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I think our biggest recruiting competitor outside of NDSU is UNI. They get many of the players in Iowa that are not quite good enough to play at Iowa or Iowa State. They pick up many regional players who transfer after having tried making it at DI majors and also recruit the Twin Cities very well. UNI has excellant facilities(new basketball arena under construction), loyal following, member of established, top notch conferences (Missouri Valley and Gateway. With an enrollment of 14,000 and in a progressive, college town like Cedar Falls I think we can emulate a lot of things that UNI has done to establish themselves in DI. UNI was a member of the NCC until they withdrew after the 77-78 season and joined the Mid-Cont. I'm hopeful we can begin a non-conference rivalary with UNI in all sports. In terms of marketing SDSU has an advantage in that we don't have to compete with two other major universities in the state . I believe the football game scheduled in 2005 was moved to 2006 in order to allow UNI to play Iowa instead. Our basketball coaches in the past have indicated UNI with former NDSU coach Greg McDermott at the helm is not interested in playing home/home series because they know we are traditionally tough to play in Frost and because we have so many Iowa players. I would bet we can compete with their women's basketball team right now! UNI has also been historically good in wrestling. Anybody else have observations about UNI and if you feel they are a good school to model our athletic programs after and if you feel this could be a rival for the future?
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Re: University of Northern Iowa
Greg McDermott with coaching stints at UND, Wayne State(Ne) and NDSU, is very familiar with Frost as you have pointed out.
I would think he would have no fear about coming back to Frost so either there is more to it than maybe a coaches fear. Maybe UNI is looking for a bigger guarentee that we want to pay. I dont know, but watching Coach McDermott all these years, he loves to compete.
Then again maybe risking a loss to a provisional member of D1 on their floor would not be good for UNI.
One other thing could be at play and that is that UNI may have some better choices in terms of both home and away games. -
Re: University of Northern Iowa
He certainly wouldn't have feared coming to Frost this year, but I think we all know next years version and beyond will be much improved.Comment
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