#-1: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -3). Monday night's results, where the Timberwoofs, Mild and Goofer men's basketball team all lost (thereby burnishing the reputation of the Twin Cities as Loserville, USA) has soured me just before I do this week's survey. Why am I putting the Goofer women's b-ball team on top just for winning two games at Williams over a Kansas team that is not the men's team and a Navy squad that, God bless them, serves our country but is safely disregarded on the court? Because there may not be another chance for this squad to be on top of a WMNSS the rest of their season. Oh: Freshman Center Amanda Zahui B. was named Big Ten Player and Freshman Of The Week for her performances in beating the Jayhawks and Middies, so there's that.
They finish their three-game homestand tonight vs. Loyola before quickly heading out to Honolulu and enjoying Thanksgiving on the eve of the Waikiki Beach Marriott Rainbow Wahine Showdown, where they have games Friday through Sunday against, respectively, Chattanooga, Colorado St., and Hawai'i.
#-2: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -5). They went on the road and beat the two Michigan teams, both of which are ranked in the Top 20. Ashley Wittman is this week's Conference Player Of The Week, and Tori Dixon (whom I did not know till recently is the daughter of Minnesota Vikings lineman David Dixon) is the league's Defensive Player Of The Week. So why are they not #1 here? Well, a bunch of reasons. First, I'm still pessimistic this generates momentum to a tournament run that advances them past the Sweet Sixteen zone they are permanently in (it's a gripe, always being very good without being close to being a championship contender, that I wrote about in last week's WMNSS). Second, I'm pretty sure I put this team on top of a survey, so I feel like spreading the love around. Third, I have other shit I need to do, so I'm not going to second-guess myself. Fourth and finally, my fucking modem's still on the blitz and I misread this team's schedule: I thought they swept Michigan and beat Michigan St. in four at home, which is two home wins, the same as the Gopher women's basketball team, and therefore I thought I had better justification to put the volleyball squad second. By the time I realized my mistake, I had already written out my blurb on the Gopher women's b-ball team. Do I want to change it? Nah -- please see my third reason.
Oh: They finish the regular season this week with games tomorrow at home against Wisconsin (which I will take in, the first and only volleyball game I will get to) and Saturday on the road against Illinois.
#-3: Gopher wrestling (Re-Entry!). We welcome back the University of Minnesota grapplers, which start the season ranked second in the country. Per usual, they start off the season with a pair of victories (both at the Sports Pavilion) over then-20th-ranked Purdue and Wyoming by a combined score of 76-8. Wow. But, like with the U. volleyball team, these guys will always be very good, yet I can never, never see them winning a national championship ever again. I would like to be proved wrong. Their first road dual (they technically began their season with a pair of neutral-site, multi-team invitationals) comes Saturday at Oregon St.
#-4: Wild (Last Week: Positive Numbers). Hmmm ... after what turned out to be a very good start to November, their 2-2 screening week is notable for their two losses, a 6-2 crushing by Montreal and a 3-0 of St. Louis, which finally might win their first Stanley Cup in team history. So far, scoring has not been a problem, unlike it has virtually this franchise's entire existence. A couple of blips on the road isn't the worst thing in the world, it just reminds fans of a chronic woe.
On the upside, they outlasted Ottawa and came back to defeat The Bastard Atlanta Thrashers in a shootout. It's not exactly a clean win, but it's a win nevertheless. This week they come home to play The Bastard Winnipeg Jets, take in a home-and-home against The Bastard Quebec Nordiques, then host Philadelphia.
#-5: Vikings (Last Week: -4). I spent Sunday afternoon at a rare place: At home with my parents as they were preparing to leave. I caught the first half, where Christian Ponder was bootlegging and throwing with confidence, and Scott Tolzein, who wasn't having the worst day in my opinion, not able to hit the receiver in the clutch. And I was stroking myself thinking that the Vikes had a chance, beyond a puncher's, to upset the Pack in Green Bay.
And then I hear as we're getting into their minivan that fucking Matt Flynn comes in. Matt Flynn, the Quarterback who made millions out of coming in to give Aaron Rodgers a break in a last, meaningless game in the regular season and tie franchise records, the guy who then parlayed that to what was supposed to be the starting job with Seattle, only to lose it to Russell Wilson during training camp, the guy who washed out with fucking Oakland. And somehow Flynn starts moving the Packers down the field and scoring. It's like he was the key that unlocked Green Bay's offense, although he may have needed them as much as they needed him.
By the time I got done dropping them off and heading off to the Mall Of America to start celebrating Seven Weeks Of Freedom, they tied the game up at 23 after Minnesota led at one point 20-7. That's when I knew they were going to lose, so I decided to try and take a nap and wait long enough until after the loss. After 20 minutes of being startled by loud kids, accelerating muscle cars and vehicle alarms that got set off by both, I thought waiting until a quarter to 5 was enough to avoid seeing the choke in-person.
But by the time I got to Hooters, I saw about two dozen people standing just outside, looking at the TV screens the breastaurant has. It's not over? Oh, great, I thought to myself, I'll get to see the loss right before my eyes after all. But no, there were mere seconds left and I saw that each team managed to score a field goal in overtime. One dumb ViQueens dump-off-turned-aborted-hook-and-ladder ended the extra session, and for the first time in 35 years (and in my waking existence), the Purple end a game in a tie. That tie back in 1978, by the way, was against the Packers.
Despite the novelty of it all, I got a blue balls kind of feeling to the game, you know? I'm used to either feeling good after a win or screaming bloody murder after a loss, but this? How should you react? I will say, however, that after a lot of reflection, this should be seen as a loss because they had the lead and lost it. And as much as you can nitpick on Ponder not being able to convert on third down, or even mishandling the ball during the team's collapse, it's the defense that yet again broke when they needed to stop the opponent. Remember that in the team's only two wins, against Pittsburgh and Washington, both teams were in the red zone and poised to score touchdowns, only to fail in the final seconds. Green Bay didn't fail here, and so they managed to avert a loss.
I will be at Sunday's game against Chicago. Jay Cutler still isn't ready to come back, so under center for the Bears will be Josh McCown ... 'memba him, Vikings fans? He's the son-of-a-bitch who, while with Arizona, scored the last-play touchdown to knock the Vikings out of the playoffs. As Paul Allen said: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
#-6: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -1). Goddamn Bulldogs. I hated this rival to the Gopher men's hockey team more than any other, for some reason. Maybe I could not understand when I was young how there could be two Universities of Minnesota, and I considered this zombie U. in Duluth -- in Duluth?! -- to be impostors deserving nothing more than scorn. And when they beat my Gophers, which seemed to be often, I hated them even more.
Well, even though we escaped them to venture into the new hockey version of the Big Ten, we still play them from time to time. After all, we are in the same state. And even though the real U. took the first game 6-1, UMD blitzed us right back in the second game, 6-2. Hrumph.
Despite the split at Mariucci, the Gophers cling to #1 in the polls -- although, in the USCHO.com poll, they beat out St. Cloud St. by a single point while trailing the Huskies in first-place votes. And so the male icers begin a new era in program history, kind of. This weekend, Thanksgiving Weekend, the Gophers (and freshman Defenseman Michael Brodzinski, named this week the Big Ten's Third Star) begin play in this new conference at home against ... Wisconsin, the school that moved with them from the WCHA. I think I'll catch the historic first game late Black Friday afternoon, but it'd be nicer if it were against one of the other teams. They'll also play early Saturday evening.
#-7: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: 0). Look, I didn't think this team was going to be Indiana perfect. And even though they started off the week with resounding wins over Coastal Carolina and Wofford, six of their first seven games were played at home. So I wasn't too bummed out when they broke their loser cherry Monday after Monday afternoon's 75-67 defeat to Syracuse in the first round of the Maui Invitational. After all, the Orange is the #8 team in the nation.
However, this afternoon's 87-73 blowout loss to Arkansas is another thing. I have no idea how the Razorbacks are supposed to be this year. But as I was being relayed the "action" while listening to KFAN's Common Man Progrum, it seems like the five-point lead the Goofs had at halftime was pissed away under a crumbling structure of turnovers and lack of poise. There was a nine-minute gap in the second half where they made only one shot from the field. So maybe this team really needs the mulligan year under their new head coach.
They play tomorrow afternoon in the hopes of avoiding being the losingest loser of the Maui Invitational. Good thing they face host and lower-division school Chaminade. Now that I think about it, maybe the game shouldn't count. Wow, maybe it really shouldn't count and I should leave them out of next week's survey. ...
#-8: Timberwolves (Last Week: -2). Wow, what happened to the Woofie Dogs? They went a putrid 1-4 for this week; a win at home over Kevin Garnett and the Brooklyn Nets prevented a pair of two-game losing streaks from fusing together to become a Voltron-like five-game losing streak. Combined with the swoon the U. men have been in the past 48 hours, Twin Cities hoops hopes have been harshly hampered.
Don't know what it could be besides defense. For that, the Timberwolves made a trade today, sending the second overall pick in the draft from a couple years ago, Derrick Williams, to The Bastard Cincinnati Royals (by way of Omaha/Kansas City) in exchange for Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. He's not considered to be more than a complimentary player, but he can play some D, something Head Coach Rick Adelman likes and something this team needs. This week: home to Denver, at Dallas, at The Bastard Seattle SuperSonics.
#-9: Gopher football (Re-Entry!). I feel bad putting them at the bottom of the WMNSS, but everybody else at least won one game (or, in the Vikings' case, did not lose). And they did cover the Las Vegas spread of, what, 16 or 17 points as their four-game winning streak was snapped at home by Wisconsin, 20-7.
In fact there are many positives to take from this defeat, the tenth straight in the fight for Paul Bunyan's Ax. I was able to catch much of the first half of the game from the community fitness center, and they were in it. In particular I like how the team was able to tackle. As soon as a Gopher defender got to a Badger, down he went. The Vikings could use some tips from Jerry Kill & Co. Seriously, coaching is how you improve on fundamentals. The players on the U. are not the most talented, nor were they the highest-rated coming out of high school. To have them play stout and sound defense is teaching. That is quite impressive.
When the defense locks the opposing offense down, opportunities arise. So when I saw Aaron Hill catch an errant ball thrown by Wisconsin Quarterback Joel Stave and return it all the way for a touchdown, I was jumping up and down and shouting, "Go! Go!" There were two women sitting behind a table selling tickets to the hockey game next door, and there was a window between us. I hope that they were too busy talking to each other to see me ... and I also hope the wall is soundproof.
Unfortunately the offense could not score any points. It was a cold day, but the few drops I saw in the first half would have helped the Minnesota O tremendously in eating up the clock and marching down the field. In the end, though, Wisconsin won the time of possession and the turnover battle, and therefore this is another year where the U. does not possess any of the trophies that count. (Yes, Minnesota and Penn St. play for a trophy too, but the Governor's Victory Bell was contrived because Minnesota was the Nittany Lions' first opponent as a member of the Big Ten. Besides, after the Goofs won it this year, they broke it.)
Not saying I'm not happy or joyful for the team's breakthrough year, but after Saturday's regular season finale at Michigan St. (a game I thought would be competitive, but now, not so much), I'm happy to be able to thin out the number of teams I have to write for in this blog post.
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