OK, just wanted to say that. I give the top spot this week to the Gopher women even though most of the teams on the list (and, yes, all of them emanate from the U.) had great weeks and a few, like the Golden Gopher women b-ballers, had spotless ones. But not only did this squad go 2-0 this screening week (at Penn St., home to Iowa), the team has made some headlines for Tuesday night's "upset" of the 13th-ranked Hawkeyes. Well, not exactly the team, but one player -- Amanda Zahui B., who notched a career-high 39 points, a conference-record 29 rebounds, four blocks and two steals. Like I said before I fell asleep once the Gophers took a 48-42 lead into halftime. As usual I was afraid I would be listening to them eventually lose the game (I don't have cable, so I listened on the radio), but now that I know that Zahui basically did a Kirby Puckett, "climb on my back"-type of deal, I regret falling asleep.
That is All-American material, what she did in that game. If people don't recognize how she's tearing it up for this club before -- and without the services of Rachel Banham, possibly one of the 25 best players in women's college basketball, no less -- that effort, and the fact she reached headline status on ESPN.com for a spell through Wednesday morning, should give her some well-deserved publicity now. Those who did know her underestimated her impact ... and I'm talking about myself. Now, the Big Ten knows they are facing a potential First Team candidate and, if what ESPN.com women's bracketologist Charlie Creme said Tuesday night is true, Minnesota has sewn up its first NCAA tournament bid since 2009.
The final regular season game at Williams Arena is Saturday afternoon against Michigan. They then visit Nebraska Tuesday.
#-2: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: 0). I'm putting the Gopher women's basketball team as well as the Gopher men's hockey team in the top two positions because both of their weeks strengthened their prospects to get into the NCAA tournament when it hadn't quite been secure before the week began. For the Gopher men icers, that was a decisive home sweep of Michigan by scores of 6-2 and 2-0.
Naturally the Gophers were lauded by the Big Ten; there are only six schools, after all. Kyle Rau is the reigning conference Second Star Of The Week for notching his second-career hat trick in Friday's tripling of the Wolverines (scoring the Three Main Ways: even strength, power play and shorthanded -- impressive!) and Goalie Adam Wilcox the Third Star. The club's fortunes have risen with these two players'; in their last six games they have won five and tied (at least technically) once. Now, at least points-wise, they are tied with the Wolverines for first place in the B1G. More importantly, they have passed Michigan in the PairWise; Jayson Moy has Minnesota as the fourth-last team in the field of 16 and still the only team from the conference playing in the postseason. That isn't great, not having a profile good enough to warrant an at-large bid. But they seem to have gotten over their mid-season doldrums; keep this up, and they might get in even if they lose the conference tournament.
The only downside to this is they have won their last four at Mariucci Arena, and the win and tie before that was against Wisconsin, which is having perhaps their worst season in program history. They strike out on the road against Penn St. this weekend, which is making some nice strides in only its second year of existence as a top-flight college hockey program.
#-3: Gopher women's hockey (Last Week: -6). They have righted the ship with 7-1 and 2-0 victories over Minnesota-Duluth (and lame duck Head Coach Shannon Miller -- if you haven't heard what's going on over there, read this, it's weird) last weekend, and with it several milestones were set. The Gophers clinched their ninth Western Conference Hockey Association regular season title; Head Coach now has 251 victories; and the senior class on the squad has now won 139 games, not only the most in Golden Gopher women's hockey history, but the most of any senior class from any program in top-flight women's hockey. Oh, Sophomore Forward Dani Cameranesi is the WCHA Offensive Player Of The Week for her two assists in Friday's win and the first (and game-winning) goal in Saturday's victory over the Bulldogs.
Same shit, different day; they haven't really needed to improve their postseason hopes, so that's why I placed them third behind two teams that needed good weeks. They remain second in the polls behind Boston College. But I took a look at this advanced hockey metric called KRACH, and I want you guys to take a look, too. Assuming that this KRACH is a better indicator of how good a team really is (it is much better than RPI), you can see that the Eagles are first overall among all programs in Division I and II women's hockey, and decisively so over the Golden Gophers. But look at the Strength Of Schedule columns, and really the last two; Minnesota has a huge SOS score over BC, and they are ranked second overall while the Eagles have the 15th-strongest. That should mean something if they meet in the title game -- right?
This weekend is the last regular season series, at Bemidji St.
#-4: Gopher softball (Last Week: Positive Numbers). Welp, they aren't going to go undefeated this season. After stomping Stetson in a doubleheader series (the second game a 16-7 triumph that was mercy-ruled after five innings), then blanked Massachusetts-Lowell 8-0 in six (which gave Jessica Allister her 150th win as Head Coach at Minnesota), they were shut out by Central Florida, 4-0. As a result the Gophers slipped a couple places in the two softball polls I can see down to the mid-teens. (The Golden Knights, meanwhile, were propelled into both polls by virtue of their upset victory.) Their eight wins to start the season is the best in school history, but now comes the task of playing after a defeat. This week they participate in the Diamond Devil Tournament in Tempe, Ariz. They play five games against four schools, all of them with "State" in their names; in order they are New Mexico, Boise (for two), host Arizona, then finally Colorado.
#-5: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4). Shit, man. I was looking forward to a survey where I would have to write blurbs for only nine teams and not ten since the National Basketball Association listened to the Players' Union and stretched out All-Star Weekend to last a whole week. That week fell right on this week, which meant I had no games to write about, and since there were no games to write about (and since I thought Zach LaVine's Slam Dunk Contest win and Andrew Wiggins's Most Valuable Player award in the Rising Stars Challenge didn't merit a blurb to make this WMNSS ten teams strong), I was more than happy to leave them off for the week.
Unfortunately, however, the NBA has a longstanding tradition where their trade deadline falls just as the second half of its season begins. And there, this year, the Woofie Dogs were able to rip off on hell of a trade: Kevin Garnett is coming home. You know, kind of like LeBron:
I've had a few friends on Facebook fawning over the return of KG, a man so beloved in town we still feel that he is the face of the franchise, even though he was traded to the Boston Celtics in 2007 (?) and is coming from another team, the Brooklyn Nets, in exchange for Thaddeus Young. I've had at least one guy I know think this is a stupid idea because the team's just trying to be nostalgic. I would be OK with it on three conditions:
- Garnett sticks around for at least one more year beyond this, and not retire, as some have been speculating;
- He is the rim protector in the games Nikola Pekovic is injured. Pek can return the favor in games where The Kid is too old to play;
- KG mentors the young pups on the team, like Wiggins and LaVine and Anthony Bennett, the same way Sam Mitchell mentored Garnett when he started out. A Pay-It-Forward kind of a thing.
#-6: Gopher wrestling (Last Week: -7). In the first round of NWCA National Duals Sunday they trounced North Dakota St. in Fargo, 26-9. Guess that's good, although I don't exactly know what that means. The rest of the tourney presumably takes place this weekend in the neutral site of Iowa City, Ia. Their next opponent: Cornell.
#-7: Wild (Last Week: -3). Brandon Mileski, Producer for KFXN's Common Man Progrum and self-styled Wild analyst, believes that the club has to be in playoff position by the end of this month in order to reach the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That means there isn't much room for error after the mid-season hole they dug themselves. So that means that the Mild's 3-2 loss at Vancouver was so bad it wiped out the two wins they got at Xcel Energy Center over Florida and Carolina. But Mikko Koivu at least stopped any thought that the team was backsliding by winning last (Wednesday) night's game over Calgary, 3-2 in Overtime. They remain on a hot streak, but unfortunately putting themselves behind the playoff chase means there are more teams in front of them that have to lose. So even with their 3-1 week, they are one point behind eighth place, which currently is shared by the defending champion L.A.. Kings and San Jose. Not too bad, but I would not recommend a losing streak.
This week may be an easy one. They get to face the worst team in the National Hockey League (I think?), the Edmonton Oilers, twice, first away (finishing up their second Prairie Province Three-Step in about a month), then home. But sandwiched inbetween that is a Sunday night date, part of NBC Sports Network's Hockey Day In America (totally copied from our Hockey Day In Minnesota, clever), at home against The Team That Was Totally Stolen From Us. I can't believe that my frenemy invited me to this game. I am totally going to pick a fight with a Bastard North Stars fan!
#-8: Gopher baseball (Re-Entry!). The college baseball season started this past weekend, but apparently the Minnesota team did not know this. Well, now that I see that Houston started the season as the third-ranked team in College Baseball's Top 25 poll (the Cougars are ranked in other spots in other polls, of course, but none of them below 11th), I shouldn't slam them too hard. But they nevertheless began the 2015 season by getting swept at the Cougars. Friday's season opener was a 9-1 drubbing, and they were shut out 5-0 Saturday, but at least they managed to tie the game at 4 in the top of the ninth inning before losing in the bottom of the ninth on a Fielder's Choice.
Give dap, at least, to this team challenging themselves. And it's not as if they're biting off more than they can chew, or at least biting off too much more. What I mean is that ... wait, I thought a little blurb on the B1G on this ESPN.com preview included the Golden Gophers. It doesn't. So it means they're gonna suck this year. Oh, OK.
Hey, they still think they're world-beaters. They're going to get a chance to nick one from yet another highly ranked team, this one ranked at worst tenth in the six college baseball polls around, and a program with whom Minnesota has battled since 1924: Texas. Unfortunately, and of course, they will be playing the entire series (all four games) in Texas. But hey, this is baseball -- they have to win at least one game, right?
#-9: Swarm (Last Week: -2). Rough weekend for the Smarm, a very rough one. Dropped both ends of a home-and-home against the Toronto Rock, which could be the far-and-away class of the National Lacrosse League. They were quadrupled at home on Friday the 13th, 16-4, and then they were trampled in T.O. the next night, 14-9. They have a two-week vacation until they play again, and I think that break will do this squad good.
#-Infinity: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -1). I was going to slot the U. baseball team down here because they started off their season with a three-game sweep. But after hearing what happened last (Wednesday) night in their home match against what is on paper an overmatched Northwestern squad, I had to kick those guys up and throw these guys here, below everyone else. And with their two losses this screening week -- Sunday's 90-71 ass-kicking at Indiana and the coup d'grace, a 72-66 loss to bottom-dweller Northwestern at home -- I feel it's well within reason to give them a preemptive -Infinity.
The one thing that ties these two NIT bid-sealing defeats together: three-point shooting. The Hoosiers sanke a school-record 18 treys; since they attempted 32 shots from deep, they went a fucking 56.3% from The Land Of Three-Pointers. That doesn't speak well for these Goofs' perimeter defense, but I don't think any team that can score 54 points from that far out will lose no matter what you do. But it's the Wildcats loss that hurts the most, and takes much if not all of the shine off Richard Pitino. A team that, I'm guessing, may have to rely on the three but may not be all that great from it was allowed to go 15-32 from behind the arc. That is 33-of-64 in 3FG% for Minnesota's two opponents this week. Four of those threes chained up a 12-0 run late in the first half that propelled Northwestern from seven-point deficit to a five-point lead. The Gophers battled back to take the lead in the second half, but a 16-0 run by the Wildcats took Minnesota from six up to ten down, and they never were able to take the lead ever again. Even if they somehow get some resume-building wins, this bad loss will loom large.
But we won't have to worry about the NCAA because they aren't good enough. And if those two losses didn't bury their chances, a Saturday afternoon visit to Wisconsin, rival and resounding class of the Big Ten, will.
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