#0: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -2). Could this be the best Gophers squad Tubby Smith has put together? Barring a complete meltdown in Big Ten play -- and don't totally discredit that; that is exactly what has happened to Smith's teams -- this squad's going to the Big Dance.
They scored a pair of resounding wins this week, at home to South Dakota St. (a task made easier because Jackrabbits Point Guard wunderkind Nate Wolters rolled his ankle and was kept out of the lineup) and at USC just last (Saturday) night (a Trojans team, by the way, one person I know was certain, certain, to be ticketed to the Sweet Sixteen this year). They are now 10-1, and routs over a pesky Cinderella and a road victory over a name school (that, granted, is not good) have to be good notches when the Selection Committee talks about a team's "overall body of work."
By the way, I give this squad a #0 for a milestone: The Gophers' win over the Trojans gave Smith his 500th victory in his career. If what I remember what I heard on WCCO correctly, he is the 91st coach to get that many wins in top-flight college basketball and the 23rd-fastest to reach that mark. Congratulations, Mr. Smith: We've had a lot of ups and downs with you here in Minnesota, but you've made it this far. Plus, you can put those downs in your rearview mirror if you finally live up to our dreams when you first arrived. But first, a beatdown of North Dakota St. at Williams Arena Tuesday.
#-1: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -4). It could've been a perfect sweep at Colorado College in the final series these two hated rivals will have as members of the WCHA. I was hanging out at a stripclub that I hadn't been to until recently. I was looking at ESPN to see if I could get a score on the Gopher volleyball tournament match (see the result below -- way below) and I glanced at the Fox Sports North feed, which was showing that the Goofs had a 4-3 lead very late in the third period.
I stare at ESPN a little more, don't see that volleyball was going to show up anytime soon on their ticker, and so I look back at the hockey game ... and see that the Tigers tied it up just before the game was over. They battled to a tie, and the U. won Friday's game 4-2, but that has to leave a bitter taste in their mouths. It certainly does in mine. And now I just saw that the team held a 4-1 lead heading into the third. Oh, you gotta be kidding me. ...
Next up, a break for the team, and for me doing this survey! Winter break and finals until the last weekend of the year, their special Mariucci Classic, which includes a rematch against defending champion -- and the team that curb-stomped them in their Frozen Four semifinal -- Boston College.
#-2: Timberwolves (Last Week: -3). OK, I can sense that the team has found a new equilibrium after the change agent that is Kevin Love. Boston pulled away from them on Wednesday, but they routed Philadelphia in Philadelphia Tuesday and Cleveland at the Bullseye Friday to go 2-1 this screening week. Alexey Shved, this guy ain't half bad. And things might get even better now that Ricky Rubio appears very close to coming back to playing. It might be another stimulus that throws the team's chemistry out of whack, resulting in losses in games they should win. But if they recover as quickly as they did after Love came back, it'll be worth it.
The Woofie Dogs host Denver Wednesday; the last time the Nuggets came here, it was the game Love shocked the world and came back to play in. Why not keep the same opponent to bring back the team's other big gun? It'd be poetic. The club also travels to New Orleans Friday and hosts Dallas Saturday.
#-3: Gopher women's basketball (Last week: -5). OK, a 12-point loss at #20 Kansas, followed by ass-kickings at home of lightly regarded Denver and Missouri-Kansas City. We know they can't beat really good teams and can dominate really bad teams. But I cannot get at read on how good this team really is. Can you? Does anyone care?
One final game before finals and Winter Break: At the Barn this (Sunday) afternoon against Robert Morris.
#-4: Gopher wrestling (Re-Entry!). I finally went to my first Minnesota wrestling match ... er, dual. I had bad memories when I had to wrestle for gym. There was this one time when my teacher paired me up with another guy who didn't want to wrestle and made us wrestle in front of the rest of the class. Shivers.
Anyway, I learned a lot of terms, such as "riding time" and "near fall." I also saw something I didn't need to learn: The Gophers losing. Yes, it was a very good team, then-fourth-ranked Oklahoma St. (at least according to one poll; that same poll had the Goofs third, so I'll just use that). But champion teams just don't let good teams come into their house and push them around, and the Cowboys did just that, winning 22-15.
There are ten matches, representing higher weight classes, and I think they always start with the scrawniest guys and go all the way up to heavyweight. It was the third match, the one at 141 lbs., that decided the upset. Individual wrestlers are also ranked, and Nick Dardanes was ninth in his weight class. Since his opponent, Julian Feikert, was unranked, it seemed as if he would at least put the Gophers up by a 9-0 team score. (Three points are the minimum a wrestler can get for his team. The first two U. grapplers won their matches [the one before Nick Dardanes was his brother, Chris], so Minnesota was staked an early 6-0 lead.) But 52 seconds into their match, Feikert caught Nick Dardanes slipping and somehow managed to pin him. That's, like, the most decisive way to win a match, and that gives a team a maximum of six points.
That tied the match up at 6, and then the next match, at 149, went how it was supposed to go: OSU's Jordan Oliver, ranked #2, pinned unranked Gopher Seth Lange. The Cowboys went up 12-6 and collected three more wins in a row before the U. finished the dual with three decisions featuring their best players. If Nick Dardanes did what was expected of him and just won by decision over Feikert, Minnesota would have beaten Oklahoma St. 18-16.
The Timberwolves and Minnesota women's basketball teams also went 2-1 this week, but seeing that loss in-person was the (albeit selfish) reason I put the U. rasslers behind them. It does not help, by the way, that last (Saturday) night the team's final player, heavyweight Tony Nelson, had to go to double overtime to outpoint his opponent in his match and break an 18-18 tie with 15th-ranked Oregon St. (They also routed Northwestern Friday.) Maybe this team is a clear notch below Penn St. and Iowa -- which, if true, is exactly the same spot they've been the past several years.
So maybe this really long Winter Break will be good for the team. They are done till New Year's Day, when they participate in the annual Southern Scuffle in Chattanooga, Tenn.
#-5: Vikings (Last Week: -6). While at the wrestling dual the PA announcer gave an update on the Vikings game going on ... 14-13 Vikings in the third??? That can't be right. So after the loss I walked over to Buffalo Wild Wings with the intention of at least getting a beer if the game was close.
Alas, at this point, it was not. They were down by two scores to Green Bay, and when Blair Walsh pushed a field goal attempt wide right, I went down to the bathroom to pee and then left.
Then I saw the highlights. Oh, we could've had this one. But that Christian Ponder interception in the Green Bay red zone was inexplicable, almost Favre-like. Not to say that a field goal there would've given the ViQueens a win. But it's getting to be more and more obvious that Ponder is not playing well at all, and this may seriously damage his future as a quarterback in the NFL. He doesn't have a whole lot of parts helping him, on both sides of the ball. But he hasn't demonstrated that he can lead a team and make plays on his own when you need someone to do that.
That someone right now is Adrian Peterson. Are you kidding me? He notched his longest touchdown run in his career, and I swear he had at least two longer than that. And the most surprising thing about his lead in the rushing category this year is that, at least to me, it seems as if he has lost a step. He doesn't look as fast as I remember him, and he seems to routinely get taken down from behind. But he's leading the league in rushing yards, and he's pushing off would-be tacklers like a beast. The guy is just bleepin' good.
I will be working today's (Sunday's) game against Chicago, assuming I make it through this blizzard that is in its full fury as I type this. If Ponder keeps producing nothing but three-and-outs, it could get very ugly in the Dome. Oh, and it doesn't help this team that their best receiver, Percy Harvin, was put on Injured Reserve this week and is done for the year.
#-Infinity: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -1). Did a great job of quieting the partisan West Lafayette crowd and downing Purdue in their Sweet Sixteen matchup in four sets.
I was hoping and giving the team a puncher's chance in beating the overall #1 seed, Penn St. I knew that Elite Eight matchup would be the first one yesterday (Saturday), but I forgot to check before going to the roller derby bout last (Saturday) night. It was at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and while you're in one of the exhibit halls and not in the actual halls, the only way you can access the Internet is if you pay for it.
So I had to wait till I got home to check ... and they lost. At least they took a set from them. Hey, what can you expect? The Penn St. program is currently the best in women's volleyball. And the U. traded coaches mid-season. Seeing the scores, that set they took was the second, and they won it handily, keeping the Nittany Lions down at 19.
It was the third set that was the difference. It was a back-and-forth affair, but Penn St. finally own out 26-24. As often is the case in volleyball matches, an underdog that loses a close set appears to have "blown their wad" and fades in the following set, and sure enough, they only got to 18 points in their final set of the season.
Maybe things will change now that Huge McCutcheon has a whole season to set his system and recruit. I don't know if he has anybody great coming in, but at least he still has Tori Dixon, who had a fantastic year killing, and Alexandra Palmer, his main Setter. They might now win the NCAA title next year, but they won't fall off, either. For right now, I am OK with that, even if this season is ultimately a failure because they did not win a championship.
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