Believe it or not both Stony Brook and Utah Valley outspend NDSU when it comes to men's basketball. Based on 2017 numbers, which is last year reported in the US Department of Education's database Stony Brook spent 2.276M, Utah Valley spent 1.635M, and NDSU spent 1.611M. NDSU is 6th out of 9 teams in the Summit League when it comes to MBB spending:
1. Denver: 2,545,906
2. ORU: 2,126,124
3. SDSU: 1,991,489
4. UND: 1,824,580
5. USD: 1,685,107
6. NDSU: 1,611,189
7. Fort Wayne: 1,545,947
8. Omaha: 1,244,937
9. WIU: 1,212,286
Obviously in the last 5 years NDSU's MBB program has had more success than any of those other Summit League schools other than SDSU (which I won't argue if you say they've had more success than SDSU as well). They've also had more success in the last 5 years than Utah Valley or Stony Brook as well (although Stony Brook has had a couple 22+ win seasons including an NCAA tournament berth in that time).
I don't know anywhere that has MBB coaches salaries but I know that both Eric Henderson, in his first year of head coaching at any level, at SDSU and Todd Lee, in his 2nd year of head coaching at the D1 level, at USD both make more than Richman does in his 6th year.
None of this excuses the lack of performance from this year's team and Richman should not get a pass because he's working with a smaller budget and a smaller salary than some of his peers but that's why I say you get what you pay for. NDSU has actually gotten a pretty good ROI over these last few years compared to other places that have spent as much or more. If Richman is let go I hope Larsen and the NDSU AD commits the pocketbooks to at least SDSU's level for the next head coaching hire. If not, we can bitch and moan all we want to about lack of results on the court, but we're just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with the right bargain bin coaching hire so I won't be all that surprised if there's no big turnaround. Again, you get what you pay for.
Btw, all this spending information can be looked up at
https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/