#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -2). I really thought I would not be putting the U.'s baseball team in the first spot in the WMNSS the rest of the season. Yet here we are; after the club swept Penn St. at Siebert and then defeated South Dakota St. at home yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon at the bottom of the ninth on an RBI single by Matt Fielder, the Gophers, who have their annual write-up in the Star Tribune today, are riding a five-game winning streak and inarguably is playing the best all of the year. Nevertheless they are still only 6-9 in the conference, therefore they still would not be participating in the conference tournament, which will take place at Target Field.
As I said last week, if they are going to climb back into a top-eight spot in the B1G and therefore a spot in the tourney, they have to take advantage of their 13-game homestand. This week is incredibly busy: They have a three-game series against Michigan this weekend, then after a day off Monday, they host a special two-game mid-week series against the first of two non-conference teams, Kansas St. I would have loved to have gone to see one of those games just for the novelty. Alas, I have test scoring projects that'll prevent me from going to either Tuesday night's or Wednesday afternoon's game.
#-2: Gopher softball (Last Week: Positive Numbers). This is a sign that I still don't know that much about softball: I thought that Michigan St., the squad's opponent over the weekend, would be a bigger challenge than North Dakota St., the team they had a doubleheader against yesterday (Wednesday). Turns out, however, that the Spartans were no match for the Gophers, even at home; Minnesota outscored them by a combined 24-9 (even though, surprisingly, they didn't slaughter-rule the Spartans in any of the three games). However, the team's winning streak ended at seven when the Bison took the first game of the one-day series 5-4. The Gophers responded by mercy-ruling NDSU 8-0 in five innings in the nightcap, which actually began at 4 in the afternoon. Only a couple days ago did I see that in the college softball polls, it was the Bison and not Michigan St. that was the team that received votes (and in fact is 25th in the College Sports Madness poll).
I see that in the same poll that the Gophers are 12th; they are, in fact, tenth in the other two, although I am not sure that the Bison doubleheader is factored in. This week they look to start a new winning streak when they finish a short homestand with a trio against Iowa.
#-3: Wild (Last Week: 0). Well, what a difference one game makes. Yes, Game 1 was great and of it stood to reason that St. Louis would bounce back to win Game 2. I felt some confidence after the Mild shut out the Blues in Game 3. Wild fans got a little cocky that they were about to steamroll the Central Division Champions.
And it seemed as if some members of the team did too, because they got their dicks smashed into a car door, at home, by the Loo last (Thursday) night 6-1. Devan Dubnyk became a sieve, the defense melted in front of them, there was no hustle along the boards or the corners and the speed that the squad was utilizing to great success in the series completely evaporated.
Don't get me wrong. When the Wild won Game 1 I thought that people who thought they had the series won don't know NHL playoff hockey. Home-ice advantage means little; of the four sports, only in baseball could playing in front of your home crowd be as irrelevant. But it's better to have home-ice than not to have home-ice. Moreover, news flash, it's better to win than to lose. And with the chance to leave St. Paul with a 3-1 series lead, they not only lost but got the shit kicked out of them. I can see championship teams lose a game in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I cannot see a championship team allow a team to put their foot up their ass to the tune of 6-1.
Is it time to panic? I'm a bandwagon fan, so fuck yeah, it's time to panic! Up till now the big storyline on the Blues, at least from an outsider's perspective, is the team relying on goon Steve Ott instead of the speed of X-factor Vladimir Tarasenko. He was the one who scored a hat trick in Game 2, and he erupted with a pair of goals at the X in Game 4 to tie the series. It looks like St. Louis has woken up and decided to fight the Wild's speed with their speed. With that a wash, the tie may go to the better, deeper, more talented team. And I don't know if that's the Mild. The advantage they had because St. Louis decided to go with a faulty game plan may be gone.
Even if that theory is wrong, I think we can agree on one thing: Game 5 is kind of pivotal. If this team has any sack, they'll sure as fuck not shit the bed like they did at home for Game 4. No, I'll go one step further -- if this team has any sack, they'll win.
#-4: Twins (Last Week: -1). A 3-3 week -- which, considering the blowouts they suffered through way early in the season, is actually an improvement. In fact, I might be being overly optimistic, but there's a chance that this team has in fact improved. As Michael Rand pointed out in his Page 2 sheet at the Strib, lockdown strikeout pitchers out of the bullpen has been and may be a severe weakness, as it appeared to be in Tuesday's lead-blowing 6-5 loss at Kansas City. But the lineup has stabilized and begun to produce, and maybe the young guns in the rotation aren't going to be godawful like they have been the past four years. The playoffs are probably a pipe dream; avoiding 90 losses feels like a goal that can be tackled.
This week: They are in Seattle for three over the weekend, then come home to face Detroit for three games starting on Monday.
#-5: Swarm (Last Week: -3). So I made my annual sojourn to the Swarm game Saturday where they faced the Calgary Roughnecks (great name, by the way). I didn't have much incentive to see them since they have already been eliminated from the playoffs, but I couched my annual trip to eat at the venerable Mickey's Diner as an excuse.
I was pleasantly surprised by, all of people, the DJ. No, he still skipped through song after song like he had ADHD. But there was one thing he did that was really clever. He asked for The Wave, and like a bunch of fucking idiots the crowd at the X (which was announced as 8,131 -- man, that's a lot of masochists!) obliged and I went, "Oh, God." But then he told one section to do it in slow-motion, and they began to sloooooowly get up, put their hands in the air, put them down, and sit down. And the entire arena did it when they were supposed to do it. No joke, the timing was impeccable.
And then the DJ told one section that once The Wave got to them, to speed it up. And they did that as well. This crowd was so smart and literate, they jumped up and down to spur The Wave on when they were supposed superbly. I was so impressed that I had to jump in and do The Wave, both slow and fast. I have never seen that before, although I guess it wouldn't be too much of a leap to attempt that. But I was impressed, nonetheless.
So I have to give the DJ credit for coming up with that. I also have to compliment the DJ because I think he was entertaining the fans in order to divert their attention away from the piss-poor showing that their team was putting out on the field. The Smarm lost to Calgary 10-6, and it wasn't that close because they were blanked 4-0 in the second quarter and trailed 7-1 at the half. It got so bad that in the second starting Goalie Zach Higgins was replaced by sub Brodie MacDonald. MacDonald did OK; he certainly was not worse than Higgins. But inexplicably, before the period was over, Higgins came back in. Why?
That is one of many on-field questions I have about this team. They are going to miss the playoffs again, and there is a good chance that they'll be the worst team in the National Lacrosse League for the second year in a row. They recently jettisoned most of their veterans in order to bring in younger players and draft picks again. At what point are they going to stick with the players they accumulated and try to trot out a professional team? Or are they running this organization on the cheap?
I have to believe that this franchise is not making any money, or not enough that they can be successful in the box office with a good team. All the signs point not necessarily to parsimony, but belt-tightening. But you can't cut your way to success, as the past two years attest. So what the hell are the owners, John and Andy Arlotta, doing?
They host Edmonton Saturday night. I'll be in the vicinity, but not to watch the game. I'll be next door, at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, to see the Minnesota RollerGirls take on Chicago.
No comments:
Post a Comment