Dustin

So, Steph Ziegler came in to serve the last point - had she played previously? If she has, I haven't noticed. I was figuring she was being red-shirted.

That will be a tough way to close the season, with a potential Big Sky tournament hosting on the line.

SAC and NAU still have to play each other twice, so we have that going for us as well.

UND up 2-0 over the bobcats at the break with not too much trouble. Hitting 0.356 to MSU's 0.067, and 4 blocks.

Is that to accommodate Idaho as a football member?

Absolutely. Has to be a win to keep the momentum going if we're to be taken seriously at all.

UNDBIZ and gundy1124 seem to be saying opposite things to me.

No, not those 8 teams. The teams that have to bid for their home games in the round before.

Or, are the matchups pre-determined, and then they play at the school who bid higher between the two?

Question for you: Are the 8 home teams for the first round determined by the 8 highest bids, and then low/no bid teams are paired up with them, with geography as a potential factor?

According to both FCS playoff projections available (nobowls, Stats), there are 4 Big Sky teams in the field if the season ended today, same as MVFC, with Southern Utah as a bubble. So the Big Sky can't be that bad. CAA has the most at 5.

Thanks. According to Sagarin, Northern Iowa is the 4th highest ranked FCS team.

what about EWU? Can you post the link to where you're getting this information?

It appears that as long as we make the playoffs, a date with NDSU is in our future.

Highlights are one of video selections on undsports.com

For sure. Essentially, there's a home playoff game this weekend, so we better act like it. (Team AND Fans)

I still think we'd get SDSU or UNI before Montana. Fits with the NCAA models of non-conference match ups, and 400-mile travel preference.

When you look at statistics, UND doesn't seem like an exceptional team. Maybe we're not.

Football, like hockey, avoids conference match ups on the first round. So we don't have to worry about competing against Montana for bids.

I was just going by the size of their venue. I didn't realuze that that doesn't necessarily translate to bidding power. Glad UND has that going for them.

Without individually counting every seat, there appears to be over 3,000 seats available right now, according to the venue map on Ticketmaster. So that would put attendance at 8-9k. Since there is no Friday night hockey game, the people in town for hockey may not come until the hockey game starts, although, the fact that it is homecoming may help. I hope we can crack 5 figures.

Wow, I wonder why the fans didn't turn up. Anyway, good to know.

At this point, I don't think SDSU could lose a playoff spot with all the profit being made from playing a MVFC schedule, unless they really tank. Like you say, a loss to NDSU won't really hurt them that badly. I also think that UND getting a top 8 seed is also extremely unlikely, given there's no profit on their Big Sky schedule. So, if UND and SDSU are both at-large selections, those two schools would probably be matched up against each other, and it will probably be in Brookings, based on their ability to bid high. I would say root for SDSU to get one of the 8 seeds, and root for UNI to get knocked out of the playoffs all together. I think both of these things happening are achievable goals.

I better throw in there that UNI probably can't make the playoffs either if UND wants to host, unless number 1 happens, then it won't matter.

http://www.fcs.football/fcsfront.asp #22