Positive Numbers: Vikings (Last Week: -2). I can no longer deny at least this: The Minnesota Vikings are beating a lot of teams that they weren't able to beat in the past. On the road against an Oakland Raiders franchise that seemingly has stumbled onto a Quarterback for the long run (Derek Carr) and a Safety that is playing close to his best (the legend, Charles Woodson), the Vikings managed to step up a gear in the fourth quarter and put the game away and win their fifth consecutive contest.
They did it with back-to-back big plays. First, an Interception from Terence Newman in the end zone, with the Vikes clutching to a nine-point lead, showed that the defense was able to bend but not break at clutch moments. And on the ensuing offensive play, Adrian Peterson picked up his blocks, shed a tackle from an out-of-position defender, and trampled 80 yards (although I must say a bit slower than the man he was five or ten years ago) to put the finishing touches on the 30-14 win.
The defense has now gelled into a fearsome force. Lately, praise has been heaped onto Linval Joseph for creating havoc on the line of scrimmage. Just as important, though, the secondary has been making big plays and forcing turnovers. That may be just the elixir needed to defeat the Green Bay Packers in the Sunday national game, who are reeling after losing their third straight. They have no running game to speak of and the receivers have been unable to get open. In short, the Pack have never been more vulnerable to getting beat, and at Das Bank, no less. Things are already looking up now that Minnesota is in first place all alone in the National Football Conference North. But to beat Green Bay and be two games up on them, with an early tiebreaker? No one could have seen this good fortune coming.
#0 (tie): Gopher volleyball and Gopher soccer (Last Week, respectively: 0 and -8). I grade these two U. of M. teams at 0 reluctantly. I kind of still want to put these three in Positive Numbers, right next to the Vikings. That would mean that three teams are at the same level, which I believe would be a WMNSS first, and I don't know if I want to do that.
Both programs had very notable weeks. I was at Saturday's volleyball game against #1 Penn St. as part of my Day Of Volleyball. I had thought that the match would have the highest attendance ever at the Sports Pavilion for a v-ball match -- turns out that the match earlier in the season vs. Wisconsin had about 50 more people -- but I know for sure that I have never attended a Gopher volleyball match that loud and fervent. And if you believe in home-court advantage, it was an overwhelming force in helping the U. sweep the Nittany Lions. The concern going in is if they were relying too much on Daly Santana, but she was helped in the first two sets by Hannah Tapp (10 kills) and tremendously in the third set by Sarah Wilhite (12 kills). That balanced attack will serve them well in the long run, one that should be punctuated with the Big Ten regular season title.
The only reason I used to not put the squad at Positives was that I thought that beating "the man" meant that they would be "the man." Unfortunately they only moved up one spot in the AVCA Top 25 to third. The disappointment over not getting first there was enough of an excuse for me to not put them first here. Well, at least they remain #1 in RPI.
Oh yeah, the club also swept Maryland last (Wednesday) night, keeping them two games ahead of Penn St. and Nebraska for the conference lead. They have three games left in the regular season, none of them complete walkovers. They visit Purdue on Saturday, then have Senior Night Dranksgiving against Ohio St.
Meanwhile, the Golden Gopher footy squad won for the first time in six matches, and since it was the first round of the NCAA Tournament, not a moment too soon. They found both their offensive spark and defensive mindset Friday at Robbie Stadium, utterly dispatching a South Dakota St. side that could have taken advantage of a team that had fallen on black days. Simone Kolander has yet to get back on track, but credit Redshirt Senior Taylor Stainbrook for kicking off the 5-0 onslaught by scoring the first and game-winning goal in the 19th minute.
Even better, they do not have to face seeded Cal in the next round. In the only big upset of the first round, the Bears were shocked, 1-0, by Loyola Marymount. So it is the Lions they will face in the second round of the tourney, Friday afternoon, in Morgantown, W.V., site of the next two rounds of that pod of the tournament (the winner of the game will face either host West Virginia or Northwestern on Sunday). There's no reason not to believe Loyola Marymount can't follow up one win over a seeded team with one over an unseeded one, and I didn't want to lift this club up to Positive Numbers only to shovel them all the way down to -Infinity the following week, so that's my excuse to place them at 0 here. Nevertheless, their first tournament victory since (I believe) 2010, when they reached the Sweet Sixteen, makes this season a smashing success.
#-1: Gopher men's basketball (Re-Entry!). College basketball season started up this weekend. Seth Davis of SI.com proposed that the beginning of the season, regardless of what day of the week it falls, should start on November 11, aka Veterans Day, and, in fact, Davis stipulates that every Division I college basketball team should play on that day. It would generate as much of a splash to commence the sport's season as you can get in a time of the year where football (both pro and college) are in full swing and the NBA has just begun. Actually, that's a great idea.
Right now, the NCAA states that the season must begin on the second Friday in November, which this year was (duh-duh-duh!) Friday the 13th. The first game in top-flight college basketball, by the way, tipped off at 11 Central Time that afternoon, Vermont vs. Eastern Michigan. (Don't know why I wrote that sentence.) Teams didn't have to play that day, but the Gopher men did, and they trounced Missouri-Kansas City at Williams Arena, 76-58. And they quickly followed that up with another home win versus Louisiana-Monroe Sunday, 67-56. Certainly these aren't formidable opponents, and I can recall many times U. men's b-ball teams fattened up on tomato cans at home before being exposed in conference play on the road. But it's always better to win than to lose, and with the arrival of three pretty solid recruits, the aura around this team, at least, is positive. The test comes this weekend, however, in San Juan for the Puerto Rico Tip-Off. The eight-team mini-tournament ensures three games over four days to determine where each team places, and let's home to God the U. isn't dead last. They draw Temple this (Thursday) afternoon.
#-2: Gopher women's basketball (Re-Entry!). Meanwhile the Gopher women ballers also started play on Friday the 13th -- earlier than the men even, by 2 1/2 hours, because they too were playing at Williams. Marlene Stollings's squad decimated Wofford, 98-54. The team sank a highest-ever 16 three-pointers, six of them by not Rachel Banham. It was Mikayla Bailey, who was named B1G Co-Player Of The Week for chipping in a career-high 26 points and career-high 13 rebounds.
Good start, but I'm not sure how well it's going to end. There are no sites I see that place Minnesota in the NCAA Tournament. That would be a horrible shame for Banham, considered to be one of the 25 best players in top-flight women's college b-ball, to be relegated to the WNIT. But I guess that's a huge testament to how important Amanda Zahui B. was to the team when they made it to the Big Dance last year. Man, if Zahui stayed this year, and assuming Banham would be healthy all year, they could have put the hurtin' on the conference. But now ... ?
They host Maine on Friday before having a true blue road game against Kent State Tuesday.
#-3: Wild (Last Week: -4). They are just about to complete a four-game road trip, and it's not going so well. They beat The Bastard Hartford Whalers in Overtime, but then lost to The Team That Was Stolen From Us in OT. Then on Tuesday, they were defeated in regulation by Pittsburgh a team that, according to Michael Russo of the Star Tribune during the radio broadcast of the game had such weak defensemen that the Wild should be able to outscore the Penguins. So a straight-up loss like this should be considered a grave disappointment.
It's not helping that the club is going through a rash of injuries right now. They are calling up a host of young guns from AAA Iowa, and they shouldn't be; many folks in the know say that the Iowa Wild (or the I-Wi, as I want to call them) are the worst assembled team in the minors.
This week they finish their road trip in Boston, then come home to play Nashville and Vancouver.
#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -5). NBA League Pass is a satellite service where you can subscribe to a team. I am guessing that a lot of diehard hoops fans have the Woofie Dogs on their League Pass, because a lot of folks in the know are delighted nightly by the continuing emergence of Andrew Wiggins, the still-crisp court vision and passing virtuosity of Ricky Rubio, and the grown-up power of rookie Karl-Anthony Towns.
Too bad it's not translating to wins. They went 1-4 in a grueling screening week, their only win a second-half comeback in Miami on Tuesday. Last (Wednesday) night's loss to Orlando was excrutiating: The Magic's Evan Fournier sank a three-pointer with about three seconds left in Overtime. Thus, Wiggins's 28 points, Towns's 21 points and 12 rebounds, and Rubio's almost-triple-double (12 assists, 12 boards but only 8 points) went to waste. I think I said it last year and I'll say it again: This may be the most entertaining 25-win team in recent NBA history.
The good news is that the Wolves are at home this whole week: Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. The bad news is that they have yet to win at home.
#-5: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -6). Split a home-and-home against Minnesota State-Mankato. Both teams won on the road: The Goofs routed the Mavericks Friday, 4-0, but then were bested in Mariucci in OT the next night, 3-2. That defeat was a particular gut-punch because they were up 2-0 with 3 1/2 minutes left in regulation, but the Mavs scored two goals, about 2:45 apart, after they pulled their Goalie. Nevertheless, Minnesota's Goalie, Eric Schierhorn, was named the B1G Third Star Of The Week for his efforts.
The team has a break this weekend. They had a break just three weekends ago!
#-6: Gopher football (Last Week: -7). At the Minnesota State Fair there is one building dedicated solely to the University of Minnesota. One part of the wing is for Gopher athletics, where you can buy tickets at State Fair discount, get free posters, and see notable team trophies. It was notable this year because of all the rivalry trophies the U. football team collected in 2014. It was another year where they had Floyd of Rosedale, which they won after beating Iowa, and the U. displayed the Little Brown Jug for the first time in a long time, the result of defeating Michigan. The Governor's Bell was there, too, but that is a minor rivalry, and unfortunately I still have not seen Paul Bunyan's Ax because the Gophs haven't beaten Wisconsin in a while. But I took pictures with all three trophies anyway, just in case I won't be able to see them displayed at the State Fair again anytime soon.
Glad I did take the pictures. A bad play call gave the Wolverines the win on Halloween, and after Saturday's 40-35 setback in Iowa City, the pig is gone, too. The game against Iowa was not as close as the score indicates, by the way. That means that they have lost four in a row, and newly-named Head Coach Tracy Claeys still has not won a game. He has his chance Saturday early afternoon at TCF Bank Stadium against Illinois, a team playing for an Interim Head Coach but one that is playing a lot better than anticipated. The Goofs have their own motivation: They need to win their final two games to be bowl-eligible.
#-7: Gopher wrestling (Last Week: -1). I heard that this year's team wouldn't be as good as previous classes, but this is absolutely shocking: The team lost all three matches in Sunday's Northeast Duals in Troy, N.Y. How the fuck does this program, the U.!, get swept in all three matches on the same goddamn day? And how in the fuckety-fuck do they lose to North Carolina and N.C. St.? Two ACC schools? What does the ACC know about wrestling? They're a fucking basketball conference! And the Goofers got deeeee-stroyed by the Wolfpack 31-3!!! I can't fucking believe it.
Worse yet was news from last week that I was not aware of. The #1 high school prospect in the nation hails from Apple Valley, a young man named Mark Hall. Despite being trained by Gopher coaches and student-athletes, and thus being lobbied heavily to go to the U., on Veterans Day he said he would go to Penn St. under the tutelage of Cael Sanderson. That's got to be a kick in the nuts. Head Coach J Robinson can't keep the borders closed for the best wrestling blue-chipper in the Class Of 2016? And he loses him to a hated conference rival? The Nittany Lions had come from virtually nowhere to win four NCAA Champions in a row; that Sanderson could just saunter into Gopher country and pluck this state's best wrestler means that the power in the Big Ten, and in college wrestling, resides in State College for the foreseeable future.
Right now, though, Robinson has bigger things to focus on. Like trying not to get upset by the Air Force this Saturday evening at the Sports Pavilion.
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