. The 3 out 4 years we go to Alaska we get 2 more games due to the exemption which makes a total of 8. The only other exemptions that I am aware of are the Icebreaker (we played BU/UMass this year) and the Hall of Fame game (we played Michigan State last year). So the only way we have more than 8 non-conference next year is if we play in the Icebreaker again (not likely) or play in the Hall of Fame game (1 game only).

That should be it. The NCAA allows a total of 34 games unless there are exemptions. Next year we go to Alaska so that will allow us to play 36 games. I don't believe any of the other games are exempt. With 28 conference games that allows us to play 8 non-conference next year.

The Sioux are 2-4 in the last six played at AA (split in 2004-5, split in 2005-6, got swept in 2006-7). The good thing is those games were played during the "pre-surge" part of the seasons but anything less than a full 60 min each night and they will be in trouble. AA, Tech, and Wisconsin play a style that seems to give the Sioux problems. There is too much on the line for any excuses after the game(s). We are the better team, we need to play like it and come away with two wins. Anything less will probably drop us below 14 in the pairwise. There is a resonable chance there will be a least one or two "upset" conference playoff winners that will get in that are not in the top 14 pairwise, therefore we really need to be at #12 or better. Had we not come back to win the Sat. Mankato game we would be at #17, that's how much each game matters right now.