SiouxSports.com – Page 22 – Sioux Sports Talk

Weekend Preview: UND vs. St. Cloud State

A quick flashback to November 13th, 2009: UND entered the weekend series with St. Cloud State at 6-1-1, was ranked #2 in the country, and was scoring 3.62 goals per game and allowing 1.50. On the special teams side, North Dakota was scoring on 26% of their power play opportunities and had allowed only three power play goals in 41 chances (92.7%).

On a very unlucky Friday the 13th for the Fighting Sioux, St. Cloud junior forward Aaron Marvin met North Dakota senior defenseman Chay Genoway with a high elbow, sending Genoway into the glass and to the ice. UND’s captain and preseason All-American has not returned to game action (post-concussion syndrome) and the Green and White have struggled in his absence.

Since that game, North Dakota is 6-9-4 and is scoring 2.47 goals per contest while allowing 2.53. After converting on 13 of 50 man advantage opportunities with Genoway in the lineup, the Fighting Sioux have potted only 16 goals on 103 power plays (15.5%) in his absence.

There has been much debate this week regarding whether one of Genoway’s teammates will attempt to exact retribution against Marvin for his illegal hit; it is my opinion that the best way to do that would be on the scoreboard rather than attempting to injure an opponent.

For St. Cloud, the opening of the year 2010 was stellar. The Huskies won their first nine games after the calendar turned, but have just one victory in the past three games. During the current twelve game stretch (10-1-1), St. Cloud has converted better than 28 percent of their power play opportunities.

After this weekend’s series, SCSU will travel to Wisconsin for a pair before playing a home and home with Minnesota State Mankato to close out the regular season.

SCSU head coach Bob Motzko has been rotating netminders, playing junior Dan Dunn on Fridays and freshman Mike Lee on Saturdays. That cycle will continue in the series against the Fighting Sioux.

This weekend, the teams will be earning points for the UND/SCSU Challenge Cup, a traveling fan trophy awarded to the team which wins the four-game season series. The teams split the series in Grand Forks, so the Cup is on the line this weekend and will be awarded in St. Cloud on February 13, 2010. North Dakota has won at least a share of the Challenge Cup each of the past three seasons.

St. Cloud State Team Profile

Head Coach: (Bob Motzko, 5th season at SCSU, 99-68-23, .582)
National Ranking: #4/#4
PairWise Ranking: 4th
This Season: 18-8-4, 13-6-3 WCHA (t-1st)
Last Season: 18-17-3 overall, 13-13-2 WCHA (6th)
Team Offense: 3.27 goals scored/game
Team Defense: 2.50 goals allowed/game
Power Play: 20.6% (33 of 160)
Penalty Kill: 85.7% (108 of 126)
Key Players: Junior F Garrett Roe (11-22-33), Junior F Tony Mosey (10-16-26), Senior F Ryan Lasch (15-18-33), Senior D Garrett Raboin (5-13-18), Freshman G Mike Lee (8-6-3, 2.39 GAA, .923 SV%, 1 SO), Junior G Dan Dunn (10-2-1, 2.55 GAA, .914 SV%)

North Dakota Team Profile

Head Coach: Dave Hakstol (6th season at UND, 143-81-24, .625)
National Ranking: #11/#11
PairWise Ranking: t-11th
This Season: 13-10-5, 8-9-3 WCHA (6th)
Last Season: 24-15-4 overall (NCAA Northeast Regional semifinalist), 17-7-4 WCHA (1st)
Team Offense: 2.86 goals scored/game
Team Defense: 2.21 goals allowed/game
Power Play: 19.0% (29 of 153)
Penalty Kill: 86.6% (123 of 142)
Key Players: Sophomore F Jason Gregoire (13-10-23), Senior F Chris VandeVelde (9-12-21), Freshman F Danny Kristo (8-12-20), Junior F Evan Trupp (5-16-21), Junior D Derrick LaPoint (1-11-12), Sophomore G Brad Eidsness (12-7-4, 2.26 GAA, .906 SV%, 1 SO)

By The Numbers

Last Meeting: November 14, 2009 (Grand Forks, ND). One night after defeating St. Cloud but losing Chay Genoway, the Huskies scored the first three goals of the game and downed the Fighting Sioux 3-2 to earn a split of the weekend series.

Last Meeting in St. Cloud: January 31, 2009. North Dakota rebounds to defeat St. Cloud State 4-2 after suffering their first shutout loss of the season in Friday’s opener (3-0). Senior captain Ryan Duncan scored the game-winner for the Fighting Sioux.

Most Important Meeting: March 17, 2001 (St. Paul, MN). St. Cloud State defeated North Dakota 6-5 to claim the 2001 WCHA Final Five Championship. Derek Eastman scored the game-winner in overtime after UND scored three goals in the final ten minutes of regulation to force the extra session.

All-time Series: UND leads the all-time series, 51-28-10 (.629), and holds a record of 20-15-5 (.563) in games played in St. Cloud.

Game News and Notes

St, Cloud has not won a game this season when trailing after one period of play (0-3-3), but the Huskies are doubling up opponents (38 goals scored, 19 allowed) in the opening frame. UND sophomore goaltender Brad Eidsness is 4-1 in his career against St. Cloud. SCSU head coach Bob Motzko will be looking to pick up his 100th win this weekend. Under the new 12-team schedule rotation beginning next season, the Fighting Sioux and Huskies will continue to play four regular season games each year.

The Prediction

The last two times North Dakota has traveled to St. Cloud, the Fighting Sioux have lost on Friday and won on Saturday. I think UND will reverse the trend this weekend with a strong first period on Friday night. In Saturday’s rematch, tempers will flare and the Huskies power play will be the difference. UND 3-2, SCSU 4-1.

If this prediction holds, North Dakota and St. Cloud State will share the Challenge Cup for the first time since the 2007-08 season.

On a Personal Note

I look forward to this series every year because of the unique relationship we have with the Center Ice Club, the official hockey booster organization for the St. Cloud State University Huskies. On behalf of the Center Ice Club, I would like to invite you to the UND/SCSU pre-game social on Saturday afternoon from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Legends Grill and Bar in the Holiday Inn Hotel and Suites in St. Cloud. This is a great opportunity to meet fans on both sides of the rivalry, share in some complimentary food and door prizes, and view the Challenge Cup. This event is free and open to all fans 21 and older.

Sioux fans rally behind one of their own

While Internet forums are sometimes (rightfully) thought of as untamed jungles into which only the thickest of skin dare tread, they also foster a strong community among distant strangers brought together by a common tie.

Over the past week, the SiouxSports.com community rallied behind a 14 year-old Sioux fan in the Twin Cities who was recently diagnosed with leukemia.

In addition to visiting his Caring Bridge site to drop notes of well wishes, fans proposed chipping in to buy his family an over-the-air satellite dish so he could watch all the Sioux games for free while recovering.

Enough Sioux fans, none of whom knew each other or Nick, offered to chip in that the plan was surely becoming a reality. When a Sioux fan contacted a satellite dish installer who frequents the forum (and who has installed dishes for countless other forum denizens) to arrange the details, “PSB” was happy not only to perform the installation, but to donate the entire system himself.

There’s not much I can add to the story, other than to tell you to check it out yourself:
“14 y/o Sioux Fan diagnosed with leukemia, Nick Cherekos from Osseo, MN” thread
Nicholas Cherekos Caring Bridge guestbook

Lennon leaves and the foolish blame game begins

This whole “it must be somebody’s fault that Dale Lennon left” line is total bunk. Yesterday on KFAN, Scott Swygman and Wayne Nelson of the Grand Forks Herald said it wasn’t widely known, but other schools had taken serious looks at Lennon and he’d taken serious looks at them.

Quite obviously, UND’s head football coach was considering better opportunities for some time. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. Anyone with an ounce of sense should have understood that the moment Lennon won a national championship in 2001, there was a chance that he’d be offered a job he couldn’t refuse. Frankly, I think UND was extremely fortunate to have had a coach of his caliber here for so long.

But there were some who claimed that if not for former UND athletic director Tom Buning, Lennon would stay at UND for his entire coaching career. The university got rid of Buning and Lennon left anyway. So much for the accuracy of “inside” information. The idea that a witch hunt should be conducted to purge the university of those responsible for Lennon’s departure is simply ridiculous.

The fact is, UND bent over backward to create a situation that would help keep Lennon here and it wasn’t enough. Until UND joins the ranks of the top dogs in college football, there will always be schools that can offer its coaches more money and better situations. It’s just a fact of life. It’s no single person’s fault.

When a coach as competent and as popular as Lennon leaves, it’s probably natural that the finger pointing and blame game takes place. But it’s unseemly, counter productive and childish.

Lennon is gone and publicly leveling accusations against certain individuals at UND isn’t going to change that. It’s time to get over it, move on and set the stage for UND’s next football coach to successfully transition the program to the next level. Public backbiting and infighting serves no useful purpose, a lesson Fighting Sioux fans should have learned from recent experience.

NCAA releases blogging policy

Still no Sioux sports to talk about, so another installment of “A day in the life of running a college athletics website”.

Readers may remember the controversy last summer when the NCAA threw a newspaper reporter out of the College World Series for blogging from the press box. The NCAA has finally clarified its position on blogging as part of its new Conditions on Media Credentials.

NCAA Blogging Policy (PDF from ncaa.org)

By my interpretation, Credentialed media must follow rules including the following at NCAA championship events (selected highlights):

Any blog must link to ncaasports.com Blog Central
All blogs must post an NCAA logo/link
All blogs must be free
Any representations (picture, video, audio, drawing) of an NCAA championship can only be used by Internet media entities within a 24-hour period following the competition and cannot exceed 3 minutes in length
The maximum number of blog entries allowed is restricted by sport, e.g.:
- Football: Three per quarter; one at halftime
- Hockey: Three per period — one in between (includes overtime)
- Baseball: One every inning (includes extra innings)
- Swimming: Ten per day/session

Note that score/time updates do count as blog entries.

Does anyone own PAIRWISE?

Owning a college sports web site doesn’t usually bring with it much intrigue or drama, though having a blog does allow me to share interesting stories about the online college hockey world with you when they do occur.

Does USCHO exclusively own the term “PAIRWISE”, as it relates to college hockey rankings? For now the answer appears to be no, though USCHO has been trying to change that. I first became aware of this effort when USCHO added a small “SM” to their “Pairwise” tables on their site last spring. I dashed off to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to investigate, which you may also want to do so you can follow along:
USCHO’s claim to Pairwise

Mar. 20, 2006

USCHO’s initial application for trademark for “PAIRWISE”

Apr. 17, 2006

The next action in the file, described as “Paper Correspondence Incoming”, came from a bunch of names you might recognize as formerly associated with USCHO: Mike Machnik (founder of HOCKEY-L, now affiliated with CollegeHockeyNews), Adam Wodon (founder of CollegeHockeyNews), John Whelan (developer of some pretty neat hockey ranking analysis tools, wrote USCHO’s Pairwise analysis tools, now with CollegeHockeyNews) and Keith Instone (long-time HOCKEY-L ranking guru, first devised the pairwise technique to mimic the selection process). Their letter raised quite a few objections to USCHO’s application, including the following:

Pairwise is a generic mathematical term that describes how the comparison is performed
The algorithm, in relation to college hockey, was developed by Keith Instone before USCHO existed
USCHO doesn’t use the term “pairwise” in commerce, as they claimed
The sample of “advertising” submitted by USCHO was not, indeed, advertising, but a page of hockey rankings
Lots of other sites cover college hockey and publish pairwise rankings of teams

Compelling stuff, particularly the first, which is why I was surprised to see the next document…

Sep. 11, 2006 Office Action Outgoing

No mention of the Apr. 17 “Paper Correspondence Incoming”. Notes were pretty much limited to the following:

Office records have been search and no similar registered and pending mark has been found that would bar registration

The wording used to describe the services needs clarification because it is unacceptable as indefinite. Applicant may adopt the following identification of services, if accurate: Providing information in the field of rankings of college hockey teams; and publication of books featuring rankings of college hockey teams.

Though there seemed to be some confusion between the two parties about wording (is USCHO a book or a web site? is PAIRWISE a marketing slogan or the name of a database?), it seemed like USCHO just needed to adopt the suggested description. I start getting ready to scrub the word “pairwise” from SiouxSports.com and come up with the SiouxSports.com Power (PWR) rankings (which is what everyone thinks PWR stands for, anyway).

Nov. 22, 2006 Response to Office Action

USCHO seems pleased with the change in wording, though did want to note that they publish a website, not books.

Jan. 25, 2007 Office Action Outgoing

Pointing out that USCHO is a web site, not a book, seemed to have compelled the USPTO to search the web, because it came back now denying the claim:

Registration is refused because the proposed mark merely describes a characteristic and feature of applicant’s goods and services

The proposed mark appears to be generic in connection with the identified services

According to the Internet evidence, a ‘pairwise comparison’ is a problem solving method that allows one to determine the relative order (ranking) of a group of items

The mark… is a commonly used term for ranking college hockey teams

Evidence for the denial included a mountain of captured web pages (what did trademark examiners do 10 years ago?)

Page 1 — The first few pages are from Wikipedia. Really? It was my understanding that students aren’t allowed to cite wikipedia in fifth grade reports, yet the PTO uses it? Ok, let’s see what else they have…

Page 9 — Wiktionary?!? Seriously, will someone buy the PTO a subscription to the OED? I think m-w.com is free.

Page 10 — Mathworld, that sounds like an amusement park where I could imagine running into Whelan.

Page 12-16 — SiouxSports.com. w00t. I’m particularly impressed that he grabbed our awesome individual team detailed pairwise comparisons table, which I still think is the best on the net.

Jul. 25, 2007 Response to Office Action

Obviously, PAIRWISE is not descriptive of a ranking

Eh?

Even if the word “Pairwise” has become descriptive of a general process by which items are ordered and ranked by comparing each item to another, the fact that such a process is employed in a specific sport application in which the source of the ranking chooses and assigns weights to selected criteria makes it clear that the word is, at best, suggestive of what makes PAIRWISE rankings better than its competition.

Ok, I think I’m getting it. USCHO is trying to lay claim to PAIRWISE in all caps, differentiated from pairwise, the descriptive term. Huh.

From Tim Brule’s letter:

The success of our PAIRWISE rankings help establish uscho.com as a definitive source of information about college hockey and consequently increases the traffic to our site. Obviously it is economically benefical to us to have high traffic rankings.

Ah, is this about search results? Let’s google “pairwise hockey“:
USCHO.com::U.S. College Hockey Online::Pairwise
USCHO.com::U.S. College Hockey Online::Pairwise Surprise
College Hockey News: NCAA Tournament Pairwise Comparison Ratings
College Hockey News: Pairwise and KRACH
SiouxSports.com: NCAA College Hockey PWR (Pairwise Rankings)

Is USCHO’s new desire to trademark PAIRWISE because CollegeHockeyNews is gaining ground as a source of that information? It hardly seems a coincidence that this occurred so soon after the CHN guys split off.

Sep. 5, 2007 Office Action Outgoing

The examining attorney has also considered the applicant’s arguments carefully but has found them unpersuasive.

The applicant has responded to the refusal by stating that the proposed mark is not descriptive of the applicant’s services. The examining attorney disagrees

The term “PAIRWISE” as used in the mark merely indicates that the pairwise method was used to generate the college hockey team rankings.

Let’s take a look at PTO’s new evidence (much of it from the same source as the previous):
Page 4-6: Is PTO really using a page from USCHO’s site to try to demonstrate that Pairwise is a generic description. I don’t get this one.

Page 7-10: CollegeHockeyNews’s PWR

Page 11-12: SiouxSports.com’s PWR

Page 18-21, 27-30: Brad’s blog chats about USCHO’s PWR

I think those last three sets of evidence are flawed, for reasons I’ll describe in the next section.

What does Jim make of all of this?

Keep in mind that USCHO wasn’t trying to protect the mathematical formula behind PWR (which by my understanding could have proven difficult), but rather the name “PAIRWISE” when used to describe their rankings using that formula.

Though the formula isn’t their invention, but rather mimics the NCAA Selection Criteria, trademarking their own unique name of their presentation of those rankings strikes me as plausible. Searching the HOCKEY-L archives^** may give you fascinating look at the origin of all of this stuff; the first reference I could find to the criteria came from Keith Instone, but the first reference I could find to PAIRWISE or PWR was from Tim Brule (of USCHO).

As to the numerous examples from the Internet of sites using PWR/Pairwise to describe the college hockey rankings, though there was no way for the examiner to know it, the term is likely in use in all of those places specifically because USCHO popularized it. I have no idea if allowing it become part of the college hockey lexicon for 10 years before attempting to trademark it harmed their case, but I can say on behalf of SiouxSports.com that our PWR rankings are called PWR specifically so people are aware that they use the same methodology as those USCHO calls PAIRWISE (PWR’s very purpose on SiouxSports.com is to assist people who want to analyze and predict the PAIRWISE rankings by providing detail of the calculations beyond that available from USCHO).

However, that is all likely irrelevant, as the nail in the coffin of USCHO’s claim seemed to be that pairwise is a generic term descriptive of the ranking methodology. Though the first reference I can find to that name did come from Tim Brule on HOCKEY-L, it also predated the creation of USCHO, so it’s not surprising that the rankings were given a descriptive name rather than one chosen with attention to trademark suitability. If only he had chosen Tim’s Rankings for American College Hockey (TRACH).

Final thought — it’s almost impossible to run sites like these without a good IP attorney. Thanks to John (ours).

^** While browsing the HOCKEY-L archives, you may stumble upon the Nov 29, 1995, announcement of SiouxSports.com, which wasn’t yet called SiouxSports.com, but is a pleasant reminder of our longevity.

Welcome to the SiouxSports.com blog

Welcome to the SiouxSports.com blog.

While the world undoubtedly does not need a new blog, I view this as a repackaging of the information you already come to SiouxSports.com to find. It will complement the news listings and message boards by providing much of the same information, but in a different format that may be more accessible and useful to certain audiences.

Like the news listings, we will use it to point out interesting information on the Sioux discovered from media across the Internet and offline. However, like the message board, it will allow us to include some commentary, analysis, and personal experiences with that news. Because a limited group of bloggers can originate new articles, quality will be high and readers can catch up on the latest news even when they don’t have time to engage in the message boards. Categorization of posts will allow you to quickly locate just those posts that reference a topic in which you’re interested.

Finally, this increases your opportunity to participate. All registered SiouxSports.com members can post comments on any blog entry. No new accounts or passwords are required, yet the lack of anonymity should keep spam and trolling to a minimum (as SiouxSports.com members have come to expect).