SiouxVolley

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2013/02/13/jaron-and-jerry-nash-basketball-bond/1918117/ The NCAA is beyond disgusting: a total monster. Changing the transfer rules to within 100 miles of home to stop one player from transferring after receiving the transfer request. Hope next year is a dream season for Jaron and his father.

The few Bison households in Grand Forks seem either have big signs in their front windows or on their yards. Just their way of being obnoxious and showing they lack style.

What this will actually do is encourage more FCS schools to move to FBS. N Iowa needs games against Iowa (and Iowa St) to balance their football budget.

In the Betty, two video screens behInd each basket that swing down from the rafters for the games, including volleyball. For practice, they swing back up with the non-video side padded and facing the floor. Would have no effect on practIce.

The Ralph brings a lot of entertainment value to not-so-astute "hockey" fans, including the video boards. Seems like half the fans there are glued to the videos when there is a break in play, even the commercials and other goofy stuff (much of which helps to create a party atmosphere). Being able to watch a replay for a serious fan is huge.

A men's hockey game at the Ralph isn't just a game, but an event that provides a lot of visual stimulation. The Sioux Center can't match that, so at least it needs some video boards to provide extra stimulation and replays. That would bring in more casual fans, with their kids. The poor start due to injuries to Huff and Brekke meant a lot of losses to begin the season. That took a lot of hope out of the air. Sioux fans will support a team that has a good shot of an NCAA bid. If the volleyball team next year is at the top of the conference, I would expect it to approach attendance for the basketball teams.

Knew you were slow, but Lord help you. You simply can't comprehend that your beloved Summit is burning down. Wow.

After starting the Big Sky at 1-4, the team is now 6-2 in its last 8 games. One has to wonder what would have been if Huff and Brekke had been healthy all season. Probably in 3rd place easily.

http://www.baseballa...13/2614637.html The Horizon League is down to five members in baseball this year. It needs six soon. Maybe UND can get an invite there. Guess Oakland has baseball, so the Summit might have to take in UND baseball to survive.

Cool. Probably took $300,000 to buy a win vs a MEAC school. For $25,000, they could have had Moorhead St.

Thanks for the comment, Panther_OM (should stand for Open Mind!!). Worked with suburban Chicago kids, and they generally like the idea of travelling alot and seeing new places. Champaign-Urbana, Iowa City, West Lafayette, East Lansing, and Madison have the "cool" factor for them, but not directional university towns. Of course, all kids are different. P.S. Make sure your UNI Panthers kick the hind ends of those bizon next year. Thank you in advance!! North Dakota now has reciprocity with Illinois, where a couple years ago it didn't. Now a scholarship given to an Illinois athlete isn't much more expensive than one from Minnesota and Wisconsin. This reciprocity with Illinois saves a lot of money over four or five years of scholarship (maybe as much as $50,000 a kid over five years.) If the kid gets a partial, reciprocity sames him and his family a ton of money too. We probably always should have been recruiting suburban Chicago, but didn't because of costs (football has a budget too). Texas and Florida kids are very expensive on this account - no reciprocity. Most western states like California have reciprocity, but the California education system is horrible, even with discipline. Even the gal that was recruited for basketball from a tonier high school couldn't qualify for admission. That's pretty rare for women's basketball. Illinois may be broke, but suburban Chicago kids generally have first class education, so they aren't at so much of a risk to fall out of the program for academic reasons. Schleusner, who coached at Western Illinois (when they actually made the playoffs), almost certainly knows what appeals to these surburban kids, and uses to it his advantage over MVFC offers.

http://craverealburgers.com/burgers/ When in Colorado, one has to go to Crave. They will take over the burger world!!

When is Schleusner getting a raise? He may have had the most significant impact on this program since his catch in the DII championship game.

Maybe Chicago kids are a bit more worldly and aren't interested in seeing Macomb, or Terre Haute, or Normal, or Vermillion or Brookings, or even God forbid, Fargo. They want to travel the western half of the country on jets. Actually see things other than cornfields on their long bus rides. Other than their parents or girlfriends, many of their HS friends often think downstate Illinois, Iowa, etc (i.e. the MVFC) are places to avoid.

So the NCC as it existed before was a low major DI conference - not in name - but in talent. In that I would agree. My point has always been that there is a fine line between upper DIII talent and low major DI talent. A number of kids in low major DI should be playing DII, and a number of kids on outstanding DII teams should have had an opportunity in DI. As also stating previously, DII play has become worse over the years because of a huge number of shifts from DII to DI. and from NAIA to DII. In football, there is a huge difference in scholarships between FCS and DII, but in basketball there is not. A good DII coach, like there's been at Winona, Northern St, or Metro St, could easily do well at DI schools but they chose not to move on.

If they are NAIA. They don't schedule Moorhead St if it counts.

As much as the Alerus Center gets knocked, especially by bizon fans, bet this will never get posted on their forum: http://www.wdaz.com/event/article/id/16208/

You really need to get a brain, Danny boy, as you can't possibly process this information. You team that went to the Dance would have been DII players if they were in the previous class.

That was the point. Those teams are NAIA - lower level at that. Show me where any of UND, NDSU, SDSU, USD, or UNO schedule an upper level DII team. They don't.

That Woodside NDSU team would not have been together. They were high level DII recruits and they would have been at better DII schools like Winona, Mankato, or St. Cloud. That way my point. Some of the same DII recruits that NDSU fans like to lambast now, and only became DI recruits because DI has been watered down, were the exact same ones that brought NDSU basketball to its moments of glory. If Wolters had signed with Augustana instead of SDSU at the last minute, I'm sure NDSU and SDSU fans would have cast him as a loser DII player if Augustana fans were bragging about him. From ESPN's Grantland: http://www.grantland...ate-jackrabbits So NDSU winning against Marquette and Wisconsin with DII recruits doesn't mean much either. There is no question that DII doesn't get the number of players that they used to. Subtracting nearly 60 programs from DII and adding them to DI hurt both division. Also, a large number of NAIA teams have moved to DII, watering DII down further. None of the former NCC DI schools dare place Mankato, Augustana, or Northern State on their schedules because it is much too high a risk of getting a loss.

Which proves my point. I never said a top DII team can or should beat a top 100 DI team. Duke will schedule any DII in an exhibition, because they will always win. Top 100 DI teams should always win vs DII, especially at home. All DI teams attempt to schedule exhibitions against teams that they know they will beat 99% of the time. A 100-200 rated DI team will not schedule a top 10 DII team, period, because there is too high a probability to get beat. Top 10 DII teams can only get games scheduled against Top 100 DI teams. DII teams have to rely on old time basketball fundamentals to win, and are often better at that facet of the game. NDSU lost to Moorhead State last year in exhibition. Guess NDSU wanted as cheap a game guarantee as possible that only cost them taxi fares, Moorhead was just a fair DII team. N Kentucky beat WVU last year. Butler lost to Northern State (Aberdeen) last year. Arizona lost to Seattle Pacific. Syracuse lost to LeMoyne, which is also in Syracuse. Winona St - when it had an absolutely awesome 3-pt shooting about six years ago and was the DII champ - beat Minnesota. Grand Valley St beat Michigan St. An SDSU team with Wolters could have been assembled in the NCC now if not for all the move ups. DI teams, other than former NCC members, did not want Wolters. The Woodside NDSU team was assembled from athletes that had DII scholarship offers, but no bonafide DI offers other than transition schools. The five move up s from the NCC means that 65 basketball players a year, mostly from the Upper Midwest area, that were getting DII scholarships 10 years ago are now getting DI scholarships. Does that make them better players? The DII Elite Eight would dominate the last 8 into the DI NCAAs (15 and 16 seeds). Granted, 60% of DII is absolutely awful. Seems like most fans, like the total moron NDSUstudent on Bisonville who isn't man enough to actually discuss this issue here, can't grasp the concept of a statistical distributions and how they overlap between DI and DII. In the Big Sky, the only schools that can actually win recruiting battles with the WCC, WAC, and even the Big West are Weber St and Montana. Weber's and Montana's recruiting results are reflected in their computer ratings, while the rest of the Big Sky has numerous DII teams rated above them.

It's not nostalgia. It's facts. Twenty years ago, there were 7 DI teams in the upper Midwest. Today there are 12. There were like 280 DI teams then, and nearly 350 now. The top level of DI ball today is better, but the DII level is not. DI ball at the lower levels has been watered down by the huge amount of DII teams that have moved up. Woodside from NDSU never had a real DI offer, except from a move up team. Wolters went to SDSU, because no higher DI non-Summit team would offer. Practically the entire Woodside team and the current SDSU team would be playing at the NCC DII level in that era because they didn't have higher offers. Both teams made the NCAA DI tournament with players that would in an earlier decade been predominately DII recruits. Woodside and Wolters are clear examples of players that would have been DII, if they had played in an earlier era. The entire current UND squad would have had only DII offers if UND and other schools had not moved up. That changes with Quinton Hooker.

Have you ever seen Metro State play? They are unbeaten and rated just under #100 by Massey. They easily be over a .500 team in DI and could easily win either a Big Sky or WAC tournament. Western Washington in basketball would have a good shot at third after Weber and Montana in the Big Sky. A 300-350 rated DI team is worse than at least 25-50 DII teams. Slapping a DI label on a team does not automatically mean that that team is better than all DII teams. Think younger fans are just ignorant of just how good UND basketball has been in the past.

Agree with Oxbow on this. The top of DII is easily better than 200-250 of the 350 DI teams. The 88-91 team had talent in the middle, which this team is definitely short on. Guldseth initially went to LSU on full scholarship but just didn't fit in culturally, him being from a small ND town. Not aware of anyone on this team that got a full scholarship offer from any top conference. For a guard oriented team like UND now is, they have to shoot exceptionally well behind the 3 pt line, which is not typical of this team. Not trying to take anything away from the current team, as without all the injuries and adversity, they could possibly be a top 150-200 team in DI. Right now some ratings have them down at less than #250.

Most UND fans would probably just forget the whole Great West experience. Recruiting was difficult, there wasn't really anything to play for, and fan interest went way down. Seems like a lot of other team fans assume that UND is well down the list historically with other current DI schools that used to be in our former DII conference. UND has a winning record vs every former NCC conference mate that is now DI except Creighton: UND leads NDSU 159-129 UND leads SDSU 106-78 UND leads USD 99-88 UND leads Neb-Omaha 54-34 UND leads N Iowa 49-32 UND leads N Colo 40-19 UND behind Creighton 3-9 (those don't include this year's games) Our nemesis up into the 80's used to be teams like Old Dominion, Chattanoga, S Illinois, and Louisiana Tech. UND hasn't had many recent games vs Montana or Montana St, but the records are vs Montana, 5-7 vs Mont St, 7-8 Just curious, how many NCAA appearances does Weber St have? Hasn't Weber missed a boat load of tournament bids by losing the conference tournament after winning the regular season? Also, any idea what Weber's records vs BYU, Utah, and Utah St? Know those games draw big crowds when in Ogden.