#-1: Gopher women's basketball (Re-Entry!). We start what probably will be the longest WMNSS of this season with the U. lady ballers on top. Savor this, program; I highly doubt you will top such a large heap again.
Don't be fooled by the bona fides of this squad's opening screening week. They really shouldn't be up here, but they are 2-0 and won their host Best Buy Classic. However, they had to go to double overtime to defeat Washington St., 87-83. They coasted past Villanova this (Sunday) afternoon to claim their tournament. They get to host another tourney, the Subway Classic, this weekend, starting with Ohio Saturday.
But soon they will have to go on the road, and they will be exposed soon enough as an also-ran who had a brilliant few years before going back to the muck most of us know the program for. Head Coach Pam Borton has Rachel Banham, probably her best player since Lindsay Whalen and Janel McCarville. But they are not considered a tournament team, let alone a contender in the Big Ten. I guess Borton has to get credit for running a clean program, and they did win a fourth-rate postseason tourney. But it's beyond clear now that she went to the Final Four with players recruited by her predecessors, Cheryl Littlejohn (who recruited Whalen) and Brenda Oldfield (McCarville). I might as well ask now because it's obvious we will ask after the club is shut out of the Big Dance: When in the hell will Borton lose her job?
#-2: Gopher football (Last Week: -5). They beat Illinois to become bowl-eligible for the first time in three years. Yay. The opening line from the recap on the Gophers' official sports website: "Minnesota coach Jerry Kill did it again."
Don't make me laugh. They won the two remaining conference games they had to win to reach the magical number of six, but that was padded by beating second-division team New Hampshire. Really, only victories against top-flight (FBS, formerly called Division 1-A, but I think FBS is a stupid name so I refuse to use that official designation) programs should count. Plus, with games at Nebraska Saturday and home to Michigan St. to finish the year, six is all they'll get.
Why the hubbub over getting to a bowl? Really, who gives a shit? The bowl system is a vestige of a time when people were too stupid not to care about who is the champion of a sport. At least Minnesotans are smart enough not to go to wherever the fuck bowl they'll be given. This is a money drain for the school. So why go? The power players with the U. football program -- Kill, Athletic Director Norwood Teague, and the subordinates to both -- get big bonuses for getting the team to a bowl. Meanwhile, they make the school agree to a bowl's onerous and obsolete "bowl packages" they are forced to try and pawn to alums and fans, where for hundreds of dollars they could get tickets with hotel and car when they could spend a shitload less if they go online and go to scalpers. Any tickets and packages that aren't sold -- and there will be a lot of that -- will be money the school will have to eat. It's all bullshit that was exposed in the great book Death To The BCS, and the university is going ga-ga over this ripoff. You've got to be kidding me.
#-3: Gopher men's basketball (Re-Entry!). Myron Medcalf, men's college basketball writer for ESPN.com and former writer for our local Star Tribune, says that Tubby Smith is the coach that needs to win the most now. He says that this isn't a list of coaches on the hot seat, but come on, what the fuck's the difference?
Smith has to win now. He was supposed to win yesterday. But he did win Friday in their season opener, doubling American (how dare they do that the week we hold a presidential election?) 72-36. To tip fortunes in his favor for another consecutive year, he is padding his non-conference schedule with home games: He starts off with four at Williams Arena, including games against Toledo (tomorrow [Monday]; I might go) and Tennessee St. (Thursday).
Unlike their distaff analogues, the team has potential to make the NCAA Tournament; they are projected to be a middle-tier team behind B1G powers Indiana, Michigan, Michigan St. and Ohio St. But they also seem to be a middle-tier team, and Smith was brought in with the thought that he would do better than that. But they only have two Big Dance appearances in Smith's five years, and they didn't win either time. And who cares about their NIT run last year? They got blasted in the final, and besides, it's the fucking NIT.
The same thing I said about Borton I must say about Smith: When in the hell will Smith lose his job?
#-4: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -2). I still don't fucking understand why Alaska-Anchorage has a top-flight program in anything. It's in Alaska; the travel costs alone should be so prohibitive that the school should look twice about having athletics at all. Well, maybe they want to feel like they're a part of something, and it's always cold up there, so ... OK.
The U. at one time seemed to routinely whip the Seawolves. And it's not as if they got crushed in Anchorage this past weekend. But they give up one out of a possible four points in Saturday's 2-all tie. (Minnesota blanked UAA 4-0 Friday.) With the Goofers starting the Big Ten Men's Hockey Conference next year, at least they won't have to fly all the way to Anchorage for a long time.
Next up: Home to Wisconsin this weekend for two.
#-5: Timberwolves (Last Week: -1). Well, with their defeat at Toronto in the second game of the regular season, their hopes for a perfect season were over. But they finished the screening week (well week plus one; sorry, I've been so busy this weekend that I'm blogging this version of the WMNSS Sunday evening) 3-2, and with the team's two best players injured, that's pretty good.
Channels 4, 5 and 9 have Sunday night sports shows after the 10 o'clock news. I prefer Channel 5, even though it begins at 10:45 and lasts only 15 minutes, because host Joe Schmidt (a guy who I hated when I saw him for the first time decades ago for his schtick but now seems to be the most professional of the local sports anchors) invites journalists on to his show, not mush-mouthed athletes or analysts paid by the teams they cover. Judd Zulgad of the Strib was Schmidt's guest last week and they covered all the sports teams playing that weekend. Zulgad had two very good insights about the Woofie Dogs: The players on this year's team, unlike the detritus forming much of last year's club, shut up and know their roles; and Brandon Roy's knees look like they're really slowing him down. (By the way, the ending to Friday's Indiana win was fucking cray-cray, wasn't it?)
This week: at Dallas, then home to Charlotte and Golden State.
#-6: Vikings (Re-Entry!). Maybe Christian Ponder really is the problem. I praised his development, most notably his touch, in the win over San Francisco. But in the ViQueens' recent slide, the biggest problem has been the pop-gun offense. I may have been late to seeing Ponder's scary backsliding, but the bounce passes, inability to throw on-target downfield, and his flight instinct beating his flight instinct when he senses pressure has short-circuited this team.
The defense hasn't been playing bad. They lost to Seattle last Sunday 30-20, and with a competent performance by Ponder, they may very well have won that game. But like their previous defeat to Tampa Bay, the D got gashed left and right by the opponent's running game. I swear I thought Marshawn Lynch was done four years ago. Instead, Beast Mode may be the most popular sports figure in Seattle now.
Then again, maybe Percy Harvin is the problem. With him subtracted from the team because of an ankle injury, Ponder was forced to rely on other receivers, and himself; I think he threw to ten different people (one of them himself after a ball was batted back to him) in today's 34-24 win over Detroit. He was able to throw a little farther downfield to guys who got open. And, of course, it helps that Adrian Peterson can run for 170+ yards. Oh yeah, Jarius Wright might be the stretch threat Jerome Simpson was supposed to be.
There have been reports that Harvin was openly grousing, if not yelling, at Vikes Offensive Coordinator Bill Musgrave. I understand that the offense sucks, but I think everybody also understands he is the best athlete on the team, and they are trying to get the ball to him as much as possible without having every 11 defenders just hone in on him every game.
But maybe Harvin's outburst isn't justified. Maybe it's less showing leadership and passion and more him being an asshole. Remember, back in April reports came out that while he was at Florida, he beat the shit out of then-Gator OC Billy Gonzales. Unless he can prove that Gonzales had it coming (and I can give Harvin some leeway in what "it" entails), Harvin should be seen as nothing but an abusive prick who has absolutely no respect for authority figures. And maybe him being out of the gameplan is the best thing for the Vikings' offense to grow.
This week they're on a bye. And this allows me to ice my hands so I don't get carpal tunnel.
#-7: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -3). Now this is dispiriting. Back-to-back defeats at Michigan St. and Michigan (both OK teams, neither receiving a significant number of votes to even get a blurb in the latest AVCA Top 25, the latter a sweep) follows a win at Ohio St. when they dropped the first two sets.
They will surely drop from their #10 ranking, where they've been seemingly all season long. However, according to the NCAA's Ratings Percentage Index, the metric by which they seed the women's volleyball tournament, the Goofs are securely ensconced at #6, although that surely should drop because of their week. And once again, this doesn't feel like a team that can go far.
Their final two home games of the year come this week: Nebraska Friday (it's the perfect night for me to go, but I'm afraid the U. will get killed), Iowa Saturday.
#-Infinity: Gopher soccer (Last Week: -4). So they didn't make it. I don't think the university planned a tournament announcement watch party, so that's good.
But if you look at the field (and by the way, if you want to follow any sports tournament, you can do a hell of a lot worse than the interactive bracket furnished by the NCAA; it's big and clean, and live games are updated, at least I think), you will notice that Illinois made the field of 64. Remember that the last game the Goofers played was their Big Ten Tournament opening-round defeat to ... Illinois, one that they lost in penalty kicks 3-2 and thus in goals 3-2. The U. was seeded fourth, the Illini fifth. It appears as if their CVs, or at least the appearance of their entire profiles, are similar. Is it possible that that game was an elimination game? I think some of the players see it that way, and that's got to hurt. (By the way, Illinois is still alive in the tourney; they beat Missouri in the first round of the NCAAs on PKs, and will next face the most storied program in women's college soccer, North Carolina.)
The final book on this team's season: 6-4-1 in-conference, 11-7-2 overall, Sophomore Striker Taylor Uhl named to the All-B1G First Team.
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By the way, I apologize for the WMNSS being so long, even with the eight teams I had to write about. If I'm going to do this half a day after I'm supposed to, I might as well take my time, because late is late. I also apologize for my tone this blog post disparaging most of the entries, all of them associated with the U. However, I really don't need an excuse; I think what I said about the teams I slagged are very true.
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