It's an embarrassment of riches as to who claims the top spot. I will give it to the U.'s male icers, who wound up their last regular season playing in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association with a road sweep of Bemidji St. and, finally, caught St. Cloud St. on the last day of the regular season to claim a share of the McNaughton Trophy, the prize given to the WCHA regular season champion. It was a struggle to finally catch up to the Husky prey, even though St. Cloud St. clearly is an inferior team, so to be tied for first is an accomplishment that breaks the tie with all the other teams that did well. They also finish second in the two national polls behind Quinnipiac, another team whom I believe the Gophers would whip if they met in a tournament game.
For seeding purposes, Minnesota is only second because St. Cloud St. gets the tie-breaker, which is most wins. So they will face, yet again, Bemidji St., this time at Mariucci, this weekend in a best-two-out-of-three series to begin the WCHA Tournament. All three games are at home, so the Beavers are going to have to do what hasn't happened yet this season to advance: Win twice at Minnesota.
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -4). Well, not only did they kick off their Dome series against Western Illinois with a no-hitter by staff ace Tom Windle (a game I had thought about going to but didn't), they proceeded to sweep the Leathernecks all three games. (Correction from last week: Apparently this is not the first time a Minnesota pitcher has thrown a nine-inning no-hitter; some guy named Walfrid Mattson no-hit Wisconsin way back on June 3, 1931.) Sunday's finale was the closest as they erased an early 3-1 deficit with a three-run fourth inning to eke out a 5-3 win. Coupled with a Wednesday victory at home over Hamline and this may be the first time they've gone 4-0 in a screening week since the WMNSS began.
Does this mean anything for any College World Series hopes? Probably not. But it's still a hell of a weekend. And like I said in my previous blog post about Windle, maybe he can repeat that feat this Friday as the U. host a three-game set with Indiana St. to end their 17-game homestand. They will also sneak in a midweek two-game series against Nebraska-Omaha tonight and tomorrow afternoon.
#-3: Gopher wrestling (Re-Entry!). Well, the good news is they snuck past Iowa in the Big Ten Wrestling Championships in Champaign, Ill., over the weekend. Unfortunately, the bad news is they still failed to win, getting crushed by Penn St., 151-139, Cael Sanderson and the Nittany Lions' third consecutive conference title. Head Coach J Robinson was named Co-Head Coach Of The Year with Sanderson, but let's face it -- this is the hierarchy in the B-1-G for the intermediate future, Penn St. first and everybody else last.
Congratulations go out to the U.'s Tony Nelson, who won his second straight conference title at Heavyweight. Nelson was the #1 seed going into the bracket, and he was able to play to seed. What is more impressive is Dylan Ness, who won the championship at 149 despite being only seeded third. I was able to catch the end of his match while working out Sunday afternoon. He faced Nebraska's Jake Sueflohn, the 4-seed who, like Ness, upset a higher-seeded wrestler in the semifinals. In the first period, Sueflohn had Ness on the mat. But somehow Ness flipped the script on Sueflohn and was able to pin him at 3:27. I don't know all the nuances of wrestling, but I know that that was awesome.
What is not awesome are the other eight grapplers not winning. But let's see where each was seeded, and if he finished above, at or below seed:
- Kevin Steinhaus (at 184) and Scott Schiller (197) were both seeded second and lost in the final. Don't know if they lost to the 1-seed in their respective classes, but they themselves wrestled to seed.
- Cody Yohn (165) won the third-place game while seeded fifth. Good!
- Nick Dardanes (141) won the third-place game while seeded second. Bad!
- Chris Dardanes, Nick's brother, lost the third-place match as a 6-seed. OK.
- Danny Zilverberg -- did I see this guy when I saw Minnesota's match against Oklahoma St.? Who is this guy? -- came into the tournament as the 8-seed at 157 and won the consolation match. Alright.
- David Thorn (125) was seeded seventh but finished sixth. Nice.
- Logan Storley (174) was the top man at his weight and finished seventh. Oof, that's ... not good.
#-4: Vikings (Re-Entry!). I am shocked, shocked, that there are some people who are pissed at the team for trading away Percy Harvin. How? He sounds like an asshole -- remember, this is the guy who coldcocked his position coach while at Florida and was allowed to get away with it -- who, now that he's been traded, the media has come out with a lot of stories about how he clashed with Head Coach Leslie Frazier and was just a dick. Harvin ass-kissers say that he's a once-in-a-lifetime talent whose attitude you massage and just deal with because he's so transcendent on the field. No you don't, and also, you don't know if he wants to be on the field. The ankle injury that put him on IR and cut his season short was in fact a way to get his toxicity away from the team. And General Manager Rick Spielman's public soothing of Harvin was a smokescreen as he and Harvin's agent found a way to end this relationship.
The Vikings getting what they got just for an oft-injured headcase is the best thing about this trade. Harvin goes to Seattle in exchange for the Seahawks' first- and seventh-round picks in this year's draft, plus a "mid-round" pick in next year's draft. You never get a first-round pick for a player, never. But somehow Minnesota managed to do that. Now, is it possible that Harvin becomes the next big Wide Receiver and serves as the game-changing piece of a Seattle offense that reaches the Super Bowl? Sure. But from what we're now hearing, the damage Harvin did to this team is irreparable, and even if he does become a man, he'll have to do it somewhere else. And in the meantime, the Vikes now have two first-round picks in the draft! Sure, they're in the twenties, and this is a draft that has some depth compared to average at this point but is considered weak overall. But maybe they can find two gems there. Or, they can trade one and move down and get more picks. Or, they combine the two and move up. There is flexibility, and all because the team moved trash that another team considers treasure. This is a great trade even if the draft picks they get don't pan out, and if they do, this could be awesome.
#-5: Wild (Last Week: -2). It is exciting to see a team, maybe even a franchise, grow up and be good in front of your eyes. I hope to Buddha I'm not gullible when I say that this is happening to the Wild. They finished 2-1 this week, surging to the top of the Northwest Division and, at least right now, holding down the third spot in the Western Conference standings.
They have played great lately. They followed a shootout win in Nashville (where Defenseman Ryan Suter played for the first time after leaving the organization he came up with for the Wild) with a thorough, 4-2 victory over the best team in the Northwest, Vancouver, at Xcel. There are even some encouraging signs in the club's loss to Chicago Tuesday: The Blackhawks scored four straight after the first period, but they came back to score twice to make it a "respectable" 5-3 loss. Plus, Chicago's regulation unbeaten streak ended the next game, in Colorado, so you can say the Wild softened the 'Hawks up for the Avalanche to take advantage. OK, that's preposterous.
What is not preposterous is the Wild's offense, which is not great, but far from the sputtering, two-goals-is-a-miracle slog that marred the squad the beginning of the year. Best of all, it's great to see the young talent paying their dues at the NHL level and, more importantly, getting it. Jason Zucker, Charlie Coyle, Jonas Brodin and even Jared Spurgeon have all played very well as of late, finally showing signs that the Wild's youth movement is starting to bud. They may not topple Chicago or Anaheim this year, but I am more encouraged than ever that the future for this franchise is bright.
They host those Ducks tonight, then have a home-and-home with The Bastard Quebec Nordiques Thursday and Saturday before visiting Vancouver Monday.
#-6: Timberwolves (Last Week: -7). We are now in the Mr. Hyde side of the WMNSS.
A 1-2 week; a victory Wednesday over Washington prevented the Woofie Dogs from being on a nine-game losing streak. Ricky Rubio still remains sensational despite not seeing vast improvement in his scoring touch. Derrick Williams continues to show potential when Ricky-Ricky is in the starting lineup. Also, most of the team remains on the injured list. And Alexey Shved continues to suck.
Team's at 21 wins. I'm still not sure they can reach 25.
They have possibly the busiest week of their season. They host the best team in the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs, tonight. Then at Indiana and Houston, home vs. New Orleans, and at Memphis.
#-7: Swarm (Last Week: -5). Last week I forgot to tease this week's game; sorry. They visited Calgary Friday. And they lost at Calgary Friday, 19-15. Despite career performances for Acting Captain Callum Crawford (three goals, ten points) and Ryan Benesch (four goals, seven points), what did the Smarm in was the second quarter, when the Roughnecks outscored them 9-4; they tied in goals in the first and third periods and outscored Calgary in the final quarter, 4-3.
They are now tied with Colorado for last place in the Western Division, and if the playoffs were to start today ... well, first of all it'd surprise the shit out of all of us because the playoffs aren't supposed to start today, but the Smarm would be the odd team out of the playoffs. They host Washington Saturday.
#-8: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: 0). OK, now this team is really pissing me off. They squander the historic upset of #1 Indiana and the Senior Day throttling of Penn St. with two awful losses against the dregs of the league, Nebraska and Purdue. The loss to the Cornhuskers, the worse of the two opponents, was by two points. These Goofs went 10-for-20 from the line. They do even decently from the charity stripe and they win. But no, this goddamn team can't convert free points.
Nor do they show the willingness to play to their own level, only their opponents'. That's the far more frustrating thing about this team, which were absolutely embarrassed by the Boilermakers by 16. As with most of their defeats this season, they started off slowly and remained passive with the ball the remainder of the game.
After that loss, Tubby Smith called his team "the worst defensive team I've ever coached." Well, you're coaching them. Despite having the second-toughest strength of schedule and an RPI of 23 (according to Eamonn Brennan of ESPN.com) or 24 (so says Andy Glockner of SI.com), they are not considered locks yet. In fact, if I'm not seeing things, the advanced metric site Seven Overtimes says the Gophers are, get this, one of the "First Four Out."
I have absolutely no fucking idea how this bunch of guys will do the rest of the way. Maybe this team has the problem of playing up or down to their opponent. Therefore, the neutral court setting vs. teams that are good or better than them in the Big Ten and NCAA (cross your fingers) Tournaments will mean we will see this team at their best -- aggressive, athletic, swarming. Or maybe they're just a bunch of fucking malcontents who'll pack it in if they're not up by 10 after the first TV timeout. They begin the conference tourney -- as a 9-seed, for God's sake (this team was once ranked eighth in the nation!!!) -- against another team that seems to be in but is not a lock yet, Illinois. I'll say this: If Minnesota loses on Thursday, and if they don't get in despite a season that's much better than most of the other bubble teams, it will feel like they deserve to not get in, you know?
#-Infinity: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -1). Well, at least I can stop talking about this team till the late fall. An adage often trotted out is that it's very difficult to beat a team three times in one season. This godforsaken team fell into that adage. Despite sweeping Ohio St. in the regular season and getting the better seed in their 8/9 game, they got clowned by the Buckeye in the first round of the B1G Thursday, 58-47.
So now what? The NCAAs are out, obviously. If they make it to the WNIT (they finish with a record of 18-13), I guess that'll be better than their CBI title last year. They have Rachel Banham, the program's in no academic or off-the-court trouble ... and that's it? Pam Borton won't be let go? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Does no one give a fuck that this program has slipped back into irrelevance?
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