And this Bandits team was 8-3 going into the game. The contest was remarkably tied after every interval -- scoreless after the first quarter, three at the half, seven at the end of three and nine at the end of regulation. Then it took almost eight minutes of extra time before Swarm stalwart Callum Crawford collected the loose ball and sent it home to end the game.
With that win Minnesota ties the Vancouver Stealth for the final playoffs spot, and are a half-game behind the Philadelphia Wings for seventh. They visit Calgary Saturday.
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -1). They took two out of three from Northwestern ... at Lindenwood University. Huh? On Wednesday it was announced that the series, which was supposed to take place at the Wildcats' home field in Evanston, Ill., was going to be moved to St. Charles, Mo., and to help both teams adjust and acclimate to what really becomes a neutral site, the first two games of the three-game set would be a doubleheader on Saturday. (They lost the back half of that double-dip.) Is Lindenwood's Lou Brock Sports Complex (got an autograph from Mr. Brock once while at a trade show in St. Louis; he has an unorthodox signature where instead of going up and down, he waves the pen in his hand from left to right, and tightly, making his autograph look like a seismograph recording a very big earthquake), which about 45 miles northwest of St. Louis, the default Plan B site for Northwestern games, which, in case you don't know, is located in a suburb of Chicago?
Also, this move was made because the weather in Chicagoland was forecast to be wintry. Will we see more of these changes, if nothing as drastic as switching to a venue five hours away on 72 hours' notice? Already Wednesday night's game against St. John's, which was supposed to serve as the season's home opener after 20 games on the road to open the year, has been postponed because the winter weather has rendered Siebert unplayable for the time being. How will the stadium be this weekend when they're scheduled to play a three-game series against Michigan St. Remember that they were set to host the Spartans for a trio last year but the entire series, all three games, were cancelled because it was too cold/rainy and/or Siebert was too shitty to play in. Oh, they also have a Tuesday date planned with North Dakota St.
#-3: Wild (Last Week: -3). They're not exactly gaining momentum into the Stanley Cup Playoffs, not after losing in New Jersey in overtime and then losing at home to Detroit (before winning in overtime in the return trip of the home-and-home at Joe Louis Arena). Neverthess they remain firmly in seventh place, as of press time six points clear of The Bastard North Stars, mired in
#-4: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -2). Save us, Golden Gophers, you're our only hope of a championship this year! (Well, there are the Lynx, but with the way the other women's team in town failed their golden chance at a repeat [see below] I have reason to be pessimistic.) I don't care that you lost in the semifinals of the B1G hockey tournament to Ohio St., because that meant I could get a ticket to the final for $20. (Bad Buckeyes beat, BTW, having a 4-2 lead and blowing it in overtime. That would have gotten them into the NCAA Tournament and bumped off the worst of the at-large teams according to the Pairwise Rankings, which would have been ... North Dakota, which finished second in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference but were in danger of not making the Frozen Dance altogether because they lost to the team that finished last in the conference, Miami [OH] in the NCHC semifinals, which I saw on Friday [for $40, alas.]) And OK, you relinquished the top spot in the polls to Union, which is #1 for the first time in school history.
Doesn't fucking matter anymore, because the tournament bracket is out, and you are deemed the proverbial kings of the mountain, aka the overall #1 seed. No one exceeds the level of talent on your roster nor the results you've garnered over the year. Plus the West Regional is at the X, and therefore you get to play in front of your home area, starting Saturday afternoon (weirdly enough it's the early game of that day's doubleheader, which happened because that means the Gophs can appear on ESPN2 instead of ESPNU) when they face the supposed worst team to make the field, Robert Morris. Win that and then they play Sunday evening against either Notre Dame or former WCHA rival (and current in-state rival) St. Cloud St.
The #1 playing the #16 in the first round of the tourney ... what could go wrong? Oh, wait; Minnesota was #2 overall team in last year's tournament, and looked what happened against #15 Yale:
Well, to give the Goofers some slack, the Bulldogs did go on to win the whole thing. And this is hockey, let alone college hockey, where upsets of the better team happen all the time. So while I feel good about this team, the U. have to fend off four opponents that could take advantage of one bad bounce to end a promising season. I mean, look at the University of Minnesota women's team.
#-5: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4). So, mathematically the Woofie Dogs are still alive for a playoff spot, even if they followed Wednesday's 123-122 thriller at Dallas with three losses in a row. But by all accounts it was the only home game of the week, a 127-120 defeat to Phoenix, that pretty much sealed the club's fate. That's because the Woofs blew a 22-point lead. Man, if that doesn't break you.
I haven't watched this -- too much losing going on around me, especially by the Minnesota women's hockey team -- but from what I hear that collapse just broke Kevin Love:
Wouldn't blame him for acting glum ... although, well, it's different for me because I didn't play in that game and therefore I had an excuse not to play defense. (Hi-yo!) It's sad, however, that this game and postgame interview puts to rest any chance K-Love re-ups with the Wolves. This week: Home to Atlanta and The Bastard Minneapolis Lakers, then an at-Brooklyn-home-vs.-the Clippers back-to-back Sunday and Monday.
#-Infinity (tie): Gopher wrestling and women's hockey (Last Week: Re-Entry! and Re-Entry! respectively).
I'll dispense with the gopher grapplers first, for I think it's appropriate I end this survey laying into the University of Minnesota women's hockey team for their historic, embarrassing loss.
I was mad as hell when I learned that the Gophers failed to win the NCAA championship. Things were looking up for them, with their dual meet win over Penn St. during the regular season being a turning point, at least I thought. But the squad only finished second, behind those goddamn Nittany Lions again, which won their fourth straight NCAA title. Now that's a dynasty, Minnesota women's hockey team.
Thought that the Gophs, which led after the first day of the two-day meet, blew their lead. But it's not quite like that. I think that you only get points if the individual wrestler wins the class. Both Penn St. and the U. had two wrestlers that had a chance to make the finals. The Gophs' Dylan Ness, at 157 pounds, got his ass kicked by Oklahoma St.'s Alex Dieringer in the final, 13-4, but that's OK, because Ness was seeded ninth and Dieringer third.
But it's the other finalist, leader Tony Nelson at Heavyweight, which is more disappointing. This guy has been a rock all year, and he was seeded first in the meet. However, he was upset by his opponent in the championship match, second-seeded Nick Gwiazdowski of N.C. St., 4-2. And apparently Nelson coughed up a big lead he built in the first part of that match. If he holds on, the Gophers would have received four points.
Meanwhile, both Nittany Lion finalists won championships. David Taylor won at 165 and Edward Ruth won at 184. Taylor was #1 and undefeated; however, Ruth was seeded second and lost once. However however, Ruth upset his opponent in the title match, Maryland's Jimmy Sheptock, who not only was seeded first but came into the match with an undefeated record. You see, Penn St. pulled off the upset while Minnesota failed to prevent the upset. If the matches went according to seed -- according to the perceived talents of the wrestlers, in other words -- Nelson would have won, Ruth would have lost, the U. would finally have won their first NCAA crown in (I think) 11 years by a score of 108-105.5. Instead, Penn St. beat them, 109.5-104. All the credit goes to Ruth, which probably would have cemented the Nittany Lions' championship. But this one stings. They have never been closer to a title than this year, and that opportunity may never come again.
Now that I've vented over the wrestling team, I now turn my gunsights on the women's hockey team, which had to come back to beat Wisconsin in the Frozen Four semifinal Friday. That may have -- should have? -- been a sign that this team wasn't the world-beater we all expected them to be. Turns out they weren't; they had trouble all game getting loose against a Clarkson program they were miles better than on paper, and they wound up failing to three-peat to a small school from Potsdam, New York. This is the women's college hockey equivalent of the Miracle On Ice, or any upset on the Gophers men's team.
I am upset over the upset. Very upset. We don't have very much to look forward to sports-wise, so you can understand when we look forward to a really great team that's almost ordained to win a championship. So when they fail to win, it automatically adds to the sense Minnesotans get that we're a damned group of people. And so it is with this, added with the inexplicable event that the on-paper, hands-down best team in the sport lost, fucking lost.
I'm getting angrier just typing this. I'm not reacting to this choke job.
I just read the recap/obituary on SI.com and it pisses me off. These Golden Knight bitches are talking a lot of shit, and I fucking hate it. Shannon MacAulay said, "Yeah, Minnesota won two years in a row. That didn't mean anything to us." Fuck you, MacAulay. Carly Mercer said, "We didn't care how many national championships they'd won." Fuck you too, Mercer. Wow, I hope all you cunts in a bus crash.
I am absolutely sick of this upset. And oh yeah, this is an upset. Who cares if Clarkson was seeded third? Somebody has to be seeded third. Minnesota, meanwhile was seeded first, and by all measures the gap between first and third was as big as the fucking Grand Canyon. This was a stunning upset, a monumental upset, possibly -- no, probably -- the biggest upset in top-flight women's college hockey history. And the U. -- we -- were on the losing end of it.
A fucking disgrace.
Oh my fucking God, I'm taking this news worse than I thought. I am pissed off about this loss, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY PISSED OFF. My car's Check Engine light is on every time I accelerate, and as much as I feel my blood pressure rise and my chest tighten, it's this goddamn loss that's about to give me a heart attack. I can't stop thinking about this loss. It's like I need brain bleach to forget this. How the fuck did these girls let this happen, to fucking Clarkson?
And now this fucking forsaken must suffer the shameful indignity of being listed on the WMNSS next year, and probably every year after that. This could be the start of a vicious downward spiral. Fuck this shit.
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