The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -5).  In a screening week where many teams started to get down to the business of trying to qualify for the palyoffs and responded with gutsy victories, who do I put on top?  At the end of it all, I have to give it to the University of Minnesota women's b-ball team, even though I still don't believe, on an objective scale, they're all that good, which is why I put them at -1.

That damning with faint praise, if you want to fall through a certain rabbit hole, may actually be reason enough to prove they deserve the catbird seat in this week's WMNSS.  Simply put, this team's living on the knife's edge and need to win games, and even though they finished the regular season with a pair of games at Williams Arena, they won both games they needed to win (versus Indiana and Ohio St.) to stay in the tournament picture.  ESPN.com's women's Bracketologist, Charlie Creme, has the Gophers in the field of 64 as of late Tuesday night, and depending on procedural line changes, Minnesota may very well be The Last Team In.  That's why their two wins this past week were so important, and that's why I give them more credit than the other teams on this list who need to win under similar nitty-gritty circumstances.

This clearly is Pam Borton's best team since the Lindsay Whalen-Janel McCarville days, mostly because she has a similar dynamic duo leading the squad.  Redshirt Freshman Amanda Zahui B. parlayed the final conference honors of the week, taking not only Freshman Of The Week (for the seventh time this year) but also Player Of The Week (for the fourth time this season, surprisingly).  The same day of that announcement (Monday) Zahui was officially crowned Big Ten Freshman Of The Year (assuming it was in a runaway), as well as being named to the All-Big Ten First Team by the media, All-Big Ten Second Team by the coaches, and Defensive All-Big Ten.  Meanwhile, Junior Rachel Banham continued to prove she is one of the best Point Guards in top-flight women's college basketball, as evidenced by her unanimous placement into both All-B1G First Teams.

The Big Ten Tournament starts Thursday in Indianapolis, Ind., where the Gophers are the 6-seed, the first time in a long time they have a top-half seed.  They face Wisconsin; the winner of that game take on third-seeded Nebraska the next night.  I say that unless there is a bid thief or two from non-BcS conferences, the U. is in the Big Dance for the first time since 2009 as of right now; they should be in with a win over the Badgers; and they will be in with a victory over the Cornhuskers -- which, in an indulgent major-conference tourney which has no purpose beyond generating more TV money for the conference, is very possible if Nebraska decides to not try.

#-2: Wild (Re-Entry!).  The only reason these guys aren't on top is because they were in a fairly good position to make the playoffs when the National Hockey League began their Olympic break.  Saying that, going 3-0 for the week against Canadian teams (and former Northwest Division rivals), two of the wins on the road (although the one against Vancouver went to a shootout, in which Goalie Darcy Kuemper stopped all seven shots) is pretty damn impressive.  They are seventh in a brutal Western Conference, but as of press time they are seven points clear of the 8th spot.  Things can change, but they are in a good spot right now.

You get the feeling that the young'uns and the old veterans are starting to mesh, and this is a great time for a squad that's not tops in its conference to surprise some people.  That's why I don't mind General Manager Chuck Fletcher declining to move any of the Wild's young players for a vet that could make a difference in the postseason.  Nevertheless, the trade of a fourth-round pick to Edmonton to get Goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov is a great move.  There was a lot of talk about Minnesota getting legendary G Martin Brodeur from New Jersey because (as it's been harped on for some time, I think) he has kids that go to Shattuck-St. Mary's in Faribault, Minn.  But apparently what the Devils wanted in return was too rich for Fletch's blood, so Fletch turned to Bryzgalov.

This trade allows the club to shut down Nicklas Backstrom for the year, and possibly for his career.  And regardless, I didn't feel that the team was a netminder away from contending for the Stanley Cup.  History is littered with teams that rode unsung, even journeyman Goaltenders standing on their heads to the title.  This may be a case of a team containing studs like Ryan Suter and Zach Parise leading a young crop of hungry thoroughbreds like Mikael Granlund and Jonas Brodin to score and defend in front of an overlooked Kuemper who is having the year of his career.  And if he falters, you can do worse for an alternative than Bryzgalov, who was once the starter in Phoenix and Philadelphia.

The next person to go is Torrey Mitchell, who let it be known through his agent that he wants outta here.  Maybe he can be moved (alongside Dany Heatley?) to another team for that third-line forward and a pick, or that third or fourth defenseman and a pick?  The opportunities to make this team better, for now and for later, are bountiful.  You have to feel good about the prospects of this team and this organization.

(ETA: And Fletch did indeed deal today in the minute up to the 2 p.m. trade deadline, sending Mitchell and two second-round picks to Buffalo for Matt Moulson and Cody McCormick.  McCormick is in the last year of his deal and probably was moved for cap purposes.  But Moulson may be a great pick-up: He's got a good shot, especially a wrister, and he is durable, which will help in the later rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs -- which, after this trade, looms as less of a pipe dream now that Fletcher has decided he wanted to deal.

And all this for a disgruntled player and two second-rounders to a team that is in serious rebuilding mode?  I call it a steal.  My goodness, I can't stop thinking big things for this year.)

In the meantime Minnesota visits The Team That Was Stolen From Us before returning home to play St. Louis and Edmonton.

#-3: Timberwolves (Last Week: -1).  They are currently 4 1/2 games out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, so it looks like they won't break their playoff-less streak.  But they're doing all they can to climb back in the race, winning at both Sacramento and Denver.  That caps off a 4-1 roadtrip (their only loss being to Portland), only the third time the franchise has ever gone 4-1 in a roadtrip lasting exactly five games.  Also, they have now won six of their last seven games.

Was listening to Monday's victory over Denver, which kind of encapsulates the story of this club's season.  They led the Nuggets by as much as 19, and they seemingly had the game in hand late.  But all of a sudden, as I stopped paying attention to the radio and then came back to it, Denver started draining three after three.  Without the T-Wolves sinking both free throws every time they were followed after each possession after the Nugz' made trey, this game could have gone to overtime.  Hot scoring?  I'll blame it on the Woofie Dogs' season-long woeful defense.

They have a four-game homestand, all of it falling within this screening wee, all of them winnable because they play not only Eastern Conference teams but teams not named Miami or Indiana (or Chicago or Brookly, for that matter): New York, Detroit, Toronto and Milwaukee.  They can get on a roll.  Watch this space.

#-4: Gopher men's hockey (Re-Entry!).  While other Twin Cities are sweating out playoff races, all the Gopher men's hockey team is doing is piling up wins.

The team played their last regular season series of the year at Mariucci Arena this past weekend against B1G bottom-feeders Penn St.  I didn't think they were this bad, getting swept by 5-1 (I was at the Friday night game; my attention wandered once the score got up to 5-1 before after two periods) and 2-1.  The Nittany Lions are a program in its second year of existence, but it's not as if they are totally bereft of good players; there are four players on that team whose rights are held by NHL teams, which is commensurate with many lesser-known programs in Division I hockey.  This isn't baseball; success is dependent on teammates joining up and making plays.  But I would think that a program with the name (though not the pedigree) of Penn St. would be able to get players who could team up and score.  I just don't get how any team could have only, like two conference wins, even if it's in its second season.

Since Boston College lost to Notre Dame in overtime on Saturday, the Golden Gophers move back up to the #1 rankings in the polls.  In other words, it's get back to me once you the NCAA Tournament begins.  Till then, this weekend they're at Ohio St.

#-5: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -2).  Won a three-game series at Louisiana Tech over the weekend, including a 4-2 win in ten innings to start the series Saturday.

That's all I got.  They now take part in the Chanticleer Classic in (what I hear is) beautiful Myrtle Beach, S.C., for games against three schools that are cannon fodder in all other sports but are more than the Gophs' equal in baseball: Elon, Coastal Carolina (it looks like they play those guys twice) and UNC-Greensboro.

#-6: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -4).  Weirdly enough, ESPN.com's men's Bracketologist, Joe Lunardi (aka Joey Brackets, the best nickname in sports journalism), has the Gopher men's b-ball team as The Last One In the tournament, exactly like the Minnesota women's basketball team.  (Funny how Minnesota basketball teams are mired in mediocrity but Minnesota hockey teams are just chugging along.)  But since greed and TV ratings have bloated the men's Big Dance to a weird 68, technically the U. is projected to be in the "play-in" game against Tennessee.  And when I say "technically," I mean according to my exacting standards.

That is where the team finds itself after they allowed Michigan to march all the way to an undisputed conference regular season title Saturday.  Although they hung sort of tough, they allowed the Wolverines to go on a run late to outdistance these Goofs by ten.  They now sit 7-10 in the conference and 18-12 overall.  Only their tough non-con schedule and the fact they are geographically in one of the toughest leagues in top-flight college b-ball give them the edge for a spot in the Big Dance.

They will certainly be on the bad side of the bubble if they lose at home to Penn St. Sunday in the regular season finale.

#-Infinity: Twins (Re-Entry!).  No, games that count don't start till next month.  But for a team whose fans have had to say "Wait till next year," well, they're going to have to say that during Spring Training, for Miguel Sano, a top-ten minors prospect and yet still only the second-best prospect the Twinks have in their farm system, is gone for the entire season after it was decided he needed Tommy John surgery.

No, it's not as if they were going anywhere in 2014.  But it felt as if they scraped the bottom of the barrel, and that things were beginning to get better, and that Sano and Byron Buxton were going to lead the way.  Now with Sano, who in all likelihood was going to get called up by September of this year, giving some fans some much-needed hope, gone for this year (and who knows if recovery from Tommy John is similar to that of pitchers, where they need a second year just get back into the groove of things when it comes to throwing) there ain't a single fucking thing to look forward to.

Man, the year is already fucked and it hadn't even started yet.