Millionaire

Plot twist: The NCAA let us win this year, to force the Sioux logo banner removal. That's devious.

IMHO, making new "historically correct" logo banners would violate the NCAA agreement*, banners with some of those logos probably never actually existed (you're now inventing "history" to serve your wants), and I'd think it would be a Blackhawks licensing problem (vigorously defend your trademark or you will lose it). *Otherwise, we can create all kinds of reasons to put up Sioux logos all over the place, marking "historically accurate" occasions. Also, being shortsighted today would be exceptionally awkward (God forbid) 10-15 years from now when the hodgepodge of banners does not yet include a Fighting Hawks logo. I know many of you won't like it but I think the most-likely result of thinking through the options that are actually available is that we'll be raising eight new interlocking-ND banners next year, or eight banners with a new Fighting Hawks logo.

If memory serves me right, the old Engelstad Arena had some 2nd, 3rd and 4th place banners, but not any "tournament participation" tapestry beyond that. I don't think the conference tournament always existed, and winning it didn't guarantee an NCAA tourney spot, so it probably wasn't that important in the more-distant past. ...to be honest, even today most years it feels more important to not get hurt and use it as a stepping stone (if needed) to get the desired NCAA seed.

Well, it's good to see nobody got all four of the first games wrong.

For what it's worth, this was my message to the Alumni Office today: Dear Alumni Office: I'm appalled to read that President Kelley decided he should (even could!) change the established nickname voting process on the fly. 1. Changing the voting rules in the middle of the process gives an appearance of manipulating the election. 2. A three-way vote can result in the least-liked choice winning a plurality. (This defeats the *primary purpose* of a run-off.) The voting process must be designed to get over 50 % of voters to have voted for the eventual-winner, so we can move forward. President Kelley has put the university in a situation where it may need to choose between a third round of voting or proceeding without public support and integrity. If there is no majority in this second round, holding a third round is vital to successfully moving forward. I wanted to address President Kelley himself, but I cannot find an email address for him. I would appreciate it if you could forward this to the president's office.

I don't have the patience to work this out, but I'll toss it out there in case someone else does: Tally up who has benefited from the "attendance considerations" in the past 10 years' brackets. If you can dig up old USCHO bracketology articles, it should be pretty clear. Whether BC & BU are proven to have a clear advantage (or I'll allow that it could prove that we all just have short memories), either way this would be nice to know. The game records of the "attendance considerations" teams would be nice to see, too. Be sure to exclude the game hosts since they get legitimate home games.

I wouldn't make that conclusion. Even if one has a week's worth of scouting, including team statistics and a couple of game tapes (neither of which always tell the whole story), I would think it also valuable to find out what the fans think. That's a scouting report from people who followed the team all year (or more). For example, would the stat sheet and two game tapes tell you what you need to know when playing against Mike Prpich? It's also friendly banter. You're in the NCAAs--have some fun and socialize.

Forecheck, perhaps you can find somebody at HC who can find out who makes the real HC jerseys. Contact that company and they might be able (licensed?) to make a jersey order for you. You're talking about an order of 10 or more, so they might be accommodating.

Drew Stafford's hat trick on Saturday was a shortie, an even-strength and a power play goal. Has a Sioux player done that before in a game? I don't even know where to begin to look that up. Has there been any talk of this or a mention in the newspaper? ...but I did find that Ben Cherski had 7 hat tricks in his junior season and 17 in his UND career, in the '50s. (!)

Za-ford's chemistry is fantastic! (e.g. shortie last week and the tic-tac-toe last night) [Za-ford? That's ridiculous ...but deliciously over the top in Bennifer style--I'll try it out for a while.] Thanks for the well-intentioned offer, and thank you to the posters who nonetheless continue to post at SiouxSports.com. A number of us like to log on later and read the in-game message log after the game. I also like how the game thread blends into a post-game discussion.

Judging by the complete surplus of tickets on the boards and eBay, I'd say you have an extremely good chance of buying the championship game on the street for face value or less. Go for it. Auctions on eBay were closing at $50-75 per set (all three games) for the past several days.

In case anybody is making a sign that refers to the commentators, the Grand Forks Herald reports today that "[The semifinal games] will be called by the network's top NHL broadcasting team, Gary Thorne, Bill Clement and Darren Pang."

I have read copies of the NCAA ice hockey rules (they're free online, too). I was sure that there there is a rule that would penalize a player that intentionally turns their back to cause an opponent to abort a hit (or to try to draw a penalty). However, I cannot find it today in the rules nor interpretations. Is this familiar to anyone else?

I just ran across this again. It seemed like a long read, but I found myself laughing out loud and reading it end-to-end. The Oliver Woofing Theorem FAQ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This FAQ list was designed to answer reader's questions regarding the ubiquitous and all-powerful Oliver's Woofing Theorem, as revealed to the Usenet community by the great prophet Jim Oliver. Any questions should be directed to the rec.sport newsgroup of your choice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- List of Topics: 1: What is Oliver's Woofing Theorem? 2: What is Woofing? 3: What is WEAUXfing? 4: Are there various degrees of woofing? 5: Who are the Gods of Woofing? 6: How accurate is Oliver's Woofing Theorem? 7: Why does the theorem seem to fail at times? 8: Do unexpressed, private thoughts count? 9: Does E-mail or private conversations count? 10: Does woofing in the middle of a game count? 11: What is reverse woofing, or anti-woofing? 12: Does reverse woofing ever work? 13: Is it possible to retract a woof? 14: How long does a woof last? 15: Do the woofing Gods save up "bad karma", to apply at a later date? 16: What about ambiguous woofs? 17: As a sports fan, is there anything I can do to help my team win? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1: What is Oliver's Woofing Theorem Oliver's Woofing Theorem states, in a nutshell, that in any given athletic competition (team, individual, amatuer, professional), the team/player who is the most over-hyped/over-praised by his/her/its fans/supporters is doomed to LOSE the competition. For example, if immediately preceding a game between the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays, two Blue Jay's fans state that "Toronto will kick ass", while only one Seattle fan makes a similar claim, then Seattle is guaranteed a win by the ubiquitious and omnipresent Gods of Woofing. 2. What is Woofing? Woofing is any outlandish, outrageous, inflammatory, ridiculous, unsupported, sophmoric, or otherwise brain-dead commentary or predictions regarding a specific team, player, or athletic event. Comments such as "Tampa will kick Dallas' ASS!!!", "Blazerz R00L!", "Notre Dame SUCKS", or "Sampras will CRUSH Chang like a grape!" are all considered to be woofing. Woofing does not include rational, well-thought-out, well-supported commentary. Thus, comments such as "I think New York will beat Orlando, because of their outstanding defense" or "I think Kansas City has a chance to go all the way, with Montana on the team" are NOT considered woofing. 3. What is WEAUXfing? WEAUXfing is a variant spelling of woofing, popular on rec.sport. football.college. 4. Are there various degrees of woofing? Yes--a comment such as "The Lakers are gonna CRUSH the Suns by 50 points, cause the Suns are a dumb, no-defense team and Barkeley is a fat slob!!!" is a more serious woof than a simple "Pittsburg will kick the Flyers' asses tonight!". However, judging the degree of a woof is entirely the domain of the omnipresent Gods of Woofing--it is not possible to quantize a woof, nor is it possible to speculate just how the Gods of Woofing will weigh the various comments of sports fans in deciding the outcome of a sporting event. 5. Who are the Gods of Woofing? Nobody knows. The Gods have only revealed themselves through the Prophet, Jim Oliver. It is known that they are all-knowing and all- powerful, and that they and they alone decide the outcome of ALL sporting events, but little else is known about the Gods of Woofing. All attempts to contact them through prayer, ritual, or meditation have failed. 6. How accurate is Oliver's Woofing Theorem? Oliver's woofing theorem is infallible. If one can keep track of all woofs related to a specific sporting event, one can predict with 100% accuracy the outcome of the event. Note, however, that only the outcome (who wins, who loses) can be predicted by the Theorem. Other statistics, such as the score, who "beat the spread", and individual statistics in team events are not predicted by Oliver's woofing theorem. 7. Last week, I saw a ton of WOOFs from fans of team A, and very little commentary from fans of Team B. Applying the theorem, one can predict victory for Team B. Yet team A won. Did Oliver's woofing theorem fail? No. You only saw a small sample of the woofing to occur. Oliver's Woofing Theorem is not limited to Usenet--it is UNIVERSAL. Thus, every comment made in every bar, athletic club, locker room, school, church, barracks, country club, workplace, house, playground, or any other place where people gather to discuss sports, is considered by the Gods of Woofing. In the example you give, the explaination is obvious--there were a larger number of woofs for Team B in other forums besides Usenet. Thus, Team B was more enthusiastically woofed, and thus they lost. 8. I am a big fan of the Bills, and I believe that they can go all the way. However, I keep my mouth shut. Do my mere thoughts count as a woof, and am I the reason that the Bills have lost in three consecutive Super Bowls? No--private thoughts do not apply. Only boasts which are written or spoken to another person or group of people apply. Thus you are not responsible for the Bill's failings. The reason the Bill's lose in the Super Bowl is twofold: First, lots of Bills fans engage in large-scale woofing, and second, the Bills suck. (Cheer up, Buffalo fans. My comment should aid them a little.) 9. How about private conversations, E-mail, and other non-public forms of communication? These ARE included in the Woofing Theorem. Basically, if you write it, speak it, sign it, or type it, it will count. 10. Does woofing during the middle of a game count? The outcome of a sporting event depends on all woofing up until game time. By the time the game starts, the Gods of Woofing have already determined the outcome, and any comments made during the game will have no effect on that game. They will, however, have an effect on future games. 11. What is "reverse woofing" or "anti woofing"? Reverse woofing is the process whereby a sports fan tries to fool the Gods of Woofing by woofing for the OTHER TEAM, in hopes that this will cause the team that he/she really supports to win. 12. Does reverse woofing ever work? No. Reverse woofing will never work. First of all, the Gods of Woofing, being All-Knowing, know which teams every sports fans likes, loves, hates, despises, or doesn't care about. Second, reverse woofing is extremely offensive to the Gods of Woofing for two reasons. One, it insults their intelligence when a mere mortal presumes that he can fool them, and two, they are offended by such deviousness. As a result, reverse woofing is the most serious type of woofing possible, and a reverse-woofer DOOMS his/her team to an embarrassing loss. 13. Is it possible to retract a woof? No. Once a woof is made, it is set in stone. The only way to reverse the effects of a woof (or an anti-woof) is for a supporter of the opposing team to make his/her own woof or anti-woof. 14. How long does a woof last? Depends on the nature of the woof. A woof regarding a specific contest will only affect the outcome of that contest. A woof of the nature "Edmonton can kick Calgary's ASS any time, any where" will affect ALL Flames/Oilers games from that point on (however, the effect will diminish exponentially with time.) A woof of the nature "The Phillies RULE!!!" will affect the Phillies for ALL of their games, but again, the effect will diminish exponentially with time. Likewise, a generic flame against the opposition ("Cleveland SUCKS!") will improve Cleveland's chances in future games, but again the effect will diminish with time. 15. Will the woofing Gods "save up" bad karma, to apply at a later date? This has been known to happen, especially to teams such as the Bills, Braves, and Blazers, who do well in the regular season but falter in the playoffs. Although little is known about this, the woofing Gods sometimes, in response to a particularly vicious woof or anti-woof, allow a team to win enough to make it to the playoffs, only to smite them there. Much research needs to be done in this area. 16. What about ambiguous woofs? Some woofs are inherently ambiguous. For example, if a fan states that "The Giants are gonna CREAM the Cardinals", does he mean that the New York Giants will defeat the Phoenix Cardinals, or that the San Fransisco Giants will do likewise to St. Louis? In this case, the woofing gods will attempt to figure out what the fan means by context (if the woof is in rec.sport.football.pro, for example, it is assumed he means New York will defeat Phoenix.) In cases where the intent cannot be determined, the woof will be ignored. 17. Is there anything that I, as a sports fan, can do to HELP my team? Yes, there is. Keep your trap shut.

That was funny when Yogi Berra said it, hilarious reuse now. (I agree that actual Hirsch posters would appear as poor class; there is some healthy toungue-in-cheek attitude here, though. The "Pain in the neck" pun made me chuckle, too, half because of Robbie's positive attitude about it.) BigGrayAnt: IMHO, it makes more sense to have HE, ECAC, etc. on a milk carton rather than a WCHA carton. Great work, though. The East slams are hilarious, but the Beanpot and milk carton might be the only ones with a remote chance at ESPN. Probably have to stick to the game at hand. My favs: Send Beanpot To: REA.... 2005: Columbus discovers North Dakota HE Milk Carton A few brainstorm ideas, most could use polishing: NHL commentators back for college? Parody "Back to School" movie poster with a Rodney Dangerfield's face replaced with Barry Melrose. Can we borrow The Cup this year? (w/ picture) NHL Who? I eight the championships (surely there's a better ate/eight championships pun) To India PM: These Tigers are endangered, too. Dr. Kupchella thinks I'm at home sick this week Hit the EASY BUTTON! (Make screenshots here. Consider putting a button on a goalie pic.) Thank you to those sign-making fans who are graduating this year. You've started a good REA tradition which also makes for great Siouxsports threads. 66% of viewers wouldn't know what a crappie is "Prpich Greene & Smaby PEST CONTROL" would be a good one. See more Nov 2003 Sioux-Gopher Pictures

Until keikla credited that quote with the HE Commissioner, I fully expected that the sentences were talking about the WCHA. I guess it's an opinion that every league would like to think about themselves.

These are the PWR implications of all 256 remaining combinations of wins and losses in the conference tournaments today. Unless the NCAA committee changes the rules, it appears that Wisconsin is in the tourney, since each of the 256 scenarios put them at least at 14th place. UND will finish between 6 and 12, the most likely result is 9th. Sorry about the funky formatting--the board removed extra spaces so I had to add zeros. team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Colorado Coll 128 128 Denver 0 38 120 98 Minnesota 0 0 0 96 107 53 North Dakota 0 0 0 0 0 13 44 53 138 0 4 4 Wisconsin 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 32 91 1 96 32 Credit to Charlie Shub from CC for this info.

I was debating whether it was necessary to add this, but I've decided that I should, to head off some anticipated wasted discussion: +/- is not incremented when you score on PP nor when scored upon when short-handed.

In the last six games... Massen: 0-4-4 Canady: 2-1-3 Fabian: 3-3-6 Could this be The End of Days? <grin> This weekend, I heard more than one group in the stands simply calling them The Horses, which I think is a more apt analogy than any sort of destruction apocolypse one. As we all know, right now they are getting a lot of ice time and playing well, too. According to fightingsioux.com, Fabian and Canady are listed as +3 for the season, which is better than Genoway, Murray, Jones, Porter, Fylling, Prpich, Schneider, Massen, Kaip, Radke, Foyt and Marvin. (Massen is +0) Not that +/- is the end-all of discussions, but I am a believer in the stat. After posing the +/- question to myself and looking it up, I was impressed with the answer. I'm not sure whether this is true, but it seems to me that, if they are rested enough, a team will try to take advantage of a fourth line by putting out a top line against them. At the very least, you can say that a fourth line shift is AT BEST up against another fourth line, and is often up against other lines. With this in mind, it seems to me that one would expect fourth lines to normally be below +0, especially when they're on a 5th place team. I'm moving into a statistical question now, but would appreciate others' training or observations. I was surprised at the negative feelings recorded on Mar 10 on this thread to The Horses' play. The line, especially Fabian and Canady, had been growing on my friends for several weeks. To be clear, I say that you can have your own opinion because we all see/value different things, I am just saying I was surprised that posters gave practically no props.

Mankato's style has historically given UND trouble. Mankato is 7-6-3 against the Sioux since they joined the WCHA in 2000-01, losing four of the last twelve.

Aside from some personal bashing on the topic starter, this has been a very interesting topic. The first post proposed what I thought was a relatively well backed up argument, given the information he/she had (it was more than I knew off the top of my head, which isn't true often enough). It turns out that others here had more specifics on Shanley and others--certainly more than I expected. shanleycheats deserved some suspicion by creating a new handle for this thread. The vendetta was a cheap shot, but the topic is worth discussing, and like I said, I'm pleased with the result. Obligatory topic fodder: Recruiting/open enrollment in sports is different from other programs like music. Gifted athletes swarming to one school directly affects the other schools because of the nature of the head-to-head competition between schools. The gaining schools are unnaturally powerful, and the losing schools' kids lose their chance to compete. Most posters here seem to be saying "that's just how it is," which is surprising to me. Should we remove the rules altogether, and turn high school recruiting into an open process like the NCAA? I don't have the answers, but I hope that's not the eventual result. My ethical rule isn't absolute: A gifted player stuck in Devil's Lake, or a player who can't make the team in his home school seem to be good candidates for transfer if they are willing to move. On the other hand I think the Lamoureauxs bypassing perfectly capable Red River HS to go to Central isn't right. For those unfamiliar with NDHS hockey, I'm not exaggerating when I say this decision may well have made the difference in a RRHS state championship or two rather than Central. (Note I said "may" and this is just my opinion.) I do hope that HS recruiting stays taboo enough that coaches must slink around and possibly choose not do it at all. The gathering of gifted talent from around regions should stay in junior hockey.

Some of you are too Minnesota Nice. Blais will publicly mention a weekend of disappointing effort or an instance of a bonehead play that cost the team, and I seen nothing wrong with that. I note that Blais never says a player stinks overall (that's reserved for the pro level). I see his comments of this manner as a reflection of his expectations. We all know from the past that he expects 100%, even from the star players. Further, his comments always leave room for improvement through dedication, rather than indicating that he has given up on the player.

How many POI players will there be? SiouxSports team looks like 7-10 players. Should the SiouxSports group consider inviting another group, like Bulldogs or Badgers or whoever else has the next-best bulletin board community? (I can't resist: Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinking Badgers!)

I did the tiebreaker legwork for myself and thought the rest of you may like to see it. Memorize it and impress your friends late Saturday night when the scores come in. Again, the standings 39 UND 37 Duluth 34 Wisconsin 28 SCSU 27 Denver 27 UM 24 CC 17 Alaska 16 Mankato 15 Tech Matchups this weekend Denver/CC Minnesota/SCSU UMD/UW UND/Tech Mankato and AA are off Head-to-head tiebreaker analysis DU vs. SCSU (2-0) DU vs. UMIN (3-1) CC vs. SCSU (3-1) CC vs. UMIN (0-2) SCSU and UM can't tie DU and CC can't tie Despite being on top in the standings today, SCSU loses any tie. DU wins any tie. CC has a long shot at home ice, but it helps that they would win a tie with SCSU. They need a sweep, and for SCSU or Minnesota to sweep.

It's a bold move by Victory. They have landed yet another telecast that people in Minnesota want to watch. It raises the pressure on the cable companies to pick up the channel. Yeah, Victory is losing big money right now, but the Regionals is another investment toward getting their foothold. The whole thing is a make-or-break venture. Maybe this will teach FSN to stop dragging their feet on Regionals until they see who is playing.