UND @ SFA

[Shawn-O]

Okay, here's the thing. I am so much happier having this discussion that I would be hashing over another 49-2 win over Winona State or 66-3 over UM-Crookston that I can't even begin to tell you. It will be a process, and a fun one to follow!

[UNDvince97-01]

Okay, here's the thing. I am so much happier having this discussion that I would be hashing over another 49-2 win over Winona State or 66-3 over UM-Crookston that I can't even begin to tell you. It will be a process, and a fun one to follow!

Totally fricking agree 100%.

It's going to be a long haul, and we will continue to gradually get better over this season and the next couple of years. It will be fun to watch us transform into a full-fledged FCS team.

Even after tonight's awful loss, I am still excited about the future.

[dlsiouxfan]

Ditto to the last two posts.... We still have a ways to go to achieving what this program can become but I'm still confident that by the end of this transition we can be there.

[4mcrue]

Surprised, no DaveK comments? You dead? UND meets a legit FCS team and loses, and you are quiet? Thought you guys owned everything? Calling you out

[Shawn-O]

Surprised, no DaveK comments? You dead? UND meets a legit FCS team and loses, and you are quiet? Thought you guys owned everything? Calling you out

1-3

[gabe01]

Well, after 2 games, we were well ahead of what I had projected. After 3 games, we are about where I thought we would be at 1-2. Looks like we got our Texas Tech sized whooping this week.

It will be great to have 3 home games in a row, I will be there cheering on this team.

Bison fan here. I actually thought you guys would be better FASTER because you have risen to the occasion when playing FBS teams and the TT game was pretty decent, given the competition. You guys are finding out the big difference between D2 and D1 is the higher level of competition EVERY week. In the D2 days, the non conference games would have been against some crap team. Now the crap teams like SFA are actually pretty good. The occassional upset will happen but a D1 schedule wears on a teams depth. Wait until the end of the year when injuries pile up. So far you guys are 3-5 vs FBS teams but most of the losses came late last year. When you guys build depth you should be pretty good. We're only 7-6 going back to last year i fyou pull out the Iowa State and Wyoming game.

[TexasSiouxStudent]

Just got back home a few minutes ago. That was brutal! On a funny note, the lady working the ticket booth thought that "Will Call" was a player on the team.

[SiouxFanatic]

Surprised, no DaveK comments? You dead? UND meets a legit FCS team and loses, and you are quiet? Thought you guys owned everything? Calling you out

How are the playoffs looking for NDSU this year?

Didn't get to listen to the game since I was at work but was in shock seeing the final score.

Hopefully the Sioux can turn things around and make some changes for the better.

[BigGame]

This is the second game I have watched this year and the first time in person. UND is not very good on offense in pretty much every area, it is going to be a long year as far as the offense. The sad thing about the game is that SFA most likely only scores about half the points if the UND defense wraps up when the hit someone and actually keeps their feet moving when tackling instead of diving at ankles. SFA was athletic but certainly not more then Tech and probably very close to the skill players the Louisiana school put on the field, they were a much better though.

[SiouxMD]

It's been a while. By my count, you have to go back to the record-setting Sep. 13, 1986 game: Texas A&M-Kingsville 67, UND 44

Confirmed.

[The Sicatoka]

Any travelers out there? How would you feel after three trips to Texas in four weeks?

The other thing: Heat and humidity. It finally caught up. (They were falling like flies at the TT/Houston game and that wasn't that far away.)

The scheduling needs to be better after this year.

The rest is part of the growing and learning curve.

[BigGame]

Any travelers out there? How would you feel after three trips to Texas in four weeks?

The other thing: Heat and humidity. It finally caught up. (They were falling like flies at the TT/Houston game and that wasn't that far away.)

The scheduling needs to be better after this year.

The rest is part of the growing and learning curve.

I understand the traveling is tough, but UND tackled very poorly from start to finish! This clearly wasn't a travel problem, and Landry does have some big time accuracy issues at times. The overall talent on offense just isn't what it needs to be right now. I am not saying they can't get better but UND is clearly weaker than is has been in the past at RB and on the offensive line.

[BigGame]

Aside from our atrocious pass defense through the first three games, the inability of the offensive line to generate any type of adequate rushing offense is a glaring concern through three concecutive games.

UND has pretty much zero pass rush to speak of right now, but the secondary did look pretty bad at times especially when SFA could just run a simple slant against man coverage on the goal line and the DB wasn't within 2 steps of the WR. Some of that is SFA having some quick and talented WR but that shouldn't happen more than one time during a game... but it happened at least twice that I can recall.

[Bigdog42]

This is the fourth year of the "co-defensive coordinator" situation. Since it's inception, the secondary has been, for lack of a better term, horrible, and has not improved at all really over the course of those four years. This, despite the fact that North Dakota has some of the best athletes of recent memory playing in the defensive backfield. Kelling is in charge of the secondary. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'. On the bright side, we are 1-2 heading into the home opener, just as I predicted. And at least we're not 1-3.

Totally agree with this posts! Our secondary is awful and it is not because of the athletes, we really need to take a deep look into this area. I know there are other factors that come into play but to have this many years of horse crap play out of this group is unacceptable in my mind. Peace!

[dallassiouxfan]

Any travelers out there? How would you feel after three trips to Texas in four weeks?

The other thing: Heat and humidity. It finally caught up. (They were falling like flies at the TT/Houston game and that wasn't that far away.)

The scheduling needs to be better after this year.

The rest is part of the growing and learning curve.

I don't think we can blame this one on the weather. It was a little hot for this time of year but not nearly as nasty as Houston

I

[BringDeanBack]

Transition years or not, you can't let a DIAA school beat you like this. UND during most of their better DII years would not have been beat like this. Yes SFA is good, but I don't recall them winning the DIAA title every year or anything like that. Hopefully things get righted next week against USD.

[star2city]

Totally agree with this posts! Our secondary is awful and it is not because of the athletes, we really need to take a deep look into this area. I know there are other factors that come into play but to have this many years of horse crap play out of this group is unacceptable in my mind. Peace!

The defensive weakness is the linebacking, not the secondary. SFA receivers danced around the linebackers all evening and ran against them at will. With the depth and speed of SFA's receivers and RBs, and the lack of athletic ability of our LB corps, UND's secondary had no chance because they are expected to plug every hole.

Up until the past few seasons, the athleticism of the linebacking corps was a solid. Now, it's even suspect at the DII level.

[star2city]

Transition years or not, you can't let a DIAA school beat you like this. UND during most of their better DII years would not have been beat like this. Yes SFA is good, but I don't recall them winning the DIAA title every year or anything like that. Hopefully things get righted next week against USD.

SFA has been a mediocre team in the past. This year SFA has stepped it up.

SFA totally dominated SMU offensively in the opener. SMU just barely won, and that was because SFA threw five interceptions. UND had to gain an edge on turnovers and special teams to win the game: we didn't.

SFA vs SMU

[Dagger]

I'm thinking the game yesterday might be a combination of a lot of things. We had some costly turnovers. The emotion of the Texas Tech and NW Louisiana might of caught up with us. Also the 3rd straight road game and travel had it's toll. Some days things just don't go the way you want them to. You know the saying when the snoball starts rolling. The other possibility is that SFA could be quite good. Time will tell. The truth is some where in between. Frankly we don't play the way we did against Texas Tech without a certain level of defensive ability. I have a feeling that yesterday's defensive performance is just a blimp on the radar. I can't wait for our game against USD. I think the players are going to very pumped to finally play at home in front of our fans.

[LumberjackFan]

The SFA quarterback threw five picks against SMU, which is one of the 20 worst FBS teams in the country according to Sagarin. I understand SFA also struggles to cover kicks/punts. I'm looking for another big day from Schwenzfeier, and UND's special teams will again prove to be the difference, with Bamba having at least one big kick return. This is also the week that the playbook gets opened up, and we see a significant improvement from the offense.

31 UND

27 SFA

I signed up for Sioux Forum about a week ago but I didn't get my sign in till Saturday. Game Day.

A few comments on the game from someone who was there for the whole thing.

1) The visiting North Dakota fans were gracious and a very interesting crowd. (My ex-wife who graduated from UND in 82' was tailgating with the Lumberjacks and UND fans)

2) SFA has been down for about 4 years but has recruited well the past two years and was bound to form into a decent team. You just caught us on the way up, unlike NDSU which was fortunate to catch us on the down slide.

3) The speed of the game seemed to just get away from UND. SFA ran so many different set's! UND probably had not seen this other than Texas Tech which doesn't run the ball as well as we do.

4) The UND offense was creative at times and kept you in the game.

Best of luck in the future. Maybe we will play a return game in Grand Forks.

Axe Em' Jacks.

[BringDeanBack]

SFA has been a mediocre team in the past. This year SFA has stepped it up.

SFA totally dominated SMU offensively in the opener. SMU just barely won, and that was because SFA threw five interceptions. UND had to gain an edge on turnovers and special teams to win the game: we didn't.

SFA vs SMU

And SMU was last a relevant team when? That was a very poor example.

Like I said, SFA may be a very good DIAA team, perhaps even top 5 type material, that still does not excuse the lopsided nature of the game on Sat.

[UND92,96]

Coming into this season I felt that athleticism of this program was at an all-time low level. I think this score confirms that. Let's face it, remaining Division II when the NDSU and SDSU moved up killed recruiting until these last two classes. We need to continue to have strong recruiting classes but scores like this definitely won't help matters.

The really unfortunate thing is that the class of 2005 had the potential to be really good, but a combination of the early departures of probably the two best players (Chappell and Stroup) along with several others who had outstanding credentials but who simply didn't pan out has led to the sr. class not being especially strong. The class of 2006 is probably about what one would expect given the circumstances at the time they were recruited, i.e. the uncertainty about whether we were staying dII or going dI. Then there was the class of 2007, of which there's almost nobody left besides Hawkins, Saporu, Ankenbauer and Bellmore, and you have back-to-back-to-back classes that simply aren't as good as what we've been used to. That puts a lot of pressure on the classes of 2008 and 2009.

[Irish]

Transition year, on the road, playing down south in the heat, playing a fast team - doesn't matter. I don't expect to see too many performances like this by a Sioux team. We were outclassed in every phase of the game, certainly including coaching preparation. We have to figure out how to cover receivers without giving them a 10-15 yard cushion. We need to go in search of some kind of running game. Our offense can't dissapear for an entire quarter. We need to learn how to tackle - the list goes on. We need to get our crap together and finish out the season strong - then hit the recruiting trail. Things weren't as good as we made them out to be after the first two games - hopefully they aren't as bad as Saturday night.

[siouxhockeyfan11]

The really unfortunate thing is that the class of 2005 had the potential to be really good, but a combination of the early departures of probably the two best players (Chappell and Stroup) along with several others who had outstanding credentials but who simply didn't pan out has led to the sr. class not being especially strong. The class of 2006 is probably about what one would expect given the circumstances at the time they were recruited, i.e. the uncertainty about whether we were staying dII or going dI. Then there was the class of 2007, of which there's almost nobody left besides Hawkins, Saporu, Ankenbauer and Bellmore, and you have back-to-back-to-back classes that simply aren't as good as what we've been used to. That puts a lot of pressure on the classes of 2008 and 2009.

I hate to pull the what if card but it pains me to think of how much better the team would be if you add in Chappell and Murray to the offense god those guys could fly.

[sIoUxPeRsTiTiOuS]

I hate to pull the what if card but it pains me to think of how much better the team would be if you add in Chappell and Murray to the offense god those guys could fly.

Please don't do that to us. That's not very nice.