SiouxVolley

As part of the breakup of IPFW into a PFW and IUFW, only the PFW will still sponsor athletics and will be changing its colors to Purdue's black and gold from white and blue. Hopefully, PFW gets invited to the Horizon in the next few months, as it's an eastern time school. When that occurs, the sh** will hit the fan because PFW is the sixth school sponsoring baseball and men's soccer, and the Summit needs six to have an autobid for men's basketball. http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/schools/20171109/color-scheme-change-part-of-ipfw-rebrand

Appears Illinois will have a college arena now, as two developers are competing for approval, one in downtown Champaign and one in the research park. http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-11-19/two-developers-one-project-competing-ideas.html

Richmond is considering the Patriot League for football: http://www.richmond.com/sports/changing-football-landscape-could-be-among-john-hardt-s-challeges/ When JMU and Delaware go FBS, Richmond wouldn't want to stay CAA.

Guess the Big Sky is a bus league then? Montana to Flagstaff, Cedar City, Greeley and Sacramento are easy bus rides.

So EWU is really unhappy with the New Big Sky. They won't get a guaranteed game against Montana now as their annual rivals are now Idaho and Portland State. The EWU AD wants formal divisions or the Big Sky North to split off so they get Montana and Montana St annually. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/oct/04/big-sky-athletic-directors-pondered-options-with-c/ Just gat the Montanas, Idaho and EWU to move to the Summit and everything will be dandy.

Presbyterian is not moving to the Pioneer until at least 2021. They have too many big payout games scheduled. The school is also adding Pharmacy and Physicians assistant majors and a Health Sciences school, so they have money from somewhere. And they will be adding sports, likely man and women's wrestling.

Happen to believe that the Grand Forks fertilizer plant will get built if the corporate income tax is reduced. An added benefit is the all kinds of foreign profits can be repatronized, which will create more investment money is the US.

So a target time is the middle of January with three finalists. Dec 3 is the final application date. http://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/4362842-ad-committee-discusses-candidates-first-time

Presume that opens up a scholarship.

Louisville formerly was only a basketball school, but now is a power in nearly every sport they offer. Adidas had a lot to do with their rise, spending ten of millions and helping them funnel booster money to facilities while Adidas money took care of coaches contracts and operational issues like paying prostitutes.

So was 4 star bb recruit Jal Bijiek on an Adidas AAU team that was steered to UND so an Adidas contract was signed? Just asking.

In 1976, there were 32 teams between the NHL and WHA. Now the NHL has 31, there are many more Americans and Euro's playing and the Russians and Czechs and Slovaks couldn't play. Seems like the NHL can be at 34 teams.

Surprisingly, the Big Sky is the 11th rated conference out of 32 in VB this year, but it still has a losing non conference record. The Summit is #19 as schools like SDSU and W Ill have been horrid this year. College volleyball,is so dominated by the P5 and WCC and Big West. There are horrible teams in the P5 though, like Rutgers, Mississippi St, and BC. Most of the P5 schools in the east and south dont pay it much attention. There are exceptions though, like Penn St, Florida, Kentucky and Texas, which are have been stellar teams.

Our current ranking after Sac St win rose 10 places to 59 on Massey. The RPI and PABLO ones seem to be worse. It would take higher than a 40 in all likelihood. The Montana St loss killed our rating a couple of weeks ago. The selection committee doesn't give any credibility to leagues like the Big Sky or Summit. The MVC has some because they have actually won some NCAA games and often have teams that rate well like UNI and Wichita St (now gone). Our best win is Sac St followed closely by NMSU at #64. Even the win over Ole Miss doesn't count for much as there are rated in the 90's.

Didn't realize that UMass lost by 12 in Fargo on Friday. Takes some of the novelty out of beating an A10 team, which sponsors basketball at a relatively high level.

The reason I posted the Massey rankings is that this program and team had what I believe a goal of qualifying as an at-large team if needed. RPI and PABLO rankings are probably better rankings for the selection committee, but qualifying as at large is what I believe Pryor wants for this program eventually. A top 40 spot is probably needed. We were blessed with Dooley and Griffin, who by rights could have gone to a more power league, but Vail seems to have reached close to her enormous potential as a P5 power spiker. Denver has qualified from the Summit for the 4th year in a row and have much of their starters returning so next year will be a challenge.

Northrop Grumman just builds a 35,000 sq ft office building and a 36,000 sq ft hangar, General Atomics just opened a new 24,000 sq ft office and Moser says where is the beef. Look in the NDSU cattle barns.

The owners of the Montreal Canadiens have been tweeting that they are not opposed to a Quebec City franchise, when many suspected that they would want some compensation for loss of exclusive French rights etc. Maybe Houston will be the 16th Western franchise, then that frees up Quebec City for the 33rd NHL team and later Seattle for the 34th team.

Still amazed by the teams Set 4 performance. Always knew that gear was possible, but they never showed it until crunch time. Pryor gave Kaczorowska credit for a stern talk that turned things around. Would like to see that gear sgain.

One announcer mentioned some senior grad transferring next year to play beach volleyball. The camera was on Griffin so I assume that is who they were talking about. Have a pit at the IPF with the new stands. Better for spectators than women's triathlon.

Hopefully we will get the second team in the region, not the seeded one. We have a much more respectable regular season than last year when we dropped a number of non conference games against weak opponents.

To think Sac St had it after the third set. Shame on me. The hitting and defense were just incredible. Vail is becoming a force to be reckoned with. Her improvement has made the difference so there is always a force in middle.

Incredible hitting % by Vail and Dooley- both over .500. Griffin is hitting .700 and Brueggeman is over .300. But somehow Sac St has a 2-2 tie in sets

While I am optimistic, as they played better than expected against Idaho, this Sac St team has so dominated the Big Sky that is will take an enormous error free and superb defensive game from UND. Actually expecting a post season apperance, but not an NCAA one.

Massey right now has UND #159 among DI teams, which is pretty good for a Big Sky school. We are actually favorites in most of our games. The ones we arent are: @Nebraska 38% chance of winning @Creighton 8% chance @SDSU 34% @Gonzaga 3% @Montana 42% @NDSU 45% @EWU 40% @Idaho 46% @ Weber 39% Granted, were only slight favorites in many games and a lot can happen to change things over the season. But the Nebraska game is by far our best shot at a signature win.