NODAK13

Schuler and Salmonson are good to go, Traylor is out. This game is huge to get a road win against one of the expected top teams in the conference. I believe we will get it done today.

Checked some stats for Northern Colorado and looking at their top 8 scorers the tallest of these 8 is 6'5". So basically they run mostly guards and/or small forwards which for once we may have a size advantage with the players that do the scoring. They do have some taller players but they do very little scoring. This team should be beatable on the road if we play together and look for the open shots.

It's very apparent our weakness is down low thru these non-conference teams and to be honest it will continue to be a weakness. The bright side is that most Big Sky teams are not nearly as strong down low like the competition we have faced so far and they will play with 3-4 guards which plays in our favor. As mentioned above our fundamentals are not good right now and that must be improved upon but I'm not confident of that because its been this way for 4 years with these players and no changes have been made. Also, concerned about the injuries to Traylor and Schuler and wonder how bad they might be. Schuler looked bad when he left the court with his shoulder and how long are we going to be putting him in the low block on free throws against guys 6" taller and weigh 60-70 more pounds and let him get beat up. He is too valuable to this team for that.

Just saw the stats. 4 guys took 45 of our 53 shots and the other 5 players that played only took 8 shots. Not good team play or movement. Wont win many games like this.

I dont understand on free throws why they have Schuler in the low block and Huff by the shooter. Huff should be on the low block due to his jumping ability.

UND no team play and SDSU team play... Score speaks for itself. For once lets drive and find the open shooter cause they are wide open.

Going to be a long game as long as we continue to not pass and drive on 3 guys. We should watch how SDSU passes the ball and learn.

South dakota state is huge....

If we did comparative scoring we should beat the number 2/3 team in the country ( Ohio State) by 1. We beat NDSU by 18 and Ohio State only beat NDSU by 17. Every team and every game is different from one night to another but it would be nice to dream we beat Ohio State on their court by 1.

So based on Kenpom we are 217 and South Dakota State is 191. Excellent chance for us to move up this Saturday.

They would be foolish not to zone us. I kind a hope they do so we have another chance to work on it with a team that is very like most Big Sky teams because all that matters at this point is the Big Sky season. I've seen some progress in our zone offense lately and especially when Schuler is in the middle. He makes great passes from that position and takes very smart and good shots. I have also seen more passing from others that generally don't like to pass and if we are hitting our open shots we will be fine.

I hate these games cause it does absolutely nothing. Well at least we get a win that does absolutely nothing for RPI or helps us improve cause Calcaterra has proven he can't do anything against D1 schools. I thought we would shake up the lineup and try playing 4 guards for the move into the Big Sky.

South Dakota State is up 18 on Belmont who a few weeks ago beat North Carolina in North Carolina. Belmont is a very good team who has many big wins over the past few years. Thought the game next week against South Dakota State would be kinda easy but they must be putting things together after a slow start.

Your lineup is good but I would still start with Webb. Calcaterra has done nothing on offense or defense for 2 games and does not even have a rebound in the last 2. Salmonson is just as ineffective so lets go with this lineup and play Traylor, Hooker, Benton and Stefen off the bench. This would make us solid with the ability to score from anybody. I would start Benton at the 5 before I would start either big cause Benton would fight for the rebounds and actually play very solid on defense. Jones definitely needs to shake up the lineup and leave the bigs out.

This sums it up perfectly. Flashes when they play together and once they go to playing one against the entire other team it's not good. We need more balance in our shots and scoring to be at a high level because we have the players that should be getting more shots that can actually make them.

Huff has made only 1 of his last 19 threes and Hooker has yet to make a three and Nash is just as bad lately but these are the ones shooting most of our threes. A lot to figure out and conference play begins in just a few weeks.

That really doesn't make since because Antwi and Stefen are shooters that can possibly kill a zone and Benton is not a shooter at all. Usually against a zone you would put in your shooters to take them out of a zone. So Nash must have played the 5 tonight. If so I would leave it like that and start Webb, Anderson, Huff, Schuler and Nash in the future for our best lineup as someone has mentioned prior.

Yeah that was weird about Antwi, Salmonson , Hobaugh and Traylor basically not playing. Also, Stefen only got 2 minutes. Our lineup heading into the big sky should be narrowed down to about 8-9 players getting almost all the minutes which would be our starters plus Schuler, Hooker, Traylor. Then a few minutes for the rest. Jones has made several comments about his depth and that he is not going to have players play 30+ minutes so they are always fresh and he's done that leading up to this tournament but tonight Huff, Anderson and Nash played 37+ minutes each. Wonder how good their legs are going to be tomorrow. 37+ minutes is too much for the starters to be playing with the depth we have when in practice the 2nd team hangs and beats the first team based on whats being said. Hopefully its not any injuries to the players that did not play tonight and we will be at full strength beginning next week.

Hope for a quick recovery cause when Schuler is in he is so solid in every aspect of his game. I'm sure he has many friends and family wanting to see him play next week in Indiana and his home state of Ohio against Bowling Green.

The outcome of this game will be simple. After playing for 4 hours and 6 overtimes the game will end in a tie due to lack of players for each team. Braun and Huff will be ejected in the first overtime for fighting and the final three players from both teams will be walk-ons, everyone else will have fouled out. That's how close this game will be for the entire contest.

I heard this game is not sold out yet. How is that possible when the Betty only seats under 4000 and this is one of the biggest games of the year.

Why are you disappointed in Schuler. He played a solid game and is the only player that plays as a team and plays the best defense on this team. He hardly touched the ball and shot 50% when he did shoot the ball. When you have several guys that don't ever pass the ball its hard for guys like Schuler and Antwi to get many touches and especially when they are wide open and no one passes to them to shoot. We scored 85 points and only had like 13 assists.

Yes we did beat the spread. Should have bet my house on it.

What in the he'll is salmonson doing shooting a 3 again.. he needs to sit on the bench a long time.

Too much size for us...agree we do miss brekke big time...