jdub27

Must be a land grant thing.

Links to bios: Bill Chaves Monty Porter Mike Mannausau Kellie Elliott

He spelled "worst return on investments" wrong.

I believe on-campus interviews were preliminary scheduled for next week, so Tom is likely correct.

Fair point. Wish UND had all 3 available. All of them had a skill set that would be really useful and help this team out.

A split in some order this weekend would be a big step forward.

The point is that Drick's replacement has been just as good if not better but there has been no suitable replacements for Shanks or Collins. I do think that Jones and Drick could have been on the floor at the same time and there would be a pretty good small-ball lineup of Drick/Jones/Seales/Stewart/Geno that would have definitely kept teams on their toes.

Johnson was actually a sophomore since he played a handful of games in 2015. That "back-up" is a 3-star recruit who had offers from Georgia Tech, Illinois, BC, South Carolina, Marhsall, MTSU, UCF and JMU and was stuck behind an All-American. He was supposed to red-shirt in 2016 until Lauletta wrecked his knee and red-shirted instead this year. I don't think anyone has said Reyes and Harris are both can't miss NFL players, however both have gotten looks and will get their shots assuming they can get back to full health.

Good post. They lost a big part of their MN connection when Ahelegbe went to USD. I thought Jones would have developed some connections there but apparently not quite enough. With the ties him and Horner have in Iowa, it isn't a surprise why they hit it so hard. Looking at the offers, they do have a couple out to a handful of kids in MN and IL along with IA, MO, NE, LA, AZ so they are at least looking other places. Just need to convince them to sign.

Nowhere did I say that Jones gets a free ride on his team but I did point out why it isn't surprising to see the team struggle. But true to form, that isn't allowed, it is simply somehow twisted into a free pass for the coach. I expected a letdown against Idaho of Christmas break and I'm not surprised they struggled with EWU's length, however even with that, UND performed below my expectations. The Montana swing in the next two games isn't going to be much easier, hoping the team can snap out of the funk they are in and figure out how to score against a 2-3 zone.

You're trying to compare a program that has an alumni base that is probably 10x the size if not more and draws at least 5x more fans, plus you're also talking about an amount that is 4-5x bigger. On top of that, the MBB was just in the big dance last season and is a whopping 2 games into their conference schedule, yet here you are raising funds for a buyout. I'm not defending performance year to date, though to claim its been all bad is putting your head in the sand. Be realistic for a change, two starters graduated, including one of, if not the best player in program history. On top of that 3 of the top 8 guys by minutes played left unexpectedly and they all happened to play a similar position. So now you're down 5 out of the 8 guys who averaged double digit minutes last season and have to replace about 60% of the minutes played with almost half of those being unexpected departures. Huge surprise the team is struggling to find some consistency. Is it frustrating to watch, especially recently? Of course. Is it unexpected? Not if you're paying any attention at all. It seems there can't be any discussion on here without exaggeration, hyperbole to the extreme or some sort of rant. Every time someone tries to discuss or give a reason for the weaknesses being pointed out, the answer is they are accepting mediocrity or don't care. Like I said, to some there is no gray area or logical explanations, it is only best and worst case scenarios.

Proposing X number of people donate X dollars is not a potential solution, it's what you'd call a pipe dream. And when you aren't talking in hyperbole all the time, there is actually difference between being flat broke and working within a budget. Literally every single thing in the world doesn't have to be on one end of the spectrum, good or bad. Apparently the color gray doesn't exist around here. And for the record, I think his solution is the most logical scenario, Jones isn't getting bought out any time soon. Much better is a pretty big stretch. Seedings have historically been very close, which is really the only thing that matters for the two. However the Summit previously had more flexibility to schedule OOC games which has helped inflate their RPI.

But money grows on trees. Why not do everything? Just think, if just 500 people donate only $10,000, we'd have an extra $5 million! See how simple it is??

How was last year the fluke when his finishes have been a lot closer than making the dance than to what they have been 2 games into the conference schedule? Holy !@#$ are you going off the deep end with hyperbole on this one.

I don't think the issue is the Jones is a bad coach, his Big Sky record and finishes back that up. The issue is that he also isn't a great coach. Hasn't shown quite enough to get a better job and performs enough to keep his job. In his defense, the revolving door at the assistant coach positions hasn't done him any favors. Typically his teams play better as the season goes on, hopefully he can continue that trend, though I'm wondering if the holes were just too big to fill this year, particularly the unexpected losses.

You're probably safe.

Where do you come up with this crap? He transferred and is playing for Crookston this semester.

Start Avants over Shanks and have him and Dale the first two off the bench plus Jafar and Billy. You have a nice 9 man rotation and Kienan gets another year to learn and bulk up while playing some minutes.

It was clear tonight why Idaho was picked to win the league despite not playing very well. They have shooters, a lot of length and are very athletic. Sanders only played 19 minutes and didn't even score in the second half. Lack of depth showed big time tonight with Jafar having to start for Jones. No length and no second guy to play in the post with Avants to help break up the zone. The struggle shouldn't be a huge surprise when you lose 5 of your top 8 guys (by minutes played from last year), which could maybe be mitigated a bit if 3 of them wouldn't have been unexpected, especially when the unexpected losses are all at the 4/5 position where UND is extremely weak right now. The rotation would look a lot different and a lot better right now if Drick, Shanks and Collins were available. There isn't really a way to plan ahead for that, when you don't have anyone waiting in the wings quite yet because you expect to have one or two more years. That being said, I'm not sure what that was tonight, especially on the offensive end. Couple guys seem tenative to shoot, which made breaking that zone seem impossible. I wasn't surprised to see them come out flat but that exceeded expectations in the wrong way. Need to hope Dale is back soon (thanks for the jinx Tom!!) and they can get into the rhythm they slowly seemed to be finding. Geno/Marlo/Tez have the talent to carry this team with some secondary help, but they can't seem to get on the same page. Hoping they figure something out soon.

I wish the days of the tournament were better but obviously TV dictates that. The one silver lining is only the Saturday game actually interferes with any hockey games, so people won't be forced to choose. I don't see a reason to change the location, they do a good with it in Sioux Falls. I won't be surprised at a less than stellar turnout from UND fans the first couple years until they fully understand and get behind it.

Walk-ons don't sign NLI however there is other paperwork they can submit to the school that allows them to be announced with the rest of the signing class, which is how coaches can talk about them. If they don't have the paperwork in, they can't be mentioned, which would be a recruiting violation, however it is not binding like a NLI is. This is why you don't always see every name you expect to, at least initially.

NDSU can't introduce him unless he signs and submits paperwork otherwise that is a violation of NCAA rules by the school. He was introduced by NDSU on the 20th. The signing period ended the 22nd, which is after NDSU announced him, not before.

So some random person on Twitter asks the Grand Canyon and UT-Rio Grand Valley AD's if there is any merger talks with zero sourcing (to which they both respond "No") and somehow that's the Idaho board reporting the AD is saying that? Unless you have more sources (like the actual link where someone "reported" it), the mental gymnastics to get from A to B on this one is even impressive than normal.

He had an offer and committed before "decommitting" 6 months later. No clue on why or any details, but he's at UND now. https://www.landof10.com/iowa/wisconsin-lb-mike-bruner-de-commits-iowa

Don't hold your breath... The only talk I saw of any conference stuff was some comments about setting up divisions in the Big Sky for football and playing a championship game. The problem with the theory is they completely forgot to include a team and you can't play a conference championship game in FCS if you want to be eligible for the playoffs. So I'd take any "reports" with a huge grain of salt.