#-1: Vikings (Last Week: -1). I shouldn't put them on top of this week's rankings because they have a bye and they haven't gotten in trouble for their boat party or anything. But there are a few reasons that they are running the table atop the WMNSS in the fall the way the Gopher women's hockey team did early this year. First of all, there is a lot of mediocrity, if not downright suckitude, going on with Minnesota teams right now and I wouldn't feel it just to put one of those squads on top. This is a football team, and I'm still not sure I should just leave a squad out of it just for a week. But the main reason is that, without doing anything on their own, the Vikes took a giant step towards claiming the NFC North because they saw Green Bay and Chicago get upset! They now have a three-game lead for the division plus the tiebreaker sweep of the Packers. A couple of inexplicable losses will toss this race wide open, and in the NFL that's very possible. But with the way the Vikings look so far, the double loss on their Sunday off may be the greatest week they'll have in the regular season. Plus, they host Detroit for their first game back.
#-2: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -9). Sweeps at home of Indiana and Purdue do as much as they can to wipe away the bitter aftertaste of back-to-back sweeps by Penn and Ohio St.'s. However much they try and demonstrate that they can beat the teams they should beat, I'm still not convinced they're won't be several more missteps along the way, including an upset during the tournament that they surely will be invited to. Meanwhile, Illinois has just about iced their place as the best team in the Big 10 behind juggernaut Penn St. It's all about seed now; they best not fuck up with road tests against Iowa and Wisconsin this weekend.
#-3: Wild (Last Week: -2). Thank Wild PR for the following note: Considering their very rough start, I am absolutely shocked to learn that this team has won four out of their last five games. That 5-2 home beatdown by Vancouver last Thursday really blows. But at least they rebounded and defeated The Team That Was Stolen From Us, and then whipped putrid Toronto at Toronto. This week they nick through the NHL's Southeast Division with contests at Tampa Bay, Washington and Carolina, then return home to face the soon-to-be-ex-Bastard Winnipeg Jets Wednesday.
(ETA: #-4: Lynx [Re-Entry!]. They won the WNBA lottery last Thursday. They only had the fourth-worst record in the league, but a trade in May gave the Lynx the first-round pick of the New York Liberty. They had the worst record last year, and the probabilities held up, which means that they have both the first and the fourth overall picks in next year's draft. Which is great, except that don't they have, like, 80 first-round draft picks on their roster already?)
#-5: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -5). This team has so much drama that they should be scrutinized just like the Vikings were during the Mike Tice years. They did achieve an important split at Wisconsin; that 5-2 win Saturday night proves, both to us fans and to themselves, they can compete against ranked teams if they want to. And Goalie Alex Kangas was named this week's WCHA Defensive Player Of The Week for making a career-high 45 saves in that game (although he stopped only 28-of-32 shots in Friday's 4-2 loss). But then comes word early this week that Defenseman Sam Lofquist has quit the team and the school. He has played for Team USA, but has not seen the ice five out of the eight games so far this season. No one's saying anything, but I'll bet he thinks he's better than riding the bench and wants to go to some other league and team that'll give him more ice time. Just more turmoil for what's supposed to be the pride of U. sports.
Did you know that Bemidji St. is ranked seventh in the country! I guess making a run to the Frozen Four as your pod's 4-seed does wonders over the course of an off-season. The Beavers right now have a lot going for them: they're undefeated, the best defensive squad in college, and probably will claim the last-ever crown in the soon-to-be-exterminated four-team College Hockey Alliance. They will join the WCHA next year, but for now they're the Gophers' first non-conference opponent of the season, and they'll be playing at Mariucci for a pair Saturday and Sunday nights. (Why aren't they playing Friday? Is it because it's Friday the 13th?)
#-6: Twins (Re-Entry!). So this is the Twinkies' big move of the off-season, trading away Carlos Gomez to Milwaukee for J.J. Hardy? Geez, will they go down Washington Ave. or University Ave. for their victory parade next year? OK, so Go-Go couldn't hit as much as a leadoff man should, and he's stupid running around the bases. But he may be The Fastest Man In Baseball, and defensively he was equal to CF predecessors Torii Hunter and Kirby Puckett. In exchange we get a SS who has had only one very productive year. Plus, Hardy's older than Gomez. If we needed to cut down on our glut of outfielders, why not trade Delmon Young? I mean, he should be more productive than he has been, but he's been better than most of his haters think he is. And while people mock him for being played every day in the outfield because he's the jewel the team gave away Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett to Tampa for, remember that Gomez joins Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey as ex-Twins in the trade with the Mets for Johan Santana. This trade is starting to look more and more as the greater fail than the Young trade, and I still have hope for Go-Go. Not a good start for the Twins in the Hot Stove League.
#-7: Gopher football (Last Week: -3). Should have known that this team would lose to Illinois at home; this perfectly fits the "lose to a team they shouldn't lose to" template that's been codified on this program the last decade or so. I was at a bar keeping an eye on the game, so I watched it but didn't hear the commentary. What happened? Now they're still one win away from going to a shit bowl, and they'll have to rely on beating second-division patsy South Dakota St. this Saturday to do it. And even then the best they probably could do is the Motor City Bowl in Detroit. Look forward to that!
#-8: Timberwolves (Last Week: -6). Oh. My. Fucking. God. This team blows. Right now I'll take last year's team; they may not have been a playoff squad, but they had the makings of a collection of players that at least knew how to play. But since David Kahn thinks this franchise had to start over again, it seems like we'll have to endure more weeks where they lose all four games they play. Monday's biblical violation at Golden State was particularly pathetic. The Woofie Dogs lost by 41 points, matching the largest margin of defeat in franchise history, and the 146 points the Warriors scored was the most they've scored, and the most the Wolves have allowed, since these two teams met April Fools' Day, 1994. These days, only the home b-ball squad is a joke. They still haven't won since Opening Night. This week: vs. Dallas, at Memphis, vs. Houston.
#-Infinity: Gopher women's soccer (Last Week: -4). Not a bad game Friday night, a 1-0 win over Indiana. Reading around the Internet, that might have been an elimination game. But although the team finished tied with Purdue for fourth place in the conference, they were snubbed when the NCAA Tournament field was announced. They actually took Michigan St., which finished sixth in the Big 10. Guess that 0-3-1 skid in the middle of the season was enough to counteract the 6-0-1 streak that preceeded it. Oh well. D Jennie Clark made First-Team All-Big Ten for the second straight year.
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