#-1: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -6). In kind of a stultifying week (that, by the way, nonetheless reasserts the college teams at the top and the professional ones at the bottom), I have to give it to the U. vagina ballers. With star Rachel Banham done for the year, I and I think most others punted on this club's chances of any success for the year. So we have to give at least some muted appreciation that they won both games of their Subway Classic at the Barn this weekend. Sure, the teams they beat were Liberty (once a surprise Sweet 16 entrant about a decade ago) and Central Michigan (got nothing for ya), but hey, without Banham I wouldn't put anything past this team. But they finish 10-1 on the non-con (their only loss to Vanderbilt on neutral Ft. Myers, Fla.) going into the start of conference play, Monday night at home against Nebraska.
#-2: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -1). You know, the basketball teams beating two tomato cans hardly counts as actual games. But as I type this I'm feeling wistful. Everything's closed, including the mall where I went to when My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division) inexplicably shut its doors sooner than they said they would. This is the holiest night of the year, and I think the entire nation -- nay, the world -- has done a good job every year of not doing anything. That means there are no sports on TV this evening -- this time of year, actually.
So, at least right now, this very moment, let us laud any sports, including games by the U. women and U. men's basketball teams, the latter of which had a 2-0 screening week. They slaughtered Seattle (is Cameron Dollar still coaching there?) but then had to hang on for dear life to beat back Furman, both victories due in part to Nate Mason, named Big Ten Freshman Of The Week.
So far they're 10-2. Unfortunately, their two losses were to Louisville and St. John's, and while neither of them are Kentucky good, they are pretty good. So, moreso with the women's team, I'm not sure how good this squad is. I'm afraid they aren't that good, even if they did beat Wake Forest on the road.
They finish the final game of their non-conference schedule, and their six-game homestand, Saturday afternoon against North Carolina-Wilmington.
#-3: Gopher wrestling (Re-Entry!). The Gopher grapplers remain undefeated and appear to remain #1 in the polls despite a (from where I'm looking at it, namely the box scores) puzzling 21-19 win at the Sports Pavilion over Northwestern. I'm not sure how to take this, because the dual meet featured not one, not two, but three forfeits. Luckily the Gophers won the best two-out-of-three, so that six-point advantage turned out to be the difference. What I don't get is why they needed every single one of those six points; both teams technically took half of the ten matches, and when the Wildcats' Dominick Moore beat Jordan Kingsley in the sixth match at 133, they were tied at 15. It's as if neither team really tried.
Oh well, the Gophs still won. They now go to Honolulu to participate in the Aloha Open. Since it's not an actual dual, I won't talk about it unless something notable happens.
#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -3). Last week I previewed what the week to come was going to look like for the Woofie Dogs. I highlighted LeBron James. Stupid me. Of course I should've talked about Kevin Love, the man who passive-aggressively bitched his way out of Minny and into a much better position for his career. Talk about seeing his old team for the first time kicked up, buoyed in part by Head Coach and General Manager Flip Saunders saying that local fans have turned their backs on K-Love. Of course we turned on him, the same way the fans of any team would after their favorite player leaves for another team.
Good thing for Love, then, that this first meeting wasn't at Target Center. The downside there might be some extra juice to our hate after Cleveland roasted the Wolves by 21. That capped off a week where the Timberwolves also lost to Boston and Indiana, even though they kept it close against the Pacers, so there's that.
OK, the season has basically gone into the shitter. They've lost six in a row. The only thing, the only thing, fans can cling to is the fact that Andrew Wiggins continues to show flashes of brilliance, capped by his 27-point performance against the Cavaliers. This is the cornerstone the franchise has to build around.
They finish 2014 on the road. This week they are at Denver, Golden State and Utah.
#-5: Vikings (Last Week: -5). Look, I continue to say that we had to punt this season from the beginning. But I look at Sunday's loss to Miami, one in where they built a 14-0 lead for the second week in a row and manage to choke it away for the second week in a row, and I wonder how improved this team has really been. Forget Cullen Loeffler's virtual ground ball to Jeff Locke, allowing the Dolphins player to block the punt out of bounds for the game-winning Safety, although it's hard to resist putting that on the shelf alongside McCown-to-Poole as a stupid way this franchise has lost a game over the years. Head Coach Mike Zimmer could not contain his incredulity that the defense, his background, took several steps back, at least according to his doily-thin comments in pressers after the game. They weren't communicating and they weren't doing what they practiced through the week. So, going into the last game of the year at home in Chicago this Sunday, he's going to be so exhausted from putting both of his feet up the defensive players' asses he'll need to lie down.
But he was careful to heap praise on Teddy Bridgewater. I took it on faith that he could be the franchise QB the team can build around. But just now I just clicked onto this piece by Sam Monson on Pro Football Focus, and now I'm convinced that Bridgewater's the man. I suggest you read it. This is the best type of persuasive writing. Monson breaks down complicated concepts into easy-to-understand language, and he does it in a way that makes you come around to his point-of-view. He doesn't use overly florid or opaque language, yet you can see this is the analysis of a smart man who did his homework. With the help of Vines and screenshots, he shows how Bridgewater had his best game of the year, depositing pinpoint passes into keyholes, using his pocket sense to avoid sacks yet stay in the pocket to throw downfield, and knowing when to just toss the ball to the checkdown. With that essay, you wonder why in the hell Bridgewater wasn't the first overall pick in the NFL Draft people said he would be this time last year. Now, we just need to see him repeat that, hopefully this weekend.
#-6: Wild (Last Week: -4). My God, this team is sinking fast. I believe this is their first winless screening week of the year -- an over time loss to Boston, an OT loss to Nashville, then a blowout 5-2 defeat to Philadelphia where they allowed three unanswered goals. The Woofie Dogs and the ViQueens also went undefeated, but I put the Mild at the bottom because 1) they had more upside than any other team playing in the winter and 2) they lost all three of those games at home. More was expected of them, and they had favorable conditions in which to win at least one game, and they couldn't even fucking do that.
There seems to be a lot of problems to what technically is a four-game losing streak, the most glaring one is now goaltending. In the last, what, six home games, the Mild's Goalie (is it Darcy Kuemper? Niklas Backstrom? Ah, fuck, who cares) has been pulled. The offense is scoring goals (at least five-on-five) and the defense is, uh, OK. But apparently the netminders are letting in easy shots. If that's the case, why didn't they re-sign Ilya Bryzgalov, or try and sign Ryan Miller?
This week this woebegone organization has one more game in this X homestand, the first of a home-and-home with The Bastard Atlanta Thrashers.
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