Season-opening tourney

[jk]

We all know about Michigan and have our own opinions there, but here's a little information about the other participants.

The Sioux open with the Canisius Golden Griffins (anyone hungry for breakfast cereal?). Seven of Canisius's top nine scorers last year were seniors, including four of the top five. So it's a rebuilding year for Canisius. Last year Canisius played only two games against teams from the Big 4 conferences, losing a pair of close games to Western Michigan. This year, besides traveling to the Ralph, the Golden Griffins' only other "real" nonconference games are a pair against LSSU.

Niagara is another story altogether. The Purple Eagles had only three seniors on last year's team, and the team had a big group of 10 sophomores leading the way. They played Lowell (L), Amherst (L,L), Princeton (W,W), Merrimack (L,W,W), Cornell (L) and CC (L). This year they play Bowling Green, Miami, Michigan, Union, Lowell, the Sioux, Michigan State, Western Michigan and Colgate. Heck, their non-conference schedule is better than UND's.

Canisius looks to not be very good. Niagara looks capable of beating Michigan or UND. As a reminder, Niagara's senior-led team faced the Sioux in the NCAA quarterfinals in 2000.

[sprig]

No doubt it will be easy to look by someone in this before-Christmas schedule. It doesn't look to strong. With scuzzie-u in the schedule twice in that time, may be looking past some of these others, which could easily result in a loss that shouldn't happen.

Much better to play SCZU in the post season, where you can't tell them from Can-ishy-us

[ScottM]

If the Sioux and Michigan meet in the tourney title game, it will be a good test for both teams. Niagara plays a pretty decent NC schedule, but they really haven't done much since they were in the NC$$ with Blaise MacDonald in 2000. I'd be more interested in seeing how Michigan responds to the loss of so much young firepower, especially coming off the FF, and how the Sioux do in what should be a tough game.