#-1: Lynx (Re-Entry!). Ooh, a promising start! After dropping the season opener in Los Angeles, they have ripped off three in a row, including an 81-74 victory at defending Women's National Basketball League champion Seattle, the first time anyone has beaten the Storm in Seattle in 19 regular season games.
The Jynx have gotten off to hot starts many times before. But without providing details because I don't have the time, this fucking team is loaded, and there should be no more excuses for building on this 3-1 start and getting into the playoffs this year.
I'm starting to see how Head Coach Cheryl Reeve is going to distribute minutes. The big loser is Charde Houston, who went from supersub that always does the "Comanche" dance in the middle of the court for fans after victories to the end of the bench. Candace Wiggins maintains her Sixth Man status even though she was lost for virtually all of last year due to injury. I think they remain very thin in the backcourt, as Lindsay Whalen and Seimone Augustus still log heavy minutes (and, to be fair, contribute heavily).
Maya Moore, the overall #1 pick this year, is automatically in the starting lineup. Good call, hopefully Reeve will put her everywhere she can because she can shoot from outside and inside. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the difference-maker for this team will be Rebekkah Brunson. She's tall, strong, tough, and a hell of a rebounder, and she's the nasty inside presence this team needs in case things bog down on the offensive end. She led all Lynx players with 22 points in the Storm upset. I don't mind Brunson being the #1 go-to scorer.
Alright, now for some reason they have eight days off. My only report will be on a game in Target Center against Atlanta Friday. The hell? Is the league taking a break for finals?
#-2: Twins (Three Weeks Ago: -2). I bought an issue of the International Herald Tribune on my flights back to the States (it was four Euros, about five bucks!!! Can you fucking believe that???). They had baseball standings, thank Buddha. And the Twinks were still losing two out of every three games. Guess leaving the continent didn't break them out of their funk.
Pundits say they've righted the ship, pointing out that they've won seven out of their last nine games. I look back three weeks and see that they've gone 9-11 since I last did a WMNSS -- far from the shitty start they've given us, yet they're no where close to competing.
The bullpen's still shit. The big guns, especially Joe Mauer, The $23 Million Man With the 23-Cent Legs, are still out. And they can't close. Unless those things change, and they go on a mammoth roll, this season will be lost. They might as well continue to tank.
At least some things are changing. Some of the bats, including some called up from AAA Rochester, are finally heating up, Alexi Casilla's, especially. And the starting rotation has stopped sucking, last night's 9-3 drubbing at the hands of the Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0 notwithstanding. So there's that.
They're in the middle of one of their two biggest homestands, ten games. I will be attending this afternoon's game against Texas. After they finish off playing the Rangers, the host the White Sox for two and then end the screening week resuming league play with a game against San Diego.
#-Infinity: Gopher baseball (Three Weeks Ago: -1). Hey, what can you do, baseball's not a Big Ten sport. In a system I still find kind of wonky, the Goofs were put behind the eight-ball ever since their tournament-opening loss to Ohio St. But they climbed back, all the way back, to be the third-to-the-last team eliminated in the conference tournament (OK, there are only six teams, so they were the fourth bumped off). Their season ended with a 6-3 defeat to Michigan St. on Saturday. But the three teams that were eliminated from the tournament before them? The Gophers were the ones that showed them the door: Penn St., Purdue, and the Buckeyes that put them in the loser's bracket in the first place. I like that expression of defiance and spite.
Alas, it was over; the Spartans lost Illinois in the final, by the way, which meant the Illini was the only Big Ten to make the NCAA Tournament, and I'm sure they didn't make it out of regionals. A bunch of Gophers were selected in the Major League Baseball draft. John Anderson will probably stick around one more year. The campaign to replace Siebert Field continues as the old park is about to be condemned. And we start all over again to a season that will probably yield little to no success.
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