The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1 (tie): Gopher wrestling and Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: Re-Entry! and -2, respectively).  Wow.  This may have been the shittiest week in the history of the survey.  Every team lost at least once and looked awful doing it.  Christ, this town absolutely sucks when it comes to sports.

Let's start with the grapplers, only because I have the least to talk about when it comes to them.  This puzzling tailspin from one of the powers of the sport continues in the New Year, where they follow up an ass-kicking at the Sports Pavilion to Maryland, a program that has been so bad for so long that it seems counter-productive to field a varsity squad, with going to Nebraska and getting their assholes wrenched open enough for Husker shoes to fit in their, snugly.  24-10?!?!  What the hell?!  Home to Rutgers Sunday.

There is a more intriguing story surrounding the men's hockey program, and it comes via the media, albeit a skeezy part of it.  The cover story in this week's City Pages (our local alternative weekly) is writer's Cory Zurowski examination of the shitty state of the Gopher men's hockey team, which split at Penn St. (a club that, may I remind you, is only three years old) this past weekend.  Maybe I shouldn't say it's an examination.  It's more of a hit piece.

Seems as though Zurowski has had a hard-on in taking down Head Coach Don Lucia.  He had a similar piece about the arms race that has come to youth hockey in the state a year ago.  And at the very end of one of his articles (which was a two- or three-part "investigation"), without any set-up or connection to anything he was writing about in his piece, he threw in a shot about Lucia giving out scholarships to young high school students, thus proving that he and the U. both profit from the recent move away from high school sports and towards travelling teams and specialized training schools.  I am trying to find it on the website, but funny, it's not there.  And now out comes this carpet-bombing of a program which, two years ago, was in the championship game.

Now, saying that, although this is a hit piece from a writer who clearly has an agenda, it's not a cheap shot.  While he hammers on Lucia and the program, he isn't wrong.  Nor has he completely relied on the easy "anonymous sources" crap that some journalists employ to undermine people in power.  He has names -- former players, scouts, people in the business -- who aren't afraid to give their opinions on the precipitous decline of a club that should not be this bad.  Now, as shitty as they are, I don't think Lucia should be immediately fired -- a notion that I know Zurowski relishes.  But he's right that something is very fishy here, and I have to agree at least with the bloodlust that comes from the belief that a program so synonymous with the state of Minnesota should have a team that always contends.

I wonder if there's going to be any hubbub surrounding this article this weekend when the team hosts Michigan St.

#-3: Wild (Last Week: -3).  Well, at least they beat The Team That Was Stolen From Us.  Unfortunately they have lost the other two games this screening week, to New Jersey and Buffalo.  Ironically, the win came on the road and the losses came at home.  So it's back to the doldrums for this troubling, laconic team.

There has been a lot of buzz this past week that Defenseman Matt Dumba would be traded to Tampa Bay for former #3 overall pick Jonathan Drouin.  It would be a shot in the arm in the middle of the season for the Mild for the second year in a row.  Last season, Devyn Dubnyk instantly solved the squad's goaltending issues and righted their tailspin.  Obviously, General Manager Chuck Fletcher think the team needs to do it again.  Who knows if Drouin is the answer, and Dumba has been a rock in what has suddenly become an abundant position for the organization.  But it's troubling that a team this supposedly talented needs a personnel shake-up in order for them to play better.

After hosting Winnipeg, they play seven of their next eight games on the road.  The first four are on the road because the Xcel Energy Center is hositng the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.  The first three road games fall in this screening week: Nashville, Anaheim and L.A.

#-4 (tie): Gopher women's basketball, Gopher men's basketball and Timberwolves.  (Last Week, -1, -4 and -5, respectively).  I ... I really don't know what to say.  Partly because I'm at work, but partly it's also because these three teams -- hell, the entire fucking sport of basketball in Minnesota -- is absolute shit.

All three squads went a combined 0-8 for the week.  The Timberpuppies have now lost eight in a row.  The U. men are currently on a six-game losing streak and there's already speculation on whether this may be The Worst Team In Program History.  The Gopher women ... well, Rachel Banham returning has been nothing but a waste.  I would have put them all in -Infinity, but this week it has to be reserved for a different team.

I would preview the opponents these teams face this week, but who gives a rat's ass?

#-Infinity: Vikings (Last Week: 0).  Three plays.  The team lost this game, a game they were shutting out The Proverbial Team No One Wants To Play, the Seattle Seahawks, for three quarters, because of three fucking plays.  I don't want to rehash all the gory details, but I want to feel sorry for myself one more time:

1. That goddamn fumble turned big play from QB Russell Wilson to Tyler Lockett.  This was on First Down, so an explosive offense that was up to that point stymied still had the chance to make hay on this drive, which, at this point, was on the Viking 44.  Wilson picked up the errant snap at the Seahawk 45.  None of the several Vikes that pursued him got to him.  One of those people pursuing him was Captain Munnerlyn -- the man defending Lockett.  Wilson found him open in the middle of the field and threw the perfect pass to him at the Vikes' 4, which led to a Touchdown and Seattle's opening score.  Technically it went 35 yards, but you should say that it was a 51-yard play.  Fifty-one yards, all in one play, instead of pinning the 'Hawks back in their territory.  Would it have prevented a score?  You're never sure, but having a 2nd and 21 would have helped the Purple a lot.
2. The Adrian Peterson Fumble on the ensuing drive.  Remember that his first two years the only thing holding him back was his tendency to fumble.  And he had corrected that ... only to start fumbling again in the 2013 season.  As mad as Head Coach Mike Zimmer was about the third play, to me, he seemed extremely upset that The Supposed Best Running Back In The League would carry the ball so carelessly and allow Kam Chancellor to strip A.P. of the ball.  In fact, if I'm right, Peterson won't be on the team next year.  And that would be better because Jerrick McKinnon, an RB who can catch out of the backfield, appears to be a better fit in Offensive Coordinator Norv Turner's offense.
3. The Blair Miss Project.  I want to hate Blair Walsh for the rest of my life.  But then the goddamn media had to step in and remind ourselves of our humanity by showing first-graders sending cheer-up messages to him.  Walsh was so touched that he visited the school of these first-graders (which actually falls within my school district, even though the elementary school was made about a decade ago and so it wasn't around when I was growing up).  Alright, I'll let him go; remember, he is the only Viking who scored in that 10-9 game.  But he still shouldn't've missed a fucking 27-yard Field Goal.

People reassure us by saying that this is a young team that they're on the up and up.  What they forget is that this is the NFL, where teams get really better and really worse from year to year.  This is not basketball or baseball, where a club gets incrementally better the more talent you bring in.  (Timberwolves excepted.)  As Kirby Puckett, a man who did come through in the clutch, once said, tomorrow is not promised to any of us.  And it sure as hell isn't promised to the ViQueens.