So how do I choose among a bunch of teams that had very good screening weeks? Well, this is when my prosaic criterion of ranking the teams by weekly winning percentage, followed by number of wins and popularity in the local market as tiebreakers, makes things a lot easier. Besides, this week has been so good that I am re-using both Positive Numbers and 0 for the second consecutive week. Have I done that before? I don't think so. Guess this is a first as well.
After it all shakes out, I'm giving this week's top spot to the local professional hockey team, which is on a tear. In front of hopefully larger and more boisterous crowds at Xcel Energy Center, they outlasted Montreal 4-3 Monday and ripped New Jersey 4-0. They've won five of their past six games (legitimately, no overtimes or shootouts needed). And Jason Pominville, who has ignited the squad's offense the past two weeks, was named the National Hockey League's #1 Star for the week. Now that hasn't meant the club is on top of the Central Division; they're behind stalwart Chicago and one of the surprise teams in the league, Colorado. But I'll take a hot start over a cold one.
They finish their four-game homestand against Calgary tonight. They then have a short road trip to Washington Thursday and Carolina Saturday.
#0: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -3). Beating ranked opponents on the road is a good thing. This team did that, outlasting then-#16 Purdue in five sets Friday. Then they followed that up by sweeping unranked Indiana the next night. The Big Ten conference is such that even a program in a down year, which the Hoosiers are this year, has a chance to upset a ranked team on their home floor, and it's doubly dangerous since the Gophers came off a tough victory against a very good team the night before. In some ways, the Gophers' three-set stomping of the Hoosiers on the back end of back-to-back matches is more impressive.
The U. which rose from 10 to 9 as a result of their perfect week, they are at the Sports Pavilion the next two weeks. They have Iowa Friday, then 11th-ranked Nebraska Sunday afternoon.
#-1: Gopher football (Last Week: Positive Numbers). Don't take this the wrong way, but even players on the football team know that, by all rights, they should have lost to Indiana Saturday. Late in the third they led the Hoosiers -- who, like the Gophers, are a team that has no recent success but this year has caught fire and has turned into an outfit worth watching -- 35-13. But Indiana Head Coach Kevin Wilson (is that his name?) has gotten this IU team flinging the ball all over the place on offense, and his team managed to four straight touchdowns to take the lead late in the game.
This Gophers team, however, showed some gumption after blowing a big lead. Philip Nelson, who took the vast majority of snaps in the game and may have finally supplanted Mitch Leidner as the #1 Quarterback for the rest of the year, gunned a pass half the length of the field to Maxx Williams to take back the lead at 42-39. It was his fourth TD pass of the game.
But Indiana had three minutes left, and that was plenty of time to not just tie but win the game. At the Minnesota 9 on 2nd-and-Goal with 25 seconds remaining, Hoosier QB Nate Sudfeld lateraled to Tevin Coleman, but he bobbled the ball to the turf. Unfortunately, in a bad college player mistake, Coleman thought it was a forward pass and thus an incompletion, and thus gave up on the play. Linebacker Aaron Hill knew he had to play through the whistle, however, and he scooped up the ball in front of Coleman and started to rumble down the field to ice the game for Minnesota, which has won its third straight B1G game for the first time in five years.
Believe it or not, this team is 7-2. Even more gob-smacking, the increasingly smug and insufferable Stewart Mandel, college football writer at SI.com, currently projects that the Gophers would -- get this -- play in the Gator Bowl. Against South Carolina and Jadaveon Clowney, possibly the top pick in next year's National Football League Draft. On New Year's Day. I have to repeat this -- on New Year's Day. They have never played a New Year's Day bowl in my fucking lifetime. This team might be better than any squad in the Glen Mason Era. Shit, I could be really in orbit right now, but even with this lucky break, this club has the potential to be very, very good.
This Saturday Nelson, conference Co-Offensive Player Of The Week, and Punter Peter Mortell, conference Special Teams Player Of The Week, invite Penn St. to Das Bank. Six weeks ago this seemed like a ritual home invasion. Now I am very certain the U. will win. Think about that.
#-2: Timberwolves (Re-Entry!). Well, they can't go 82-0, courtesy of a 93-92 loss in Cleveland after a furious Wolves rally. But they started off their week by winning their first three games of the season for the first time in a dozen years.
It's extremely early, but if this is the offense T-Wolves fans will see if nobody is injured ... holy shit. That O has the means to come back by utilizing the three, which Kevin Love (the first Western Conference Player Of The Week in the National Basketball Association this season) did in forcing overtime in the regular season opener at home against Orlando, keep the ball moving to the open man, as evident in their 100-81 destruction of the Oklahoma City Thunder and, probably more impressively, continuing to hold off pressure, as they did in leading from the middle of the first quarter all the way to the end in their 109-100 win over New York at Madison Square Garden.
Downsides? Besides a rejuvenated and refocused Corey Brewer, who is coming back to the team that drafted him as a man assured in his role as defensive stopper, I still don't know how the defense is going to fare. And the threat of injuries will continue to loom. Ronny Turiaf got injured in the game against The Bastard Seattle SuperSonics, and beyond Kevin Martin, there are no good options at the 2-guard spot. But I think I can say that this team, as constructed, is the best Timberwolves edition since the MV3 days a decade ago.
This week: hosting Golden State Wednesday and Dallas Friday, then having a two-night residency at Staples: Lakers Sunday, Clippers Monday.
#-3: Gopher soccer (Last Week: 0). OK, so I got all confused coming into this week about the potential scenarios for the Big Ten Women's Soccer Tournament. While looking at the standings before the final games were being played, it looked as if the U. had the eighth and final tournament berth, but had to sweat out games by Iowa and Wisconsin. If both teams won, the Gophers would be out of it. If one of the teams tied, well, it gets complicated and I didn't truly know the implications. But both teams played the scrubs of the conference (I think it's Purdue and Northwestern, respectively), and when I saw both teams indeed win (and comfortably), I thought that was the end of the season for them.
But then I saw that the team actually is headed to the tournament. Confused, I went to the Big Ten sports website (which, in my opinion, is not very good because it is not user-friendly and does not lay out information in an easy fashion) again. That is when I noticed there is a column for points. Like all soccer leagues around the world, they don't necessarily go by record but by points, namely three for a win and one for a tie. The Gophers ended up tied with Ohio St. with 14 points (and 4-5-2 records). But because they lost 2-0 at Michigan (which is ranked eighth in this week's NSCAA Coaches' Poll), they finished with a worse overall record than the Gophers, which I'm guessing is the tiebreaker. I also did not take into account the chance that one of the teams above the U. going into the final games of the season could drop into or even fall behind Minnesota. I just assumed that after dropping their season finale at home to Illinois (a team that needed to win to get into the tournament -- and BTW, they're the 5-seed) Halloween afternoon, all was lost. Not so.
And even if they didn't make the conference tournament, I'm not sure that they would not have made the NCAA Tournament. In fact, they might be a lock. There is very little women's soccer bracketology (hmmm ... that might be the next big thing, I have to take a lot at that), but there is one brave soul that looks through RPI and has created a (somewhat unreadable) spreadsheet ranking the teams by certainty of making the tourney, from #1 seed contender to on the bubble. Through the final games of the regulars season, it looks like this compiler, a huge women's soccer fan, thinks the Gophers have an outside chance of clinching not just a #4 but a #3 seed for the tournament. (Unlike the basketball tournament, only the top 16 teams in the tourney are ranked, and there are four 1's through 4's, one of each seed in each quarter of the tournament. The rest of the teams are placed in the bracket based largely on geography.) Regardless, as you can possibly see, they are well clear of any danger of being left out -- I think. That's what winning conference games on the road, most notably in Michigan, will do for you.
Might as well make some noise in the B1G Tourney in Champaign, Ill., though, huh? They begin Wednesday against top seed Nebraska, a team seeded ahead of the 2-seed Wolverines but ranked well behind them in the NSCAA Top 25 (18th to be exact), which is odd. They take days off for subsequent rounds; semifinals are Friday while the final is Sunday afternoon.
#-4: Vikings (Last Week: -Infinity). First of all, two things that differentiate my take on the ViQueens' 27-23 to the Dallas Cowboys from all the rest:
- Adrian Peterson's Beast Mode run? He was Bush-pushed by his teammate, Tight End Chase Ford. Otherwise he would have been stopped short of the goal line. It's totally legal in the National Football League for Ford to do that, at least now, but even Paul Allen, play-by-play radio voice of the Vikings and well-noted ass-kisser of the Purple, pointed that out.
- Everybody's making too big of a goddamn deal out of Blair Walsh missing that point after. Yes, I have heard that it's only the third missed PAT of the season. But it turns out that when the Vikes got the ball back trailing by four, they were too far away by the end of the game to go for a game-tying field goal. If Walsh makes that point after, Christian Ponder still has to heave that Hail Mary ... which turned out to be ten yards short of the end zone.
Ponder played decently. So did the offensive line, although Jamarcus Webb failed to stop that defender from getting to Ponder in the end zone and swatting the ball out of his hands for a Dallas TD. Even the defense played well. For all those reasons I decided to show a little mercy and pull them out of the -Infinity spot this organization still deserves, at least for this week. Nevertheless, when it came to crunch time and both sides of the ball could have iced this surprise road victory away, the offensive play-calling got bizarre, Ponder couldn't drive the ball down the field, the rest of the offense reverted to their sputtering ways, and, most embarrassingly of all, the defense went back to its saloon door mentality and allowed Tony Romo and friends to march down the field for the game-winning score.
They host Washington for the Thursday Night game. I get to be there, but I'll be working, so my time will not be wasted.
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