FB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[hazzben]

Bethel named their new HC for men's b-ball. At first glance I like the fit/hire.

Shame on me - I didn't realize that WI had any D2 basketball programs...though it seems that they're the only one.

TBH I didn't either. I've always thought of the GLIAC as a football conference, but they've got their own "St. Mary's" if you will. The Loras stint is nice as well, he's got familiarity recruiting at a high level in multiple small college contexts in the upper midwest.

[OldAuggie]

Lamker resigned tonight. Hopefully, the new AD can find a coach who will develop a competitive MIAC football program at Augsburg. I will believe it when I see it.   

[repete]

Nice story on the Matterns.





https://www.csbsju.edu/news/commencement-brought-emotional-reunion-for-csb-student-speaker/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKbGglleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHgv9ooVox8enrKnP_RVLzVoI0a3uqRpaNV6uSfoozCBRHTzUlXEzx3KCWbA1_aem_ppYqIQq5_ey2Jq8sP_vCSg

[Retired Old Rat]

Lamker resigned tonight. Hopefully, the new AD can find a coach who will develop a competitive MIAC football program at Augsburg. I will believe it when I see it.

Lamker's five-year record at Augsburg was 21-20.  Has there been an Augsburg coach with a winning record?  Not trying to be a troll, genuinely curious.

[OldAuggie]

Lamker resigned tonight. Hopefully, the new AD can find a coach who will develop a competitive MIAC football program at Augsburg. I will believe it when I see it.

Lamker's five-year record at Augsburg was 21-20.  Has there been an Augsburg coach with a winning record?  Not trying to be a troll, genuinely curious.

I did a quick search, and other than Lamker, who is 21-20, there has never been a coach with a winning record at Augsburg. Jack Osberg is considered the best coach in the history of Auggie football, with the most wins at 62-79.

That is a fair question, and it helps manage expectations for any Auggie fans out there.

[DuffMan]

Has there been an Augsburg coach with a winning record?

Yes, their wrestling coaches. 

[hazzben]

It's weird to me that he's resigned but staying on until Aug 1. Outside of him still wanting a paycheck until he starts at Osseo, how do you not make it effective immediately? You could even pay him until then but still have him be gone right away.

[GoldandBlueBU]

It's weird to me that he's resigned but staying on until Aug 1. Outside of him still wanting a paycheck until he starts at Osseo, how do you not make it effective immediately? You could even pay him until then but still have him be gone right away.

That is odd.  Maybe they have some summer camps for high schoolers that he's agreed to run?

[HansenRatings]

Speaking of setting expectations for Augsburg...



Augsburg was at near an all-time low when Lamker was hired, and he did a great job getting them back to respectability, but the >0.500 record was somewhat of a mirage thanks to their strength of schedule during his tenure:



In the 23 seasons preceding Lamker's tenure, there were only two seasons with a weaker SOS than the toughest schedule they faced the last 5 seasons. If I look at my "SOS+" metric, which values higher quality opponents, each of the last 5 seasons have been among the 6 easiest schedules Augsburg has played since 1997. Some of that is thanks to the conference's scheduling and current makeup, but among the schedules he could control, the non-conference schedule, the weakest non-conference slates Augsburg has ever played were in his 3rd & 4th seasons.

[DuffMan]

@HansenRatings, I thought of you this past weekend as I was driving accross Iowa to a baseball tournament.  I gave a single-finger salute as we passed through Waverly.    We wrapped up the weekend with a 7:00 pm game on Sunday and then arrived home at 2:30 am. 

[HansenRatings]

@HansenRatings, I thought of you this past weekend as I was driving accross Iowa to a baseball tournament.  I gave a single-finger salute as we passed through Waverly.    We wrapped up the weekend with a 7:00 pm game on Sunday and then arrived home at 2:30 am. 

If you had been driving past on Friday, I would have been there to graciously accept your salute. I was busy golfing (terribly).

[DuffMan]

We did, in fact, drive down on Friday. 

[art76]

Update on the Bethel University Rocket Club

The short story is that we are waiting for a few teams to get in their final flights, and until they do, we wait.

Back story – this competition was to fly one or two rockets using the same motor designation to a specified altitude, and an unlimited altitude. You got bonus points if you used the same rocket for both aspects of the contest. The first altitude to hit was 1000 feet, give or take 25 feet. If you hit the sweet spot you got full points for that aspect of the contest. Bethel hit it on their first flight. The second aspect was to design and fly a rocket that would go as high as you could make it go on the same motor designation that got you to 1000 feet. All the teams in the contest were using the exact same motor designation for both aspects of competition. On competition day, if you checked in on time, and were ready to fly in a timely manner, you also got the maximum number of points for that aspect of the competition. Bethel also received all those points on competition day.

The hiccup – there was a pretty low cloud ceiling on the day of the competition, roughly 3200 feet. Rockets that were predicted to go into the clouds and out of sight were grounded for safety reasons. Bethel's prediction was right in the neighborhood of the ceiling and we were not allowed to fly until near the end of the day when the clouds were as high as they had been all day. Thankfully, the rocket was visible all through it's flight, and we were happy with our flight. Unfortunately, two or three teams were not able to fly for safety reasons and they have been given an extension to fly all the way through the end of September.

So, we won't know who placed in what position on "flight day" until all the teams have submitted their final flights. That may be sometime in the middle of October, or it could be early as next month because those teams that have been given the extension may choose not to fly their final flights, or somewhere in the middle. We've done all we can do on the field. We need to finish up our final report, submit it on time, and then we have to wait to hear from the contest organizers once all the teams have turned in their flight data and their final reports.

[OzJohnnie]

Heh. I picture the BU rocket team swagger as you arrive on competition day.

https://youtu.be/sYq_Jpxdq2A?si=Ns0jsspe6AmMaxm0

Good luck, Art. I hope your boys (and girls?) do really well again this year.

[Pat Coleman]

For those wanting to know more about how St. John's trip to Winnipeg went, we spend a bunch of time on it in our podcast which dropped today.

https://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/2025/05/27/atn-podcast-380-goin-on-a-trip/