HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

[SCSU Euro]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

"And now we play the waiting game... Ah, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry-Hungry-Hippos!''

[bigmrg74]

"And now we play the waiting game... Ah, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry-Hungry-Hippos!''

Yep! You know, it's no secret that Alberts wants the AD post in Lincoln. And with the Huskers moving to the Big Ten this summer, I would almost wonder if he hired Dean Blias there just so that he could easily install him as the Huskers hockey coach. That or have Dean groom the guy that would be the guy at Lincoln. And to cap it all off, Alberts could very well pull the cord for hockey at UNO the same day as the Huskers announce that they're adding hockey for the Big Ten.

[Biddco]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Yep! You know, it's no secret that Alberts wants the AD post in Lincoln. And with the Huskers moving to the Big Ten this summer, I would almost wonder if he hired Dean Blias there just so that he could easily install him as the Huskers hockey coach. That or have Dean groom the guy that would be the guy at Lincoln. And to cap it all off, Alberts could very well pull the cord for hockey at UNO the same day as the Huskers announce that they're adding hockey for the Big Ten.

Now you're just talking out of your ***.

[MinnesotaNorthStar]

Now you're just talking out of your ***.

Now?

[NoClu]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Well that weekend of hockey was a kick in the ####s.

Here's to looking ahead to next Sunday... I'm not sure what may be in store.

[Biddco]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Now?

Well in this thread.

[bigmrg74]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Now you're just talking out of your ***.

You really want to say that right now after Alberts just gave an FU call to a coach right after his team won a national championship? Not to mention how he just drop-kicked the football program, thats been an issue with Lincoln for a while because they might have offered a quarter scholorship to play football in Omaha instead of being that one Walkon success story for the cornhuskers have every ten years or so?? If I was an UNO fan, I would be very paranoid and nervous right now. And I really don't see the Summit League being that great of a league to be in anyways in D1. You don't really want to say yes to the first guy that ask you to prom. If you're really going to be that great of a D1 school, you would be getting other offers as well eventually. The Summit just wants you because UNO would fill a hole.

[Biddco]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

You really want to say that right now after Alberts just gave an FU call to a coach right after his team won a national championship? Not to mention how he just drop-kicked the football program, thats been an issue with Lincoln for a while because they might have offered a quarter scholorship to play football in Omaha instead of being that one Walkon success story for the cornhuskers have every ten years or so?? If I was an UNO fan, I would be very paranoid and nervous right now. And I really don't see the Summit League being that great of a league to be in anyways in D1. You don't really want to say yes to the first guy that ask you to prom. If you're really going to be that great of a D1 school, you would be getting other offers as well eventually. The Summit just wants you because UNO would fill a hole.

Absolutely. I don't buy into the idea that Nebraska would ever add hockey.

[Red Cows]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Absolutely. I don't buy into the idea that Nebraska would ever add hockey.

While I have never heard Tom Osborne speak on the record about this, the only person I know that has spoken to him about hockey told me that he said they don't have any interest in it. However, that was also pre-Penn State going D-1 and all the Big 10 Hockey talk. UNL has club hockey:

http://www.huskerhockey.com/

They don't even play on campus. They play in Fremont, NE. I'll be up front and admit I know little about them, even though I live in Omaha which is even closer to Fremont than Lincoln is. Why the Huskers don't play at the Icebox (where the USHL Lincoln Stars play), which is walking distance from the Devaney Center, is something I don't know the answer to. To me, this speaks, at some level, to where hockey even is in the UNL hierarchy, if it even is. There has also been an ongoing discourse at Mavpuck about whether ice will even be a part of the Huskers new Haymarket arena:

http://www.mavpuck.com/mpboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8044

In any event, I believe that Trev Alberts completely and totally did the right thing for UNO, long term, and, by default, for the UNO hockey program. I won't waste everybody's time reading my own written defense of this. Instead, read the outside consultant's report (which isn't very long) here:

http://omaha.com/assets/pdf/OW5797313.PDF

..........which far more eloquently explains the rationale for this better than I ever could. The knee-jerk reation to all this here in Omaha has been pretty stupid. Football is clearly a goner under any set of circumstances. I do believe that a case MIGHT be able to be made for the wrestling program continuing in another conference (like 2 other Summit League schools currently do), but I don't know the Title 9 ramifications of that and, believe, me, besides the dollars and cents side of this, that is a big part of the equation here as well.

Yesterday's events certainly explain why there has been no UNO arena announcement as yet as well. We all knew something had to be up. What they need now is a hockey/volleyball/basketball venue now, apparently. That said, while I have never set foot in Sapp Fieldhouse, at a seating capacity of 3500, it is probably unsuitable to a D-1 basketball program, as evidenced by the fact that Trev Alberts said today that basketball is moving to the Omaha Civic Auditorium, the hockey team's former home, ironically.

Happily, I think this may bode well for UNO getting a hockey arena of the size I think they need on-campus, which I believe needs to seat upwards of 12,000 and be modeled along the lines of the Ralph, which UNO officials descended upon en masse when we played up there this season to take a look at it. I think, now, for sure, this was no accident. I don't think that an 8.000 seat arena, in the 3rd largest metropolitan area in the country with D-1 hockey after Boston and Minneapolis, is remotely big enough, particularly since UNO is making a clear statement with yesterday's events that they are a hockey school and that hockey is now, and, will be even more so in the future, the cash cow (pardon the pun) for the university.

As an aside, I think UNO is in the tournament NO MATTER WHAT happens between now and next Sunday short of a WCHA final of Alaska Anchorage/Bemidji State with BSU winning the marbles. I tried a ton of different "reasonable" calculations in the USCHO Pairwise Predictor and I could not "play" UNO "out" no matter what I did, and, believe me, I tried. Anybody else do the same and "play them "out"? If so, how?

Jeez, we've made Dan Bakala look like Dominik Hašek in the eight games we've played with BSU this year and last. I've seen all eight games, home and away, and, I here to tell you, the guy has defied description against us. Coach Blais certainly took note:

http://sports.omaha.com/2011/03/13/m...-amazing-year/

Sigh........

I'm taking at least a little solace in something that North Dakota fan said in their thread quoting something Dean Blais said years ago while coaching there. Words he said to the effect that winning the conference and/or the conference tournament gassed some of his teams to the point they had bad NCAA tournaments. If we are in, and, I think we are, that might bode well for us.

FYI, the real UNO fans were the ones that stuck around to give the team a standing O last night for the stick salute (which, understandably, was a little half-hearted). I am proud to say that I was one of the few thousand that stayed to do so.

This has arguably been the best season in school history. Way to go, UNO. Probably still ain't over.

[Almington]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

I'm taking at least a little solace in something that North Dakota fan said in their thread quoting something Dean Blais said years ago while coaching there. Words he said to the effect that winning the conference and/or the conference tournament gassed some of his teams to the point they had bad NCAA tournaments. If we are in, and, I think we are, that might bode well for us.

FYI, the real UNO fans were the ones that stuck around to give the team a standing O last night for the stick salute (which, understandably, was a little half-hearted). I am proud to say that I was one of the few thousand that stayed to do so.

This has arguably been the best season in school history. Way to go, UNO. Probably still ain't over.

Denver won the 2004 NC after losing in the first round of the WCHA playoffs that year. I believe that Gwozdecky said that having that week off was key going into the NCAAs.

That said, typically, doing well in the WCHA tournament is a good indicator of NCAA success: teams on a roll tend to stay on a roll.

[Red Cows]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Denver won the 2004 NC after losing in the first round of the WCHA playoffs that year. I believe that Gwozdecky said that having that week off was key going into the NCAAs.

That said, typically, doing well in the WCHA tournament is a good indicator of NCAA success: teams on a roll tend to stay on a roll.

Hard to argue with your 2nd statement and I tend to agree with it.

UNO is an absolute wild card, I think, because they have so many freshmen (11) and 10 of them have gotten meaningful playing time this season.

That's also why we've lost several games this year where we've outshot the other team to an ungodly degree this season; we haven't been getting quality shots. We lost games where we outshot the other team 40-29, 56-27, 46-35, 59-19, 48-17, & 42-20 this season! Hell, we got outshot in only 3 of our losses all season. Quality, not quantity counts, obviously. I bet these guys have driven Coach Blais nuts this season. Hopefully, this has been been a great learning experience for all these freshmen. Additionally, UNO's roster is made up almost entirely of former USHL players and I have wondered what impact the style of play in that league has had on our team this year, if it even has or is. It's my perception that we seem to take a lot of "USHL shots", having seen a lot of Omaha Lancers games, too.

Hope we put the time off to good use and not find ourselves on the outside looking in, either.

[MAVFANJEFF]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Jeez, we've made Dan Bakala look like Dominik Hašek in the eight games we've played with BSU this year and last. I've seen all eight games,

This has arguably been the best season in school history. Way to go, UNO. Probably still ain't over.

8 is enough

[darker98]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

8 is enough

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJnvRLj8hW0

[LincolnMav]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Man what a kick in the gut last weekend was. I'm just getting around to getting back on here. Hopefully everything will will fall in our favor and we can play on next week. Heres hoping to some happy news sunday morning! GO MAVS!

[Red Cows]

Re: HEY HERE IT IS! Its the UNO season thread!

Man what a kick in the gut last weekend was. I'm just getting around to getting back on here. Hopefully everything will will fall in our favor and we can play on next week. Heres hoping to some happy news sunday morning! GO MAVS!

There are Pairwise scenarios where we'd be out but most of them involve pigs flying.

Unless there are some major upsets between now and then, and I mean several of them, in various conferences, we are going to be in, I'm pretty sure.