The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

Positive Numbers: Lynx (Last Week: -2).

I was wrong.  My fears that they would get wiped out by the Atlanta Dream, depriving them of a Women's National Basketball Association for the second year in a row, were overblown.  Way overblown.  They followed a 25-point crushing in Game 1 with another 25-point crushing in Tuesday's Game 2, and then they finished off the Dream and the WNBA season by beating Atlanta 86-77 Thursday to sweep the WNBA Finals 3-0.

The Lynx won the way they won all season: Balance.  The starting five of Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Lindsay Whalen, Rebekkah Brunson and Janel McCarville -- the five best players that play together on the team, all of them healthy when it mattered the most -- all scored in double digits in the closeout game.  Head Coach Cheryl Reeve kept the rotation short; she basically used seven players during the postseason.  But each of them did what they needed to do when the team needed her the most.  In a continuing changing of roles, WNBA Finals Most Valuable Player Maya Moore became the lead scorer.  Meanwhile, the Lynx MVP from two years ago, Augustus, shifted her duties to the defensive end, primarily locking down Dream #1 Angel McCoughtry; she shot just 28.5% for the series.  You could make a very good case that she should have been MVP again.  And let us not forget the steady battlefield presence of Whalen (whom I was wrong about; she is both durable and steady at the point), the rebounding prowess of Brunson, which I think gets lost in the shuffle too often, and the shot- and play-altering presence of McCarville, who was the post patrol the team needed after Taj McWilliams-Franklin retired.

Once again, I ask all Twin Cities sports fans to take a look at the Lynx.  Unlike the ViQueens, the Twinks, the Mild, the Woofie Dogs, the Goofs and even the Smarm, this team, after years of mediocrity and worse, has proven that talent, smarts and hustle could equal a dominating team in Minnesota.  Those who diminish the team's feat of winning two titles in three years are misogynists who think they're better off alone in their basements talking about the shitty men's professional sports teams because girl's sports aren't real sports.  Guys, we are in the middle of what could be considered a dynasty.  Assuming all five starters come back healthy and don't begin to age rapidly, why not think they can lift the trophy again?  And why not pile on the bandwagon of a winner?

By the way, because they won a championship, they are off The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey until they end a season short of a championship.  Which means that, for the second summer in three years, the Twinks will be the only entrant for many surveys.

#-1: Gopher men's hockey (Re-Entry!).  They start off a new season, and a new era, by winning the tournament that opens up the entire top-flight college hockey season, the Ice Breaker Tournament, over the weekend.  And against, uh, not quite the top tier of talent, the host Gophers crushed Mercyhurst 6-0 and outlasted New Hampshire 3-2.

That's a good start for a program that is expected to fall back a bit, two years after reaching the Frozen Four but returning from an embarrassing overtime upset loss in the first round of last year's NCAA Tournament to a 4-seed that, surprisingly, won the championship -- Yale.  Instead of trying to pick up the pieces of a shameful exit, many on the team decided to turn pro, echoing the troubling days when the Gophers failed to make the tourney because Assistant Coach Mike Guentzel wasn't there.  He's still there, but the players are gone.  I don't get it.  Whatever the case, there is turnover, and at the very least they're a year away from contending for a title.

This weekend they start WCHA play early when they visit Bemidji St. ... wait a second, they're not in the WCHA anymore!!!  Oh, silly me.

#-2: Wild (Last Week: -5).  I was not aware of this until this week.  Do you remember two years ago, when the Mild had that fantastic start to the season, even made it to the best record in the National Hockey League, and after a tough loss to The Bastard Atlanta Thrashers they pudded out so fucking bad that they missed the playoffs entirely?  Advanced sabermetrics, the wave of newfangled information that has overtaken baseball and is about to annex basketball, foresaw the team's collapse.  There were a few that saw this, some earlier and some maybe better, but I'm going to link to SB Nation's Derek Zona because he distilled other people's statistics and postulated that the number of shots the 2011 Wild took were so low that the ramifications from not having the puck enough during the game to take more shots were going to come back and bite the club in the ass.  Zona published this piece November 30, 2011.

I have no idea how the team's Fenwick Tied is so far this season, but I think any enthusiasm in the wake of its recent turnaround should be tempered because of the chicken-choke they pulled two years ago.  Don't get me wrong; ripping off three wins in a row, all in regulation, is a great thing.  But they are suffering through early injury woes, including the loss of Niklas Backstrom.  In fact, the team is going not with back-up Josh Harding but Darcy Kuemper for tonight's tilt with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Oh, and speaking of the Leafs ... Grantland's Sean McIndoe believes that this year's Toronto team is the Minnesota Wild two years ago.  What a coincidence.  Most of its rabid fan base, like the less rabid fans of the Mild, are up in arms that McIndoe thinks the Maple Leafs are going to face a nasty regression to the mean because they suck possessing.  They probably don't understand advanced stats like Fenwick or Corsi, but after seeing a few articles (after spending some nights in stops and starts since I became aware of hockey sabermetrics a few years ago) I'm starting to believe that these metrics are onto something.  And if that's the case, maybe the Wild will get this game tonight.

They began a four-game road trip last night in Buffalo, where longtime Sabre Jason Pominville scored the game-winner against the organization he came up with.  The squad finishes the road trip this screening week, with trips to Tampa Bay and Florida.

#-3: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -4).  Do moral victories count?  After getting their asses handed to them in Nebraska, I'm sort of OK with them going down to defeat in #4 Penn St. because they lost in five and won sets after being down 1-0 and 2-1.  That's a sign of fortitude, I guess.  However, I do not want to give short shrift to them sweeping at #14 Ohio St.  Middle Blocker Tori Dixon won Big Ten Defensive Player Of The Week honors for her efforts in the program's 1-1 week.

OK, so this team is still very good but not championship material, right?  They are home this weekend for games against Michigan St. Thursday (a match that recently was moved back an hour because it's going to be televised on ESPN2) and Michigan Saturday.

#-4: Gopher soccer (Last Week: -1).  The side's unbeaten streak ended at three after dropping a 2-0 decision at Northwestern.  And at this point it'd be a good time to check how they're doing in the Ratings Percentage Index, the oft-derided measurement that the NCAA probably uses as the main, if not the sole, determinant in picking the women's soccer field for the tournament.

And as of press time, they are ... 21st!  That's really good!  Wins at home against ranked Penn St. and at ranked Michigan, along with an unbeaten (6-0-1) record at Robbie Stadium, gives the team a lot of cushion in which to maintain good stead for the postseason, even with the setback against the Wildcats.

I should be free to see this weekend's games against Iowa and Nebraska.  Wow, I've only missed one home game so far this season.  And I haven't yet been to a volleyball game yet.

#-5: Swarm (Re-Entry!).  Their season doesn't start for another two months.  But it seems as if it's going to be their last.

That's the sense you get after seeing this (desperate) letter from John and Andy Arlotta, owners of the Swarm.  In reaction to main sponsor Treasure Island Resort & Casino pulling its money, the Arlottas posted (and e-mailed) this call to action.  I take a few things away from this missive:

1. I've started to realize that I'm not all that enamored with, well, everything about "it."  The team is good, but when all but one of the nine teams make the playoffs, everyone can say they've been a recent playoff team.  They have yet to win a championship, and until they get that, they really have no roots in this area, even if this year celebrates their tenth.
2. Last year I finally was honest with myself about how much I hated the atmosphere.  The public address announcer is loud and obnoxious and never shuts up.  The disk jockey changes songs every five fucking seconds.  People -- Swarm event officials as well as the crowd -- are whipped into a frenzy to the point where the game is a sideshow.  I guess they're doing all of that because the team isn't enough to bring in the dough.
3. For the past few years they've traded veterans in exchange for draft picks.  I thought they were taking advantage of the shallow number of teams and banking on getting good talent for cheap.  Turns out they've been hemorrhaging money for years.  They don't have the money to keep their expensive (at least for the National Lacrosse League) veterans on the payroll.

Will this work?  Minneapolis-St. Paul is a growing area, but I still don't believe the Twin Cities is large enough for all four professional sports, let alone so many minor sports.  The Lynx have the backing of Timberwolves Owner Glen Taylor, at least for now.  Minnesota FC United have been skirting with oblivion the past couple years, and they've actually been pretty good.  And does anyone remember the Ripknees?  As large and noisy as I thought the Swarm crowd have been, I had the nagging feeling that things weren't as rosy underneath.  This only confirms that the Arlottas have been in the red for a long time.  And I don't know, y'all, but I don't think this plea for help, mainly a goal of getting 1.500 more season ticket holders to a total of 4,000. will work.  This is the beginning of the end, y'all.

#-Infinity: Vikings (Last Week: -3).  I was at that game, and I am absolutely stunned that, even with the struggles they've had this year, they did not appear to expend a fucking ounce of energy as they got dick-smacked by a not very good Carolina team.  No doing this for Adrian Peterson's illegitimate son; the ViQueens acted as if they didn't give a fuck.  No pressure on the quarterback, Matt Cassel was terrible, and neither side of the ball showed any clutch on third down, either converting or stopping.  The Star Tribune said it best on its sports front page: "Look, A Zombie Crawl."  Priceless.

Don't know what else to say besides that this shit is disgusting.  They next play the Monday night game at the Giants, a team that is winless, and yet might get off the schneid against our Purple.