#-2: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -2). The first of many teams having .500 weeks lost their chances at an undefeated season Sunday afternoon by losing to what should have been overmatched Vermont 5-4 at Mariucci. This inexplicable defeat, especially at home, has plagued this program in the three years they have missed the NCAA Tournament. Sure the Catamounts have had success as a program. But they routed that team the previous Friday 6-0. What happened?
They got back on the left with a 5-0 rout of Alaska-Anchorage (a program that really shouldn't be playing hockey because it's so damn far away from everybody). They play the Seawolves again tonight in Anchorage, then travel back onto the mainland to being a two-gamer against hated rivals North Dakota Friday night.
#-3: Wild (Re-Entry!). Is this my fault? It is possible Minnesota is not the State of Hockey? Maybe I just got blinded by the Lynx. In any case, I am very, very sorry for leaving the professional hockey team out of the WMNSS for so long. They started their season on the eighth. They should have been on this list two weeks ago. Uh, oops. Maybe I'm getting to be like my Grandmother.
So let's see how they're doing ... oh, another mediocre start! The media say the Mild are currently 3-3-3. I hate that because I don't understand what that last "3" means. Shouldn't that represent ties, even though I know the NHL doesn't have ties anymore? They're shootout losses, which to me means they lost. So they are really 3-6. Their wins are against Columbus, which was the first game of the season to the team that was last in the league to win a game, and Edmonton, which they beat 2-1 twice on shootouts. So it looks like predictions they will finish last in the Western Conference are right on track.
Three games this week: home to Detroit (the second time they host the Red Wings in two weeks -- what the fuck?) tonight, at Detroit Tuesday, then back home to face Vancouver.
#-4: Gopher soccer (Last Week: -3). I was at last night's regular season, Senior Night finale against Nebraska. First of all, thank you for giving me free pizza. Second of all, I don't think I have ever attended a soccer match with so much scoring. Even though it looked extremely bleak when the Goofs gave up a cross in the first minute of the game, they eventually ruined the Cornhuskers in their first game as Big Ten opponents by a score of, get this, 6-3. The school-issued story didn't mention anything about a record, so it probably wasn't. Still, I have never seen so much offense on the pitch before, and it was refreshing. Even though four seniors were playing in front of the home crowd for the final time, the night belonged to freshman Taylor Uhl, who recorded a hat trick against Nebraska, the second in her college career.
The team clinched the fifth seed in the conference tournament beginning Tuesday in Evanston, Ill. They most assuredly have to win, maybe make the final, in order to get on the right side of .500 (8-9-2 overall, 5-4-2 in the B1G) and qualify for the tournament.
#-5: Vikings (Last Week: -5). OK, so they lost to the Pack. But first of all, the game was close. Sad as it was to see the defense yield big runs to run out the clock when Green Bay wasn't able to the rest of the game was very disappointing. But they were within a touchdown of winning. A stop there, and Christian Ponder and co. had a chance to drive for the winning score.
And the fact that Ponder, the rook, gave me hope that he even could drive down the field for the winning score was the revelation on Sunday. He didn't look lost in his first professional game, which is all I was looking for. I was afraid he would throw, like, eight interceptions against what is right now the best team in the NFL. But he didn't. He threw two, to Charles Woodson, but they were the calculated risk type, not the stupid type. Otherwise, he dinked and dunked when he had to, and was able to throw deep when he had to. His scrambling play is what some people think is the best way former starter Donovan McNabb could succeed, but I don't know if that would have helped the fact he two-hopped all his balls when his receivers needed to pull a muscle in order to haul in his inaccurate passes. Ponder is going to have some bad games. It might even come tomorrow at Carolina. But he wasn't so bad that I buried my head. This is the first time in a long time I will accept the notion of a "moral victory."
#-6: Gopher football (Re-Entry!). Once again, both Twin Cities football leagues lost. I put the Goofs under because the ViQueens had Ponder. But at the risk of damning with faint praise, their loss to Nebraska wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't 84-13. In fact, Minnesota beat the Blackshirts in the second half, 14-7. That must've pissed off some Las Vegas bettors who were making second half wagers.
And at the risk of sounding stupid, there's a chance they retain Floyd of Rosedale when they host Iowa for the second year in a row this afternoon. I think they're playing better, the health of Head Coach Jerry Kill is an issue behind the team, at least for now, the focus of Kirk Ferentz teams can always be questioned, and these rivalry games have a crazy way of ending in a way you didn't expect. (By the way, I think the fact that the conference no longer has Minnesota-Iowa as the last game of the regular season is an outrage. They had been meeting each other the week before Thanksgiving for decades. The fact the Big Ten thinks it'd be better that Iowa now faces Nebraska to end every year is just wrong. Who do the Goofs have now? Illinois?? Stupid realignment.)
#-7: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -4). OK, now I'm scared of what is happening to this team. They dropped both their games this week, at Purdue and Northwestern. The Boilermakers are good, and they lost in four. Northwestern is not, and they got swept.
What the fuck is going on? They now sit 5-6 in-conference. They are 12-8 overall. They'll probably make the NCAAs on merit, but this will be the weakest team the program has had in a decade. What I suspect is Interim Head Coach Laura Bush. Is there anybody injured? If not, there's a huge problem with trust. This could be another Pam Borton situation, where a talented squad in a promising season all of a sudden goes to shit, and afterward the best players on the team quit and/or transfer. I hope this doesn't happen to this team. I love volleyball too much.
Unfortunately, short-term prospects of turning things around aren't good. Tonight they finish a four-game road trip at third-ranked Illinois. They then begin a four-game homestand Friday ... against four-time defending national champion Penn St.
No comments:
Post a Comment