fightingsioux4life

If we are going to win this game, there are three things I think we must do well: 1) No turnovers. Turnovers took us out of the game last year before we had a chance to establish any momentum. If we take care of the ball, that should give us a chance to win. Make them earn whatever they get. 2) Control the game on the ground. We have a big, talented and experienced offensive line. We need to use the Hogs and whatever running backs are healthy to establish a solid running game and control the clock. I don't care if it's Chappell, Dressler, Murray, Battle or Dungy; someone is going to have to step up and establish the run. That should open up the passing game for Freund to make some plays down the field. 3) Punch it in when we have the chance. One problem with this team this year is finishing drives that look good until we get inside the red zone. In order to win this game, we will have to score touchdowns when we have the chance. One of the reasons why we are on the road tomorrow instead of at home is missed scoring opportunities in the Omaha game. If we can capitalize on our chances, we stand a good chance to win the game, especially with our defense healthy and playing their best football of the season right now. This game might come down to the last drive for either team in the fourth quarter. No one outside of our fan base probably thinks that we can win this game, but I think we have a chance if we play solid football for 60 minutes.

Let's go Sioux, time for a home sweep!!!

That will involve not shooting at his chest (logo-killers), shooting from bad angles, shooting from the blue line without anyone in front of the net, etc. We had better crash the net and make things happen tonight and Saturday or we'll have to read Brad Schlossman go on and on about how great Stalock is in the Heraldo. We have to get the offense going this weekend. A 2.89 goals per game average is not going to cut it if we want to hang some banners this year. Time to get out the brooms!

You are thinking of the Broadmoor Trophy, which goes to the winner of the WCHA Final Five. The MacNaughton Cup is the WCHA regular season trophy. The MacNaughton is tougher to win, but the Broadmoor is also prestigious and has been won by several of our NCAA title teams. Let's hope this season ends up the same way.

This is a series that we MUST sweep. I don't care what Duluth brings to the table. I don't care how good Duluth's goaltending is. I don't care if the atmosphere is dead because the students will be gone. Championship teams sweep teams like Duluth at home. Period. If we want to contend for the MacNaughton Cup, we have to win these games. After this weekend, we have Denver on the road (split at best), Minnesota at home (likely split, although the Rodents are struggling right now) and then New Hampshire over the holidays (another tough test). There are 12 league points at stake during the next three weeks. We had better get as many of them as we can. Prediction: Sioux Sweep (3-1, 5-2)

You are right about televising home games like this, it just encourages people to sit on their butts at home and not buy a ticket. Penalizing the team because of the team they got matched up with is beyond immature. One of the main reasons we are moving up to DI FCS is to make football a stronger program. If we don't start marketing football better and taking it more seriously, this whole D-I move will end up being a waste of time and resources.

Being that there are only a few weeks left in "the year", this is certainly possible considering that a high ankle sprain can take a long time to heal. We had better hope that our running back depth can bail us out. Otherwise, it's on to DI FCS.

Please tell me you aren't comparing attendance at a home playoff game to attendance at a road game in Michigan. I was at the Alerus Center today and like you was disgusted at the attendence. I was at the road game in Mankato and was impressed at all the fans we had there. Our fans travel well in all sports, but the longer the distances the harder it is to travel. Getting the games televised is not "catering" to anyone, it's getting this program more exposure. And that is one of our main problems right now. Now I will get off MY soapbox!

This is my official call to lobby the FSSN to provide TV coverage for next week's 2nd round playoff game. It was on last year and I hope they can televise it this time as well. I know a lot of people are already waving the white flag because of our injuries today, but I still want to watch it on TV. What a great triple header it would be for FSSN: Hockey Friday and Saturday vs. Duluth and Football vs. GVSU. Time to flood WDAZ with calls and e-mails!

There is really no excuse to not get your butts to the Alerus Center to support our team. Hockey is off this week, so you can't use that one. And I don't want to hear that "It's Winona, who cares?". Our team is in the playoffs for the 5th straight year and 12th out of the last 16 years. And we'll have to wait until 2012 to see them in the playoffs again. It's outrageous that Coach Lennon has to beg and plead with people to come to a home playoff game! Let's give them the support they deserve.

According to the article I read on Saturday, Wilf "urged" the Vikings to reverse the decision that was made regarding Williamson. That suggests that the decision was made by either Childress or someone else in upper management and that Wilf didn't like it and told them to reverse themselves. Wilf obviously didn't like the negative press it was generating and stepped in to stop the bleeding. Wilf is trying to get a new stadium and negative press of any kind won't help him get it. In terms of public relations, the damage has been done. In terms of doing what is right, the Vikings finally got it right.

I agree with you, Williamson just hasn't worked out. But if you're Childress and you think it's time to move on and get someone else, there are much better ways to do it than docking him one game's salary because he wanted to go to his grandmother's funeral. If Williamson was working for Microsoft instead of the Vikings, I am willing to bet that he would have gotten the time he needed to take care of a family emergency. I always thought that Mike Tice was unprofessional in some of his dealings with players and hoped that Childress would be better in this area. Silly me. Bottom Line: This move was unprofessional, pure and simple.

Anything is better than what Rodentia offers. I have never heard the Gopher radio network, but some people have mentioned how insufferable they are. And I don't think I have to remind people about Mazzaco (sp?) and Woog. On balance, I think that Badger nation is a lot more classy and down-to-earth than Rodentia. That doesn't mean I don't like to beat them, though.

Please don't go there. If most of us in the white collar, cubicle-slave world of corporate America have access to employer-sponsored 401K plans, then why can't the NFL sponsor retirement plans for its players? And even though NFL players make much more money now than they used to, they have much shorter careers than most of us. Once your body breaks down, you are done. I don't blame players for getting as much as they can while they can get it, particularly given how successful the NFL is. After all, it's the players that people pay money to watch. I think this is just another example of how Brad Childress is out of touch and simply doesn't get it. If you make a "business decision" like this, then potential future free agents might make a "business decision" to play elsewhere. I hope that the Vikings reverse this because this will hurt them in the long run.

In honor of Dan "The Common Man" Cole of KFAN fame, I am proud to present "The Common Man WCHA Hockey Standings". These standings are different than the ones you will find in the Grand Forks Heraldo. Here is the current record of our University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux: Wins: 4 Losses: 0 Ties: 0 Ran into a hot goaltender: 3 Scoreless tie because arena in Boston didn't have air conditioning: 1 I thought we could all use a little sarcastic humor.

The schedule is very tough before Christmas: Boston College, Northeastern, Michigan Tech, Colorado College, Wisconsin, Denver, Minnesota, New Hampshire (ouch!). After Christmas, it gets a little easier with Anchorage, Minnesota State and Bemidji State on the schedule. My fear is that we will lose too many games in the first half to make a run at winning the league in the second half. Having a tough schedule only helps if you can win games.

I feel your pain, but it is too early in the season to give up. Look at the last three years for proof of that. I gave up on this team last December and look what happened. Yes, I am sick of hearing about "hot goaltenders" and "missing the net", but we can still split this series and I think we will come out smoking on Saturday.

I don't want to comment too much since I am not there and it is not televised, but why in the world does our team run into "hot goaltenders" on a regular (almost weekly) basis? No other team, either in college or professional hockey, ever has this much of a problem with "hot goaltenders". Michigan Tech was able to score goals last weekend in Madison, why can't we do it? I suspect that the Badgers are playing their usual "collapse in front of the net" style in which the initial shot is on goal but the rebounds are cleared away right away. Or we are shooting it right into the goaltender's chest again. Whatever it is, we had better figure out how to put the puck into the net or this is going to be a disappointing season.

Lennon has talked about a 12 game schedule for next season (6 at home and 6 on the road), but I don't think anything is set in stone. I think having UND and USD work together during the upcoming transition is a good idea and cooperative scheduling is one important area we can focus on.

Good points. You're right, it's early and you often learn more from failures than successes. And we did turn it on after Christmas last season, including at home. But I also believe that it is absolutely critical for this team to establish a solid record before Christmas so we can make a run for the MacNaughton Cup and put ourselves in position for the playoffs (Final Five and NCAA Tournament). And there are some good teams on our schedule before 2007 is over (Denver, Minnesota, New Hampshire), so we better bring our A game every weekend. Tonight was more like our C+ game.

Yes, but this was only our third home game so far (we've been on the road a lot to start this season). And this was our first series at home. I think that if Michigan State had the chance to play us the next night, they would have performed much better and we would have had to step up to the challenge in order to earn the sweep. Tonight, we didn't do that. I'm not panicking over one loss to a good team, but I just want us to establish home dominance like we had in the 1980's and 1990's. That is what championship teams do. And if this team is going to fulfill its potential this season, they are going to have to make REA their personal playground (like the old REA was for almost 30 years).

We had better get used to playing against good goaltending because every team in this league has at least one good goaltender (sometimes two). Even a team like Anchorage usually has a good netminder. We had chances in the first period, but we didn't generate much for the final 40 minutes, being in the box for half the second period will do that. And there were logo-killers, shots from bad angles and shots from the faceoff circles and outside, which usually are not going to go into the net at the D-I level. The Rodents really tested this kid a couple of weeks ago; I wish we would have at least done that tonight. I think everyone knew that the Tigers would come out and play much better tonight after being embarrassed at times last night. And after losing three straight, they were bound to be a little desperate for a win. I don't think we matched their intensity or their hustle and that is a no-no in this league. A split next week in the Kohl Center would be fine, splits at home are unacceptable. We have to get back to being dominant at home and taking ownership of REA. We also have to establish some game-to-game consistency in order to contend for the WCHA title. If we can establish those things in the first half of this season, we'll be fine for the second half and the stretch run to the playoffs.

Power Play coming up.

We cannot afford to split at home with the league being as tough as it is.

We are going to have to cut out the stupid penalties against a team that can make you pay for them.