SiouxVolley

SDSU has historically charged low prices for football tickets. Now that may have changed, but the gross is important, and it doesn't show up in the box score.

The don't play DIII either, but are in a never never land, with only a conference championship as a prize.

Southern New Hampshire University is said to be considering a DI move on another board. SNHU only has 3000 students on campus but enrolled 60k online. The school recently bought naming rights to the former Verizon Arena in Manchester, which holds 9800 for hockey. SNHU plays in the DII Northeast-10 league now and has a DII hockey team in the Northeast10. Might be a school to look out for in hockey and as a new DI school. The AHA may have interest. Going DI would be looked at as an advertising expense by their admin, considering the ads you see now for SNHU. DI and hockey would further legitimize SNHU as a real school.

Exactly. A conference decision is a strategic direction both academically and athletically. Similar finances of conference schools are important, but not the overriding factor. How does getting in a closer relationship with W Ill, ORU, IUPUI, and IPFW help UND. Of course the Big Sky has a few schools like them, but think S Utah, Portland St, Idaho St and Sac St offer much more for UND to hang out with.

The only school that had more than 50% of the season average was Chattanooga. People don't respond to playoffs until later in the rounds.

PABLO, a volleyball ratings system, gives UND a 4.6% chance of winning. UND has jumped nearly 40 spots in RPI to 98, which is a large jump. If UND was rated just on the second half of the conference season, they would probably be a 50 RPI or so. Hopefully, the Goophers dwell on the previous USC-Hawaii game, as Hawaii-Gopher NCAA game last year was intense.

Very hard task for UND right off the bat as Minnesota is the #2 seed. Next year, UND will have to schedule and win against P5 teams. This year they beat Clemson, but that doesn't go very far. Non conference games are critical to get proper placement in the brackets. Pryor needs to take the program to UNI or Wichita St levels to get respect. UND can give Minnie a much tougher game than earlier, even though that was a 4 set mAtch, because UND found its zone in the second half of the BSC season.

The Minnesota regional is very strong: Hawaii vs Southern Cal gets the winner.

It was after a St Lawrence loss at the Ralph on a Thanksgiving weekend.

The trip to Dayton may be a precursor for #16 seeds. Great comeback to instill confidence.

Looked like Youngstown St got the highest attended 1st round game with 5322. Their average attendance was 14,353. Only Chattanooga got to 50% of their average with 5238. Averaged 9494. 1St and 2ND round playoff games routinely draw worse than regular season games, especially on a Thanksgiving weekend.

If Coastal and W Kentucky can do it, with far less resources at their disposal, so can we. But you and others have been poo-pooing the idea since before this thread started as we are not worthy in your eyes.

Your IQ is rubbing off on us.

The game will be poorly attended because students get 500 tickets free, the NY game leaves alot of fans gone, not all season ticket holders will get tickets, and the bizon play earlier so alot of people will watch at home with the hockey game. Richmond isn't that attractive of matchup, and NC A&T is worse. 6000 fans but they will be loud.

That's unfortunately all too much of the attitude on here. If we follow ndac that means dropping all hockeys, as their fans detest it. We can trail blaze our own path.

The Stangs have the talent to beat NDSU. Go Big Sky!

Coastal Carolina is also a soon to be FBS school that seems to do everything right athletically. They have won the first two Sun Belt team championships this fall, M/W soccer and might win a third today in volleyball. None of their sports are weAK sauce. This year they were national champs in baseball, have strong softball and spring sports. Their basketball has made a few dance appearances. And they are shooting bigger with FBS and an enlarged stadium, even though their football has never had an attendance over 10k. Moreover, they started women's lax and beach volleyball, which are both growing in popularity. Coastal Carolina and Western Kentucky are two schools where an FBS move has really paid off with enrollment growth and athletic performance. Why not UND?

The women's volleyball tournament seems more dominated by the P5, especially the BIG, B12, and PAC12, than the men's dance in March. Last year, the non-P5s to advance were San Diego, Creighton, American, Loyola Marymount, W Kentucky, Hawaii, Dayton, and Wichita St. Creighton was actually seeded and the WCC and Big West are power conferences in the sport. Last year, Minnesota had Jackson St, UNI and Marquette in their pod, while Nebraska had Wichita St, Kansas St, and Harvard in theirs. Kansas had Mizzou, Mo St and Furman, so mostly the pods are regional with stray eastern teams as they aren't power eastern teams except Penn St.

Cal Poly can inflict some headaches on the Bizon defense before its over.

Hopefully we will be placed in the other game, not versus a seed, so we get a decent chance for at least one win. But think we've improved quite a bit since we played the Gophers. Feel confident this team can beat teams like Texas Tech, USD, Ole Miss, Tulane now, even though we lost earlier. Wonder if UND wouldibe open to bidding next year if our RPI is higher?

Many conference tourneys end today. UTRGV is in from the WAC. Think the Big Sky and WAC won't play a tournament ending on Sunday as the LDS contingent is strong in those conferences. Some P5 don't even have a tourney because they get so many bid's. Coastal Carolina, a 42 ranking, against Arkansas St, a 50 something ranking, for the Sun Belt autobid today. The loser probably won't get a bid. A lot of teams schedule a non conference game next weekend.

A very interested case study of a team that moved to FBS from the Gateway (MVFC) Conference is Western Kentucky. They have a good football team now, and average 18k a game, currently 8-3. Last year, they were 12-2. In the year that they won the FCS title, their largest crowd was 11k, their last regular season game was 3k, and their only playoff game was 3k. Of course, they doubled the size of their football stadium since moving to FBS, but the fan support gained has been remarkable. The only way they could get in a better basketball conference, CUSA, was if they went FBS. They have currently the #7 basketball recruiting class in the nation, and almost all their other teams are either rated or respected, like volleyball, W bball, baseball, soccer etc. They seem to be following in the footsteps of Louisville, which has also had a remarkable transformation from just a purely basketball school, and both campuses seem to have prospered.

Really think highly of Craig Haley's latest bracket, with UND taking on the Villanova-St Francis winner. That bracket avoids almost all intra-conference games or non-conference rematches until late in the rounds.

Would have been nice if the tournament record attendance would have been decimated by getting 2500 for the biggest game ever. When we hit 2000 before, the students turned out for a promotion or NDSU. This time, the students had to pay.

For much of UND's history, volleyball was not given much emphasis. The 2002 and 2003 teams did make the DII dance, but NDSU dominated those previous decades. My how the worm has turned.