Before I begin, I have to note that the Minnesota sports scene has never had a week like this. First, Flip Saunders, Head Coach, General Manager and part-Owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, died from Hodgkins' Lymphoma Sunday. Then on Monday, Torii Hunter retired after 19 years of playing in the big leagues, most of them (and his very last season) with the organization he came up with, the Twins. Finally, on Wednesday, Jerry Kill retired as Head Coach of the University of Minnesota football team, effective immediately, due to health concerns over his epilepsy. Two HC departures, two retirements, one death -- all abrupt, all within a span of four days. My God, we live in interesting times.
The news on Saunders and Kill affect the standings of the Timberwolves and the U. football team. But sorry, Torii, your departure isn't enough for me to bring the Twins back into the WMNSS to talk about them. You're one of the most beloved figures in recent Twins history, this generation's Kent Hrbek, and you'll have a place in the franchise's Ring Of Honor someday soon. But we are talking about two head coaching changes, both shockers, one due to ailing health and the other due to death. It doesn't compare.
Positive Numbers: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: 0). Things are looking good, very good, for the Gopher v-ball team. They went 3-0 this week. They got through arguably the toughest remaining stretch in their Big Ten schedule by beating then-third-ranked Nebraska in four sets and sweeping Iowa last weekend ... both on the road. They then came home to the Sports Pavilion and swept Indiana. Junior Middle Blocker Hannah Tapp was named Sports Imports/AVCA Div. I Woman Player Of The Week, the first Gopher to be given that award since Lauren Gibbemeyer Sep. 16, 2008. The conference named Tapp Co-Player Of The Week in the conference and also named Samantha Seliger-Swenson Setter and Co-Freshman Of The Week. Best of all, Minnesota, which began the year unranked, jumped from ninth to fourth in the AVCA Top 25 poll as a result of their victories over the Cornhuskers and Hawkeyes. It's the first time they've been this high in six years.
I pumped the brakes last week, but I have no excuse to give this club anything less than the + side this survey, especially since they currently lead the conference with a 10-1 record, are on a nine-game winning streak, and have won 18 of their last 19 matches. And they have a chance to polish their bona fides Sunday afternoon when they host 17th-ranked Purdue.
#0: Vikings (Last Week: -1). Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second ... Chris Burke of SI.com says the Vikings are the sixth-best team in the NFL as of Week 7? Just because they've won two games in a row? If that's really the case, this is what you call parity.
Look, I am glad that the squad is 4-2. But listening to some parts of the Detroit game on the radio (I spent the early part of the afternoon at Brit's Pub watching the Rugby World Cup semifinal between Australia and Argentina) I wasn't all that impressed. First of all, the Vikes fell behind the Lions in the first quarter. And then, even though they came back and took the lead, they had two very long drives that bogged down close to the Detroit goal line. They had to settle for a pair of Field Goals when they should have gotten Touchdowns; that was eight points they left on the table. Minnesota finally won comfortably, 28-19, but it should have been a wider margin. We Vikings fans still can't exhale until the game is over.
I guess I see signs of improvement. The defense is starting to gel; even though these are the Lions, they got to Quarterback Matthew Stafford a lot. I also think Teddy Bridgewater has the brain, if not necessarily the arm, to stick in the league and even be a very good QB. But there still are a bunch of role players in the receiving corps. I mean, Stefon Diggs had a great lay-out in the end zone for that TD (which makes me glad, since I now have him on my fantasy team), but I thought Mike Wallace was going to be Teddy's go-to guy, and that was after I thought Charles Johnson was going to be Teddy's go-to guy. And the offensive gameplan still revolves around the running game, and I'm sorry, but Adrian Peterson, seafood allergy or accidental consumption of snuff or what have you, has lost a step. His boom-or-bust game has been even more accentuated this year; he had a 50+-yard rush but about a dozen carries where he lost yardage. Is that a championship offensive MO?
Well, at least they are still in the easiest part of their schedule. This Sunday they travel to a beaten and demoralized Chicago team. They've got to be able to win this one, right? Let's just they can finish drives with TDs instead of FGs this time.
#-1: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -5). Finally, this team gets off the schneid. It took what appears to be a mediocre Northeastern program, but not only did they sweep them, they actually started to score goals. The U., which had been able to put the puck in the net once in their first three games (all losses), ripped the Huskies on Friday 4-0 and held on for a 4-3 win Saturday. Gophers took the top two spots in the B1G's Three Stars Of The Week; Freshman Goalie Eric Schierhorn stopped all 23 Northeastern shots in the former game, and Junior Defenseman Michael Brodzinski tallied a goal and two assists in the latter.
I was at the game Friday. Well, I was late. I was there early, but they wouldn't let me in with the large umbrella I carried with me in the drizzle. Weird; I was able to bring it in two years ago. Instead of throwing it in their big tub and risking never seeing it again (I won the umbrella, with screenprints from the comic strips run by the Star Tribune, at a raffle in junior high and I want to keep it for sentimental reasons), I took it all the way back to my car. I wasn't mad, even though I missed almost the first half of the first period and I wasn't able to witness the three goals the squad scored because I was in the bathroom or getting a hot dog and Coke. The security people had a job to do (I swear I saw the guy who told me I couldn't take the umbrella in when I was working the Vikings game once) and I didn't know I couldn't bring it in, so I didn't blame myself. In the meantime, I got some exercise walking to and from my car, and I needed that.
I don't know if this is the start of something good or if the weekend masked the team's youth. I learned last week that the top three scorers from last season's tournament team are gone, and the next three-highest scorers are being called upon to lead the others and have them grown up as soon as possible. Good luck with that. At least they are off this screening week.
#-2: Wild (Last Week: -2). So far, the one biggest change to this club is that they seem to be scoring a lot. I'm not sure if it's the players getting a year older and wiser, or if they are building chemistry with each other, or if it's the rejuvenated power play. But they scored 14 goals in their 3-1 week, keeping Columbus winless, outlasting Edmonton and shutting out Anaheim. Even in their only defeat of the screening week they were down to Winnipeg 5-1 before scoring three third-period goals. Right now, you can't say that the Mild aren't going to be in it.
But the week has continued something dispiriting: The games they won all were at home, and the game they lost was on the road. In fact, of the five games they've played away from home, three of them were defeats. Of course, that's balanced out by the fact that they so far are 4-0 at the X. They hope that continues when they host rapist Patrick Kane and the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks Friday. Then they make an immediate turnaround and play at St. Louis Saturday night. Huh?
Oh, one more thing: Zach Parise is playing like a man possessed right now.
#-3: Timberwolves (Re-Entry!). Guess this is how you keep an important sports figure's declining health hush-hush. The Timberwolves Public Relations department gave out daily updates on the health of Flip Saunders. Since, presumably, there was no change to his prognosis or diagnosis, the media didn't see it fit to report that Saunders is still doing OK. Well, at some point a few weeks ago, the press releases stopped. We the public didn't know that, but media types understood that that meant that something very, very bad has happened. So they knew; for the public, his death came as a blindside tackle by J.J. Watt.
We can discuss the legacy of Flip Saunders are little more critically some other time. Yes, he led the team to eight straight one-and-done series, and there really was only one year where the Woofie Dogs were really good, and that was because Glen Taylor broke the bank in order for Kevin Garnett to be surrounded by Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. But before and after his tenure as Head Coach, this fucking franchise wasn't and isn't shit. That has to say something good about Saunders. Also, I wasn't aware that after Minnesota, he took the Detroit Pistons to three Eastern Conference Finals.
But possibly most impressive is that Saunders, an Ohio native, became One Of Us. Minnesotans are notorious for being aloof towards outsiders, but since choosing to play for the U., he has become a Minnesotan. And he had all the stereotypical traits of a Minnesotan -- self-deprecation, a quiet countenance, humility and humor. He exhibited those qualities so well that I think that a more successful Head Coach that could bring the Wolves NBA championships would not be as beloved as Saunders.
When I worked for the radio station I took in a couple of his post-game press conferences. He never spoke to me one-on-one, but he seemed like a nice guy. I have heard from many reporters that he is one of the few NBA HCs that was affable towards the media because Saunders understood that they have a job to do and, therefore, he didn't make them feel inferior when they were asking him questions. Another Minnesota characteristic! Also, my friend, who works as an usher at Target Center, would oftentimes open the door for Saunders when he went into work and would sometimes make small talk with him. In times like this, when we're looking at the bigger picture, just being a nice guy is way more important than your win-loss record. So, my prayers and thoughts are with the Saunders family and family, and with the Timberwolves organization.
The T-Wolves are going to at least start the season with the death of their Head Coach and General Manager over their heads. So far, so good. Well, it started off bad, really bad. They were down to The Bastard Minneapolis Lakers by 16 points in the third quarter out in Los Angeles. But maybe due to the inspiration of Flip Saunders, or maybe due to the fact that they have this year's overall #1 draft pick, Karl-Anthony Towns, to go with last year's overall #1 pick, Andrew Wiggins, or maybe due to the fact that Point Guard Ricky Rubio is healthy (at least for now) and scored a career-high 28 points, or maybe due to the fact that the Lakers remain, shockingly, a carcass of their legendary legacy, the T-Wolves came all the way back to win, 112-111. I'm not sure if, like the Gopher men's hockey team, this shows pluck or the fact that they'll struggle to beat bad teams. But better to win than to lose.
This week: They play at Denver Friday. Then on Monday they play their first game at Target Center against Portland. The Flip Saunders memorial patches should be ready for the team's uniforms by then.
#-4: Gopher soccer (Last Week: -3). If I haven't said this before, I'll say it again: There is very poor consensus when it comes to judging women's college soccer teams and how they compare with each other. There are a couple polls in the sport, and they are in agreement with very few teams. Moreover, those polls may have the same program up to a dozen spots apart. There has got to be a way to fix this, because no one knows how good a team really is.
Moreover, it often looks as though a club's record is not indicative of their chances of making the NCAA tournament, nor is it a reflection of its RPI, the main determinant in whether or not the team makes the tourney. To wit: The Golden Goofs. They finished the regular season on a four-match winless streak; this week came a pair of 3-1 losses, at Rutgers Friday and home to Illinois (which needed the win in order to clinch the eighth and final spot in the Big Ten conference tournament). This team, which not too long ago was in the driver's seat to win the conference regular-season title, finishes as the sixth seed in the tourney and will, once again, face Rutgers in Piscataway, N.J., this Sunday afternoon.
And yet, despite that tailspin of a finish, not only is one sport prognosticator saying that Minnesota is OK in reaching the tournament, but they are safely in. In fact, Chris Henderson of Hero Sports, in his post-Sunday bracketology column (which means that he wrote this after the Gophers lost to Rutgers but before they lost to Illinois), thought that the U. would -- get this -- be a projected #4 seed and thus, presumably, host the first two rounds of the NCAAs. Huh?
Credit, I reckon, goes to the side's RPI, which is 25th best. That is heavily influenced by their Strength Of Schedule, which is ranked by Hero as 26th-toughest in top-flight women's college soccer. Again, this was tabulated over the weekend, which means that the RPI and SOS could get dinged because of the upset loss at home to the Illini. But if the NCAA Selection Committee does pick and seed the tournament the same way Henderson believes they will, the U. is not a bubble team regardless of what happens Sunday. And if the Gophs win a game or two, they may very be named one of the 16 best teams for the tournament. In the meantime, teams such as Wisconsin, who is ranked second for the B1G Tourney, is projected to be squarely on the bubble heading into these next two weekends because their SOS is weak. See what I mean when I say women's soccer prognostication is so weird?
#-5: Gopher football (Last Week: -4). I once thought Jerry Kill should resign. But after collapsing on the sidelines and then taking most of the 2013 season off to recover from his epileptic seizures, he seemed to be getting it under control. And after last year, when they finished 8-5 and played in the program's first New Year's Day Bowl in decades, he seemed to be a godsend. Yes, I thought, I was wrong. Keep Jerry Kill here in Minnesota at all costs.
But it all came crashing down, suddenly, Wednesday morning, when, citing continuing problems with epilepsy and the effects from it, he resigned as Head Coach at the U., effective immediately. Like with Saunders, the public didn't really see what was going on. The seizures came back, including two of them before Tuesday's practice. He wasn't taking his medication on gamedays because he couldn't focus, so he skipped them and risked getting seizures again. And lately, possibly as a result of the team's rough start to the year, he was sleeping as little as three hours a night. His wife got so worried that he caught her watching him several nights a week.
"Hell, that ain't no way to live," Kill said in an unprecedented, emotion-filled press conference where he announced his retirement. This was not your usual canned press conference; this is one where every statement uttered rang true and came from the heart. What we saw is a man who, under advisement from doctors, decided he had to walk away from the thing that made him the happiest because, no pun intended, it was killing him. Guess here is no journalist has ever seen something like that before and will never see the likes of ever again.
He hasn't put in long enough roots in Minnesota as Saunders did. Also, if the rough start to the football team continued, you can bet that there would be many of the Gopher faithful who would have called for him to be fired. But the accolades for Kill, the coach and the man, have been pouring in everywhere -- from players to administrators to writers to fellow coaches. Unanimously they say Kill is one of the good ones, a Head Coach who truly has his kids' futures in his mind. Just as important, even with the setbacks that this season has given him, Kill has given the University of Minnesota football progam a sense of competence and dignity, something it hasn't had in years. And he has done a lot of work with his just-started Chasing Dreams Foundation to help kids with epilepsy. Hopefully he'll find some new purpose with that, or with something else.
In the meantime, the direction of the University of Minnesota football program will now be guided by Defensive Coordinator Tracy Claeys. He said in his press conference Wednesday evening that it is his intention to be the Head Coach at the U. Well, he has five extremely tough games to prove he should be, beginning with a Halloween date with Jim Harbaugh and the newly-revived Michigan program Halloween evening.
One other thing to note. As weird as these past several days have been for Minnesota sports fans, the season continues to get stranger and strangers for the U. of M. athletic program. I haven't seen highlights of the Claeys conference, but I assume that Acting Athletic Director Beth Goetz introduced him. Please understand the tableau: The Interim Head football Coach was introduced by the Interim Athletic Director. Things are kind of fucked up over there, isn't it?
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