Join WDAY’s Dom Izzo and The Forum’s Jeff Kolpack as they dive into the heart of the Summit League season for the NDSU Bison Basketball program and detail some of the recent recruiting successes of Craig Bohls’ FCS Champion Bison Football squad.
NDSU has landed perhaps the biggest player of the 2012 recruiting class today in 6’6 Defensive End Brett Pierce out of Holy Angels Academy in Minnesota. Pierce is a beast, he had offers from FBS School Wyoming and plenty of FCS schools including North Dakota, South Dakota, Northern Iowa and South Dakota State. Holy Angels Head Coach Ray Betton told me Pierce has “unbelievable motor” and was going to help out any program immediately. Pierce helped Holy Angels to an 8-2 record this season, losing in the 2nd round of the Section 3 Playoffs. Pierce is also a hockey player, a goalie in fact, Betton told me he was heading to practice later today. He also played tight end in high school. Pierce was selected by the Star Tribune as part of the Dream Team and also a member of the KARE 11 All-Metro Team. This becomes the 13th verbal commitment for the 2012 class.
NDSU will have another kicker in fall camp to challenge Adam Keller for the starting job. Tom Barneson of Eau Claire Memorial High in Wisconsin will be a preferred walkon.
The 6-3 Barneson was 7 of 9 on field goals and 50 of 51 in PAT kicks last season with 40 percent of his kickoffs going out of the end zone. His recruiting profile says he just started kicking after his sophomore season. As a junior, he was 6 of 7 on field goals with a long of 42 yards.
NDSU graduated starting kicker Ryan Jastram. Keller redshirted last season.
Selection Sunday is 7 weeks away, but for NDSU they have their eyes on another selection show much sooner. ESPN unveils it’s Bracketbuster games Monday night at 5:30 (ESPN U) and there’s plenty of speculation on who the Bison may match up with on February 18th in Fargo. The resident bracketologist in me wanted to go thru each team, but Joe Lunardi beat me to it, you can read his projected TV matchups here (need to be an ESPN Insider)
So let’s speculate (the greatness of a blog, we can do that here) on who possibly NDSU may matchup with. The committee that selects the games, like to match teams with similiar RPI’s, heading into today, the Bison had a RPI at 132. Saul Phillips told me on Tuesday that the Bison actually dropped about 30 spots after the losses to UND and South Dakota State and wins against both teams more than likely would have put NDSU into a TV game. (As of now Oral Roberts and South Dakota State are looking at TV games) So of the 71 road teams here are the squads that have similar RPI’s to NDSU:
NDSU RPI: 132
Possible Opponents (Based on RPI)
So that’s just a sample, if I’m to make a prediction, I’d say it’s Western Michigan coming to the BSA, a solid MAC school and for NDSU a chance to go play a MAC school on the road in 2012-13. As for the Summit League, this is a HUGE chance for the league to raise it’s profile before March. Oral Roberts is on a tear, a quality win over a team from a known league could do wonders come Selection Sunday and actually give the Summit a seed higher than 14 (which they have not received it at least 4 years). Should be fun. New video blog on Bison hoops and recruiting taping tomorrow, debuting Thursday!
National Signing Day is a week from Wednesday and things are starting to heat up all over. As Jeff and I have noted, NDSU has been behind the 8-ball in terms of recruiting with the national championship run, but after the experience of playing into the middle of December last year, I’m sure the Bison coaches at least learned from that experience this recruiting season. I’m sure it didn’t hurt to have 18,000 at the Fargodome in the national semis, then win the national championship with another 12,000 in attendance. Anyway on to the matters of the day, where NDSU continued it’s new pipeline into the state of Arizona. Last year, the Bison grabbed 4 players out of that state, 3 still currently on the roster, Ryan Stanford, Matt Jones and Jordan Champion. All of those players redshirted this season, but have to think their presence certaintly helped NDSU landing these two players.
AUSTIN FARNLOF – CENTER, BOULDER CREEK H.S., ANTHEM, ARIZONA, 6’1, 253 pounds
Farnlof comes to NDSU with some impressive credentials, he’s the 15th ranked center in the NATION, according to ESPN’s recruiting database, a scouting report says he plays both sides of the ball, but will play offense in college. The report goes on to say that he plays guard but can transition to another position on the line. He had offers from North Dakota, Air Force and South Dakota State. The full report on Farnlof is here.
CHUKS AMAECHI – LINEBACKER, WESTVIEW H.S., AVONDALE, ARIZONA, 6’2, 210 pounds
First his name is pronounced Chooks and he loved Fargo. Spoke with him on the phone tonight, he was in town this weekend and loved what NDSU had to offer. He’s a late bloomer out of Arizona, who had no offers as of yet, AJ Cooper wasn’t the only connection to land Amaechi, he’s from the same high school as Jordan Champion, which was a huge bonus. Amaechi told me that the coaches like the hybrid linebacker/defensive end type players, which he is, he told me they’re looking at him at defensive end. Amaechi told me NDSU was first interested in him at the end of his junior year and that patience paid off, he watched with great interest the FCS Semis and Championship and his visit this weekend was the icing on the cake. He told me Arizona and San Diego State were interested, but no offers came. Here’s his Rivals profile.
Now that brings the total amount of verbals to 12, I guestimated back in October that 18 total scholarships are available and there are still big names out there, interested to see how the next week and a half go. The biggest name in Minnesota that NDSU was interested in was 6’7 offensive tackle Ben Lauer out of Wayzata, who had offers from both NDSU and UND, but instead got a late offer from Minnesota and chose to stay close to home. Jerry Kill is not going to let the guys that slipped thru (i.e. Marcus Williams, Grant Olson, Billy Turner) again, after seeing them beat him on the field. Plenty more recruiting talk on the Den, Monday night at 6:30, 970 WDAY!
Gray
NDSU continued its emphasis on recruiting receivers with a highly-touted high school senior in the state of Illinois. Demetrius Gray of Waubonsie Valley gave his verbal commitment Thursday night, said Paul Murphy, his high school coach.
At 6-foot-4 and 185 pounds, Gray has the size. He was rated the third-best prospect at his position by noted Illinois high school expert EdgyTim.com before the season began. He also had offers from Illinois State and Indiana State of the Missouri Valley Football Conference.
“He is that taller wide receiver that coaches are looking for,” Murphy said. “Once Dee adjusts to the speed of the college game, he will become a contributor to the NDSU program.”
He joins Carey Woods of Bemidji, Minn., and DeSean Warren of Overland Park, Kan., as receiver commits. Waubonsie Valley is located in the western Chicago suburb of Aurora, Ill., Gray had 19 receptions for 366 yards, a 19.3-yard average, but six of his catches went for touchdowns. The Warriors didn’t throw a lot, either: the starting quarterback was 42 of 87 for the season. As a junior, he had 27 receptions for 566 yards and six touchdowns.
“I’ll be honest I really didn’t have any thought of going to NDSU,” Gray told Rivals.com, “but after the official visit they really gave me a lot to think about. I had a great visit and NDSU has a lot to offer.”
His visit was the weekend the Bison hosted Georgia Southern in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision semifinals. The sold-out Fargodome made an impact. “The Fargodome was almost too loud to be honest,” he said. “It felt like a Big 12 or a Big 10 type of game and atmosphere. Everyone in town goes to the Bison games in Fargo and it’s almost like an NFL team because the players are like celebrities there. The Bison have a really good team and they also have plans for me and the roster situation looks pretty promising there.”
Other info from his coach:
Join Jeff, Dom and old-school Bison Media blogger Steve Hallstrom as they celebrate the 2000th post on the Bison Media Blog and reflect on just how far we’ve come in the past 7 years.
Join Jeff Kolpack and Me from the Ralph Engelstad Arena to break down UND’s 59-54 win over NDSU, hope everyone had a chance to watch the game and click here for the show.
At least five senior football players at NDSU will be giving pro football a shot. Running back D.J. McNorton, safety Daniel Eaves, tight end Matt Veldman, defensive end Coulter Boyer and offensive tackle Paul Cornick have begun working out in preparation for the annual look in front of NFL scouts, which usually takes place in March at the Fargodome.
None of the players, to the knowledge of myself and the NDSU sports information office, are playing in a postseason all-star game.
Pro days are an exercise in pressure; you basically get an hour or so to impress a scout. It’s what got Joe Mays, Ramon Humber, Craig Dahl and Nick Schommer to the NFL, with Mays still playing a regular role. Schommer has since been released. Dahl, if you remember, blew away some scouts at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis in the shuttle run.
Jeff Kolpack
Dom Izzo