#-1: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -5). From the outhouse to the penthouse, sisters. I don't know what a 41-point home destruction of Indiana and an eight-point victory at Northwestern mean -- I haven't looked up the records of the Hoosiers or Wildcats -- but my most sarcastic insults that the Goofs will be the worst team in the B1G will not be realized.
Will this team be run by Point Guard Rachel Banham? She had her first double-double ever with a career-high 21 points with 11 rebounds. Marvelously, she was a perfect 5-for-5 from three-point range.
Four games into the conference season and already they're finishing up a series with an opponent? The team they lost to earlier this year, Purdue, comes by Williams Thursday. I miss the days when there were few enough teams to actually pull off a round-robin. That way you could split the conference season into two halves, then schedule the teams in the same order for both halves (just switch who gets to be the home team). It's much more fair that way a) you and your opponent get to play in front of their home crowd and b) you won't face them too early or too late in a season, giving you a better representation of how both teams fared against each other without worrying about whether the team is as good as their record says they are because you faced that team when it peaked too soon or before they rounded into form. You know what I'm saying?
#-2: Gopher women's hockey (Re-Entry!). In a battle between the two top teams in women's top-flight college hockey, the #2 Goofs finished with a split against top-ranked Wisconsin, although the loss was in a shootout, where it officially goes down as a tie and the U. was awarded a point.
Unfortunately, I went to Friday's 4-3 overtime loss instead of yesterday (Saturday) afternoon's 1-0 win. However, the team did show heart in coming back to tie the game three times (the Badgers scored first, then we tied, then they scored, then we scored, then they and finally us). One thing I noticed: Two of the three Wisconsin goals were off of rebounds, while all three Minnesota goals came from screens. Alas, the Badgers won the shootout 1-0 on final skater Hilary Knight's rising wrister. Noora Raty, who I was once really high on, is primarily accountable for three of the four pucks that got past her.
The icers got revenge the next game. Senior Defenseman Kelly Seeler's goal 6:31 into the game stood up. Alex Rigsby stopped the other 41 shots (the U. took 14 shots in each of the three periods; on Friday Wisconsin started off the game outshooting the Gophers 11-0 and finished the first period leading 15-4 on shots on goal before the U. furiously tied up that statistic in the middle of the second period), but Raty stopped all 32 Badgers shots, the first time they've been bageled in 23 months.
Do they now switch places in the polls? If they do, it might be a short stay if they're not careful; they're at Minnesota-Duluth next weekend.
#-3: Timberwolves (Last Week: -3). Weird; they beat the teams I thought they'd lose to, and then they lost to the teams I thought they'd beat. Such is the topsy-turvy world of the NBA, especially in this lockout-shortened season.
They began the screening week by crushing defending champion Dallas by 17 and then outlasting old San Antonio by 10. However, they then lost a close 90-86 game to Memphis and then, I think inexplicably, got outworked by Cleveland, 98-87, in a game where the first overall pick in this year's draft, Kyrie Irving, outplayed the second overall pick in the draft, Derrick Williams. At least they broke that franchise-record losing streak at 18.
This week they play five(!) games, including their first back-to-back-to-back this year, Sunday through Tuesday at Washington, at Toronto, and home to Chicago. They then get two days off before doing a back-to-back at New Orleans Friday and at Atlanta Saturday.
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The final four teams on this list went a combined 0-8 the last eight days. An average of one loss a day from this sorry quartet. Jus' sayin':
#-4: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -1). Not good. The supposedly third-best team in the land have now lost three of their last five games after an inexplicable 3-2 loss in the Mariucci Classic championship game to Northeastern(!) New Year's Eve, then a 4-3 defeat to fifth-ranked Notre Dame last (Saturday) night to Notre Dame in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game.
I had the misfortune to be surprise my parents and say I'm not having dinner at home and instead go to this loss, just like I did Friday in seeing the Gopher women's hockey team lose. Just like the women, it looked like they weren't able to pass at all, and when they were able to, the puck would flutter up the blade. That's why they were never seemed to be able to control the puck, and thus the game, which hinged on two events: The Goofs' failing to cash in on a five-minute power play on the Fighting Irish's Nick Larson's checking from behind penalty early in the game, and Riley Sheahan's shorthanded tally late in the second period that made it 3-1 and, for all intents and purposes, a sure victory. Two goals 31 seconds apart late in the game disguised the fact that this game was not that close.
Back to the WCHA grind, but the same formidable competition: at North Dakota (now without the Fighting Sioux!) for a two-game series next weekend.
#-5: Wild (Last Week: -2). My goodness, this team is as bad as the North Stars were. An 0-3 week means they have now lost 11 of their last 12 games. And they were outscored 10-3. For all their trades for offensive punch this offseason, scoring is again their handicap: There is no Mild player in the top 30 in either goals or points (although Mikko Koivu, Buddha bless him, is tied for 20th in assists).
Three games this week: home to San Jose Tuesday, then at Chicago Thursday and at St. Louis Saturday.
#-6: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -4). Ladies and gentlemen, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Tubby Smith Era. Now that they've entered conference play, and now that they can't schedule which teams they play against, and now that they can't dictate that they play their games at the Barn, they have been exposed as incapable after losing close games at Michigan New Year's Day and home to Iowa Wednesday. They've lost their Big Ten games by a combined 16 points (with a double overtime game thrown in), but they're dead last in the conference at 0-3, with lingering questions over perimeter shooting and defending.
Yes, their best player, Trevor Mbakwe, cannot come back to this team ever again because of his injury. But hearing a promo with a snippet from KFAN's Paul Allen on his show is the perfect rebuttal to that excuse. He says that with a coach with as much stature as Smith, one who has a national championship under his belt, he should be able to find enough depth that an injury to a player, even to the best one on the team, should not result in the complete meltdown of that team. But for the second year in a row, it looks like it's happening. And that, sadly, goes back on the head coach.
They need to pull something out of their asses to save their tournament hopes. Unfortunately for them this week, they've got badass opponents to defeat. They host Purdue this (Sunday) evening, then go to Indiana, which is no longer a doormat after beating the first- and second-ranked teams in the country, Thursday.
#-Infinity: Vikings (Re-Entry!). Allen had good inside on the U. male ballers. But he had this bizarre prediction about the Vikings, the team he's the radio play-by-play guy for, just before the regular season began (and I'm paraphrasing here): "They'll go 9-7, 8-8, and they'll compete for a playoff spot."
My fucking God, what was he thinking? Before the season began I predicted these guys would go 3-13 and have the worst record in the NFC. The second part didn't happen; the Bastard Cleveland/Los Angeles Rams also finished 3-13, and because the opponents they faced had more wins, they get to pick second in April's NFL draft while the ViQueens pick third. But man, if I were in Vegas, and there was a proposition bet on picking exact regular season records, and if I had the balls to lay serious money on 3-13 (or at least the under on the given win total), I would not be in the serious financial position I am in now. Nonetheless, I take little pleasure in being right.
For the second year in a row I decided not to watch the game because I didn't think they'd win. Last year I took in an art show; this year I went to my mall job for extra hours. Both times I was right.
I don't care if I'm pulling shit out of my ass, I'll try and analyze the loss to Chicago anyway:
- Worse than having more evidence whether or not Christian Ponder is this team's Quarterback Of The Future, he has to get hit hard and leave the game with a hip pointer, thus rendering this evaluation maddeningly Incomplete.
- Two picks and just 200 yards? Man, now Joe Webb might not be better than Ponder after all.
- A half-sack short of Michael Strahan's record? Despite depleted talent backing him up, Jared Allen may have been the best player on the team this whole season. Let's hope he'll stay when the defense around him gets overhauled.
- With Adrian Peterson done for the year, the Vikes had to rely on Toby Gerhart. His output the last several games may have saved not only his career with the Vikings, but his career, period.
- You need more playmakers than Percy Harvin, who, luckily, has put his migraines behind him.
- There is not one position that needn't be overhauled, not one.
Oh, wait a second ... will we even have a Minnesota Vikings to bitch about come next season?
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