jdub27

After further review and a few more calls, turns out the Big Sky refs actually just continue to be horrible across the board.

LOL. Guy jumps on Brown's back for the putback and Brown gets called for the foul. Seems like the refs are making sure the score gets run up.

Well, there is one...

That thing they did the last few minutes (minus the last few seconds), do more of that. Nice to see Q hit a couple finally, much needed. Pleasantly surprised by the announcer, so that's nice I guess.

Complete lack of fundamentals by an experienced team. PSU is jumping every pass (which are lazy to begin with), the back cut is there all day. UND must be up to over a dozen passes that have been picked or tipped.

Glad to see the sloppy passing make the trip. That's incredibly frustrating because these guys can do much better and they've shown it.

Which was exactly one of my points I made earlier: You're saying that the rest of the country improved more than the Big Sky, meaning the conference improved less than average and moved backwards. Seems more like a pretty poor excuse for bad OOC play to me. Either way, not real acceptable. The conference needs to work to improve more so they can get a better seed in the tournament and have a chance to win a game.

No joke they are higher at this point in the season, you know how it's calculated right? They are only going to down from here on out because everyone was bad in OOC play. The conference RPI rank is also below last year.

I'm saying all coaches talk up their conference and team, it's what they do and I'd expect nothing less. And can you explain how exactly the coaches can evaluate the teams if they don't use non-conference games since that's all that's been played? Looking at record and lack of quality wins, how can you logically defend it? I'd guess that any unbiased opinion would state the Big Sky is down and the play this far in the year would back that up.

You keep bringing up what coaches are saying and ignoring on the court results that don't back it up. Talk is worth nothing. If the BSC isn't winning OOC games and has a worse showing and rating than it did in previous years, how can it be up? Did the rest of the country get incrementally better so the net effect is that the Big Sky moved backwards? Because that is the only actual explanation if you want to accept that the Big Sky is better than it has yet it did worse in OOC games than it has in the past.

Based on out of conference play, they were wrong. How often do you actually hear coaches say that their league is down? Not real often because if your team doesn't do well, you've basically incriminated yourself.

Cool, a bunch of coach speak. Did you think he was going to say the league was down? Because he'd sure look like an idiot if he said that and then doesn't win. OOC records show a different story. UNDHoops put together a nice recap of the OOC season and it isn't good. Not sure the Big Sky has a win over a top 100 team this year using any of the metrics (KenPom, RPI, WarrenNolan). And as already stated, all the metrics have the Big Sky towards to bottom this year, which isn't a UND only problem, but also means the Big Sky winner will be in a play-in game and then face a 1 seed. Regardless, it shouldn't matter where the league is, UND should always be one of the favorites. But with the talent UND has returning plus a coach who is likely coaching for his job, you'd expect to see a little more out of them in OOC play that gives something resembling confidence heading into conference play in a year when the league does appear to be down. Not sure why having big expectations for this team is a bad thing. On paper, this is should be the best team since Huff/Anderson/Webb's senior year if not better. Anything short of the dance would be a huge disappointment.

Maybe, but he fumbled 5 times this year, so why wouldn't Reyes have been able to cause one or two?

I'm confused on your angle. You continuously look to lower the bar for the program instead of raise it. You don't think UND is talented enough to win the Big Sky? If not, why? The Big Sky is clearly down this year and UND returns pretty much every key player from last year. However, the fact that they were disappointing in OOC play is even more disheartening knowing that they shouldn't have had to work on fitting new players into the rotation.

The article from earlier this year and the blog post from a few weeks ago. I didn't see anything I'd categorize as critical. I'd say it defended him more than anything.

I saw Schlossman's article but I would not characterize it anywhere near being critical of Tomek.

Have I missed some articles? I haven't seen any actual local journalists that have criticized him. I don't pay attention to much national stuff but I haven't seen much of that either. Message board fodder is about the only thing critical I've seen of him and most of it is more just curiousness of why he isn't playing or even second string at this point.

Per Tom Miller's article in the Herald, Solomon Rolls-Tyson has left the team and signed to play pro basketball in Norway. He was a transfer from Utah State Eastern College and had not played in any games this season.

Just to clarify further, FCS can have up to 85 players on scholarship, however they can only give out the equivalent of 63 scholarships among those players. FCS and FBS teams have similar amount of scholarship players, but every player on an FBS team is on a full scholarship (excluding walk-ons for both teams of course) while the amount of money an FCS player gets can vary.

Unfortunately he hasn't win the BSC tourney or came even close to winning all the OOC games (with no big upsets at all). So he is missing on both of your hypotheticals which is the reasonv for the serious discontent. And I stated he brings good kids here, the problem is the results have been below what they seem that they should be with the seemingly above average talent he has brought in

Within the Big Sky, relative to where his salary ranks and where his teams have finished, UND is probably coming out slightly ahead with Jones. But regular season finishes and making it to the semis or finals of the conference tournament don't matter because the ultimate goal of a low to mid-major is to win the conference tournament and make the dance. Jones has not done that. Being close only buys you so much time. And if he had been making twice as much the last 3-4 years, his teams would have performed exactly the same and he would then qualify as underperforming. He hasn't done anything to deserve much of a raise and more money to the same coach won't fix the problem. In regards to OOC pay, he has performed below his salary. I think the frustrating thing to most everyone is that he appears capable of bringing the horses to Grand Forks, but once they are here, they don't seem to be able to reach the ultimate goal. At some point, the excuses of the nickname, the transition, lack of conference, etc. are no longer valid and it seems we are at that point, which is likely that it seems he is coaching without a contract beyond this season. I'm normally not a fan of that kind of scenario but a line needed to be drawn in the sand somewhere and it appears it was. The only caveat I'll make on this is similar to what the football team faced under Mussman: the assistant salary pool is too low and certainly has led to the merry-go-round at the assistant coach positions. The lack of stability and need to continuously bring in younger guys that are still learning (some of which have been great hires), definitely does not help anything.

The Cay actually does have pretty good burgers, so you aren't totally wrong. $1 cheeseburgers used to be their busiest night.

My mistake, considering the thread topic, I misunderstood where you were directing your comments. Misguided comment on my part, I'll remove it to get rid of the confusion.

You haven't seen the contract, so you can't say for certain if there is any clauses that prevent or pertain to change in membership. The language in each TV contract varies greatly. I would also venture to guess the damages clause is fairly insignificant because I doubt that CBS Sports is paying very much for the TV rights. It is more of a mutually beneficial agreement where CBS Sports gets some cheap live sports and the NCHC get more exposure without having to pay the production costs. WMU and Miami each host one game that is broadcast on CBS Sports. You really think CBS Sports are going to walk away from the relationship if they lose some eyeballs in Miami, OH or Kalamazoo, MI? That being said, neither of those teams are leaving the NCHC at this point or anytime in the near future. There is no upside. I'm also not sure how the exit fees of all sport conferences have any relevance to the exit fees of the NCHC. The cost to leave the NCHC is roughly the equivalency of one year's operating cost for the league, which at this point is around $1.5million.

Their athletic budget is already 75% subsidized, to the equivalent of almost $1,100/student/year.