jdub27

He was talking about Smith. Had the timelines worked out, I think he would have been a good choice here. Interesting side note that I had forgot: USD's top assistant is Gameli Ahelegbe, former assistant coach at UND. Don't know much about their #2 Hansen that 92,96 mentioned.

The club is more clueless than originally thought. As already stated, Smith is making $185K, which is actually less than what he was making at Nebraska. About the only thing that UND could lure him with is a multi-year contract, which South Dakota schools can't offer. Not happening.

Well on the Foundation side, they spent $86K to hire Mayo, who lasted 20 months. They've put together a committee to figure out went wrong and are going to spend $10K on that. Once they figure out went wrong, they plan to form a search committee and spend another $98K or so with a hiring firm. Not to mention the pending lawsuits by a couple former employees. On the audit side, I think DCZ's response was about right. Not the place to pick a fight with the legislators. “Even though nobody welcomes a performance audit, the University of North Dakota Alumni Association and Foundation will not challenge the audit from the state. We firmly believe we follow best practices as they are outlined in the not-for-profit and higher education sectors.”

My personal takes: -Would be likely be one of the top candidates to replace Jones if he was let go. Has done very good things at MSU. -Early returns are impressive, has them playing an ideal system for their personnel right now. Remains to be seen if he's going to run his team into the ground and if they'll have anything left by the end of the season with the 7 man rotation they've been using (almost exactly what FU fans ripped on Nagy for at SDSU a few years ago) and what he'll be able to do without a POY senior point guard who plays 39 minutes a game. So far seems to be a very good hire for Fargo U. -Very much like the guy and respect what he accomplished at UND but he hasn't exactly torn up the the MIAC outside of 1 nice year. -Don't know much about him, have seen him coach a couple times I guess. Coaching high school and running a D-1 program are light years different, but not sure exactly what the comparison is based on.

While I have been generally happy with Midco (prices not withstanding) and their customer service is pretty good, I'm almost not surprised based on my discussions with them on pricing for existing customers.

I've tried that with Midco a few different times and haven't had much success unfortunately. Definitely didn't get anywhere near what I had hoped for. I've talked with others who have ran into the same thing.

I assume that the rate for the first 6 or 12 months? I had a great rate like originally but once that promotional period runs out and you're a customer, there isn't much they'll do for you on the price. Have gotten minor discounts occasionally but nothing that was really worth the time.

Really? I have pretty much that exact setup with Midco and its about $140. One DVR and no other cable boxes with no movie channels or any other add-ons (did just add the Sports/Variety pack a month ago but haven't paid that bill yet).

The problem is, there is about 100 different ways to define "getting it done". OOC and overall record? Very disappointing and not a single person has claimed it is acceptable. Conference regular season and tournament? Pretty encouraging the last two years. Highest finish for a newcomer to the league ever. Finished 3rd and 2nd in his first two years in the standings and conference tournament. This year, not so much but that isn't a total shock with what was lost. The GWC was what it was, but Jones did win the conference tournament twice. Recruiting? Talent level appears to be on the rise. For those that care, he has beat NDSU in the two most recent head to head battles that I'm aware of on players both teams wanted (Hooker and Shanks) Off the court stuff? Haven't heard much of anything about them getting in trouble. Had one or two academic eligibility issues and team GPA could probably be higher but players aren't transferring out left and right either. That's just a handful of the subjective ways it can be measured. People can complain all they want, but it barring some major off the court issues, I don't see a scenario where he isn't the head coach next year. That being said it is likely his make or break year to show whether or not he'll coach the final year on his contract or see any kind of extension.

I agree with the semi-regional comments. Also think the green team's comments were pretty spot on regarding Denver. They can get better and or cheaper (travel-wise) home/home series so that is what they stick with. UND definitely isn't going to pay them enough to come up here for a 1 game deal either. Would probably only make sense for them if they were able to do it during the conference season when Denver was in the Dakotas for one of their road trips.

I think the Dakota school's plus Omaha and a 2-1 with UNI would be an excellent OOC base schedule. Basically gives you 4 or 5 games to work with, 2 of them likely to be sub D-1 schools at home and then 3 high major money games. Puts you at 4 OOC home games for sure. Not as sold on Drake every year, but workable, it could be substituted out for other home/homes or a little more wiggle room to do a in-season tournament.

Simonson was the player specifically mentioned by Hak as the player who has earned being in the line-up, they just haven't found the spot to get him in. It could change this week, but that was how it stood last week.

Seeding has a lot to do with RPI, which isn't all about wins and losses. Playing high ranked teams at their place and losing can end up being better than winning at home against a lower ranked team. Take a look at the RPI rankings and records sometime. Hofstra and St. Francis are both at 17 wins and will probably hit 20. Their RPI's are 182 and 178 because their SOS is 302 and 321. Florida is sitting at 12-13 but have an RPI of 79 because their SOS is 7. Texas Southern had an RPI of 250 last year and Cal Poly was at 184. RPI said that Cal Poly was the better team even though Texas-Southern was just below your magical 20 win threshold and Cal Poly was 11-19 going into that game. Again, you keep shifting your argument. The top goal of this team should always be to finish in the top 3 of the conference and work to win the tournament from there. Your 20 win season takes the rest of the OOC schedule into play, whether the games are at home or on the road. But again, that won't necessarily reflect in a better seed. Because the Big Sky plays a 20 game conference schedule, it is tough to find a good balance between games you need against high-majors to help your RPI out and getting OOC games that are "winnable". Again, UND has lost way more "winnable" games then they should have the last few years and no one is defending that, but you also need to keep some of this in perspective.

Again, no one is excited about or defending these results, but you keep on moving the goal posts further and further away from your original argument until you think you have found something. These results are already taken into account on your 20 win season goal. I'm more concerned about how they do away from home at the conference tournament. By the way, NDSU was 1-4 their 2nd year and USD was 1-8 their 2nd year (counting OOC game in Rapid City) and is 3-7 this year (counting OOC game in Sioux Falls).

1)UND plays two more conference games then the other 3 schools, meaning two less chances for a win per year. 2)UND has been taking more money games and playing OOC games on the road to help fund their trip to Italy this summer. For example, UND has 1 OOC D-1 game this year and 2 sub D-1 games at home. USD has 4 (though one was played at Sioux Falls) plus another 2 sub D-1 games. 3)Now you're moving the goalposts. You already brought up 20 win seasons, not sure why OOC wins is now a separate thing. No one has argued a single time that UND's OOC record isn't disappointing. They have lost at least a handful they should have won and a couple of them in embarrassing fashion.

Of course that is what everyone wants. All of these schools had dips around their transition, but not sure how you can claim that the other Dakota schools were meeting these goals when they were where UND was. 1st 3 years out of transition Regular season finishes: NDSU: 1st, 6th, 7th SDSU: 7th, 4th, 5th USD: 7th, 5th, TBD (currently 5th) UND: 3rd, 2nd, TBD (currently 9th) Conference tournament results: NDSU: Win, 1st round loss, 1st round loss SDSU: Lost in Semis, 1st round loss, Lost in Semis USD: 1st round loss, 1st round loss, TBD UND: Lost in Semis, Lost in Finals, TBD Conference record: NDSU: 32-22 (16-2 followed by 8-10 and 8-10) SDSU: 27-27 (7-11 followed by 10-8 and 10-8) USD: 18-25 (5-11 followed by 6-8, currently at 7-6 this year) UND: 28-25 (12-8 followed by 12-8, currently at 4-9 this year) Total yearly wins overall: NDSU: 26, 11, 14 SDSU: 13, 14, 19 USD: 10, 12, 13* UND: 16, 17, 8* *in process As for consistent 20 win seasons, NDSU did it their first, fifth and sixth year and SDSU did it their fourth and fifth year.

$6/month plus whatever taxes, etc they add on.

Love that first one.

1)The amount they were over is less than what the athletic scholarships were. Unless they had some donations that weren't submitted (possible), they would have been short. 2)So you are saying NDSU intentionally chose to fund athletic scholarships over academic scholarships?

I get what you're saying but I would think the language in the bill is pretty clear in what the purpose was. Unless someone can explain how athletic scholarships exclusively advance academics or can point to a student-athlete who was recruited for the academic abilities alone, then I think its pretty simple. The only place scholarships are mentioned, it is specifically mentioned as related to enhancing academics. Playing football doesn't do that.

Taking a look at the wiki, the women's numbers have followed a very similar trajectory as the men's. I will give you that the women are up this year, which is to be expected after returning a large nucleus from last year but you single out certain games for the men's to explain bumps in attendance but then didn't mention the Minnesota game the women hosted this year where the attendance was over 2,700 (without that game, attendance would be up about 100 over last year instead of 200). I don't think attendance numbers are the "factoid" you think they are for this argument.

Not quite, there were a handful of things denied the first time around. But if you can sell it as a scholarship, it should be approved with the current interpretation. That being said, if it is something that gets renewed, I wouldn't be surprised to see a more specific set of restrictions put in place.

No, the men and women teams typically have opposite schedules, for example UND WBB played at UM and MSU this weekend while UND MBB hosted UM and MSU. There was a double header against SUU both here and there last year for some reason last year, but don't recall why.

Put the women's numbers out there for a fair comparison. Your numbers very closely coincide with the discontinuation of double headers for the most part which, while not the only reason for a drop in attendance, definitely plays a factor.

I think the allotment per participating team was something like 500. The place holds about 5,000. The way sales have already went, at worst it will be 70% UND fans regardless of who else makes it. The other 30% on how many tickets get returned from participating teams allotment. Don't see any other team having much more than the 10% they are allotted unless they pay big bucks on the secondary market or are very quick on jumping on returned tickets.