#-1: Wild (Last Week: -6). A very impressive way to return from the All-Star Break: Two wins over teams that are right with you in the muck, reaching for a spot in the Western Confernece playoffs. Right now, this puts them in a tie with Phoenix for the seventh spot, bypassing the two teams they beat, Los Angeles and Colorado, on the way. Coincidentally, they face the sister they're currently kissing, those Bastard Winnipeg Jets, in Phoenix today (Saturday). They also host those Bastard Quebéc Nordiques on Wednesday, then fly to St. Louis and face the Blues Friday. Phoenix to St. Paul to St. Louis in a week -- shit, who put this part of the schedule together?
#-2: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -7). Break up the Gopher women's basketball team!!! Break up the Gopher women's basketball team??? They are riding a three-game winning streak as of this moment. First they beat Michigan at Williams; I did not know the Wolverines are leading the Big Ten, so the win is important (or it shows that the conference is fairly even up and down). Kionna Kellogg collected 13 rebounds in that win, giving her honors for Freshman Of The Week. The Gophs then rallied from nine points down with eight minutes remaining to notch its first road win of the year, at Indiana.
The club now stands at 3-7 in-conference -- meaning all their wins in the Big Ten have come in the last three games -- and 11-12 overall. I think the NCAA Tournament is still a pipe dream. But there's always the Women's NIT!!! One game this screening week: at Iowa Thursday.
#-3: Gopher wrestling (Last Week: -1). What an important, enthralling upset win the grapplers pulled off at the Sports Pavilion Sunday! They were ranked fourth and beat third-ranked Wisconsin, 21-15, with the help of a 3-2 victory at Hwt. by sub Ben Berhow.
You would think that win would mean the Gophers and Badgers would just switch places. I don't exactly know who and how, but Minnesota remains in fourth in the latest InterMat rankings. They'll have a chance to maintain their #4 ranking and hope either Cornell, Boise St. or Penn St. slip up by going on the road to face two Big Ten powerhouses in everywhere but wrestling: Ohio St. today (Saturday) and Michigan Friday.
#-4: Swarm (Last Week: -2). Wow. I was lucky that the game I attended before the Minnesota Roller Girls bout was an exciting win. In a back-and-forth affair, the Swarm defeated defending champion Washington, 11-10, on F Ryan Benesch's solo drive to the goal two-plus minutes into sudden-death overtime. That was one of Benesch's three goals and five points Saturday night. Benesch is the guy who tallied seven goals in their win against this same Stealth team in Everett, Wash.; he now leads the Swarm with 26 points.
Just thought of something: Didn't the Swarm last year go all-in on a marketing campaign for one player? Yeah, that's right -- F Zach Greer, the man the team picked with the third-overall selection in the 2009 National Lacrosse League Draft. Well, how's he doing now? So far this season, five goals and five assists -- and I don't see him anywhere in the boxscore of the Swarm's 15-12 loss at Buffalo last (Friday) night. Healthy scratch for the man the Swarm built their promotional drive upon last year? Is he even on the team anymore? Meanwhile, Benesch is currently third in the league in goals and points. This may be the franchise's first real stud ever. Meanwhile, this is a swing and a miss for Swarm Fan Relations.
The squad's next game falls on Saturday the 12th, so they don't play this screening week ... which means they are off for the next WMNSS, unless something sordid off the turf happens.
#-5: Gopher women's hockey (Last Week: -4). The bad news is they didn't escape Madison with a win against the #1 team in women's hockey, Wisconsin, for they dropped the back half of their two-fer last Saturday by a score of 3-1. The good news, in the larger scheme of things, is that they lost in front of 10,668 people -- which is good because that sets a record for the largest crowd ever to attend a women's college hockey game. The incentive was a charity; a law firm was going to match the till for the game, dollar for dollar. And by the way, one dollar was the exact cost of a ticket for the match. This reporter says that this is a watershed moment for women's college hockey. I say, drop the philanthropic tie-in, charge for tickets like this were any other game, and if you still pull in more than 10,000, that's a watershed moment.
So, like an underling who was a yelledat by his boss at work and can't do anything but take out his frustration by kicking the family dog after he gets home, the Gopher distaff icers felt better in Ridder last (Friday) night by beating the shit out of St. Cloud, 8-0. Unfortunately, Wisconsin routed Bemidji St. at the same time, 7-1, and so the Badgers clinched the WCHA regular-season title. Guess the Gophs are gunning for second now. They finish up their series against the Huskies this (Saturday) afternoon, then play the front half of a two-game set against the Bemidji St. Beavers at home next Friday.
#-6: Timberwolves (Last Week: -8). You take the good news when you can with the Woofie Dogs, who seem to be able to find and collect talent but are so far away from finding the spark that will forge chemistry between them and make them an actual team. They finally won after six straight losses, a 103-87 win in Target against Toronto. But, they followed that up with an epically lifeless 18-point shellacking at the Bastard Vancouver Grizzlies, and then another poor effort in an 11-point payback loss at Toronto.
The other good news is that, after being snubbed when reserves were announced, NBA Commissioner David Stern did the right thing and named Kevin Love as the injury replacement for Houston Rockets C Yao Ming for the upcoming All-Star Game. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports tweeted that Steve Nash was going to be Yao's fill-in, but either Stern listened to reason and had a change of heart ... or Wojnarowski and his source were wrong. Another NBA blogger thinks that the veteran who doesn't deserve his spot in the ASG is Tim Duncan. Bottom line is, Love, the leading rebounder in the Association, get his spot he so richly deserves. Then again, this is the All-Star Game. I could totally see a bunch of people named to both conferences' rosters sitting it out because of "tendinitis."
Four games this week: they host Denver tonight (Saturday night), which just lost at home last (Friday) night to Utah, then three on the road versus New Orleans, Houston and Indiana.
#-7: Gopher football (Re-Entry!). People keep giving new Head Coach Jerry Kill a mulligan for this recruiting class because he was hired so late. I can't, only because I'm tired of this program blowing.
How did they do? According to Rivals, the Gophs just latch onto the 50th spot in this year's ranking (behind non-BcS schools TCU and Central Florida), although they failed to get a recruit given four stars by the service. Meanwhile, ESPN grades one recruit, OG and native son Tommy Olson, as a four-star; however, they rank the whole class third from the bottom in the Big Ten with a C grade.
Of course the excitement over National Signing Day is fantastic. But at the end of the day, it's what a Head Coach does with the young men he was able to recruit that is the true measure of success.
(By the way, I don't have an ironclad reason why I put the Gopher football team's recruiting haul here. This demarcates the teams that won at least one game against those that didn't. If Minnesota had a better class, I'd move them up, but this seems to be like all the ones the program have brought in, and so third from the bottom seems appropriate.)
#-8: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -3). Does anybody fucking get this team? They go up to 4th-ranked UMD and manage to scratch out a 2-2 tie -- G Kent Patterson stops 40 shots -- but this is after the offense froze and the club lost 1-0 to fuckin' Alaska-Anchorage. Really? Really?? Again???
Let me re-proffer a theory: Playing tough against elite teams while inexplicably losing to mediocre ones means that this squad plays up or down to the level of their competition. This shows that the players on Minnesota are still juvenile and/or arrogant enough to believe their talent will carry them through a game. The team has severe maturity and focus issues, and they've had this for the past several years. This will mean yet another year one of the power programs in men's college hockey stays home.
This is a very tough stretch: After they finish up at UMD, they start a two-gamer at home against 2nd-ranked Denver. This weekend is the first of three where Minnesota faces ranked WCHA foes.
#-9: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -5). A fairly strong week in the survey. The male ballers are the only club in this WMNSS to lose all their games for the week, and they only played one game. Dispiriting, the loss at Indiana Wednesday, yet I can understand because all Big Ten opponents at their places will pose some sort of challenge. In this particular instance, the Hoosiers started off really hot and held on for the win.
How much is the absence of Al Nolen ruining this team? All they need is to find a Point Guard that can feed the talented bigs down low. But can they find the guy? They're home for the two games they play this week. First, they host the top team in the land, Ohio St., in a big (and winnable) game at the Barn Super Bowl Sunday afternoon. Then they face another team in the thick of the Big Ten race alongside the Goph ballers Thursday, Illinois.
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