#-1: Timberwolves (Last Week: -2). You know what? I'm going to throw out all my usual criteria. For this week, I'm really not going to look at the records. Instead I am going to give credence (or at least some credence) to what I think the ... how you say ... the psyche of the team and the relationship to its fanbase. If you look deep enough, much more important things are going on with a team beyond its record. That may usually be the case, but this will be a week (and probably the only week for a long, long time) where I actually pay more than lip service to it.
What do I mean by that? Well, last week I said that I won't be talking about the Timberwolves because the only thing happening this screening week was the All-Star Break. Yeah, well, fuck that, because a lot of Timber Puppies did a lot of good things. Enough good things, in fact, that I think they had the best week of any local club.
First, Zach LaVine, a first-round pick many (including me) thought was going to be a complete bust, has popularized his own maturing game Friday by winning the Rising Stars Game (the, I think, rookies vs. second-year players game). Then on Saturday, big man Karl-Anthony Towns (which, it should be said, seems to be progressing more in his game than Andrew Wiggins is in his) surprised everyone by winning the Skills Competition, the end of which entails nailing a three-pointer. Finally, LaVine outdueled Orlando's Aaron Gordon to win what many call The Best Slam Dunk Contest Ever ... or at least since 2000 (aka Vince Carter's Announcement Party), if not 1988 (Jordan and his free-throw dunk over Dominique Wilkins). I was vacillating back and forth at the community center over whether or not I wanted to stick around to watch or to go home, shower, clip my nails before midnight and watch Saturday Night Live. I did the latter, and I was convinced to do so as soon as I saw there was a package for Gordon before he started the contest. I don't know remember whether the Slam Dunk Contest even got done before I had to leave the center at 10, but from the looks of it, I missed a lot, and I regret. (Also, not to shade LaVine or anything, but for that Toilet Seat Dunk alone, I think Gordon should have won. Props to LaVine, though; in his acceptance speech, he gave absolute dap to Gordon and noted how they both brought their game and revived the relevance and the spectacle of the Slam Dunk Contest. If LaVine vs. Gordon becomes a milestone for this contest, LaVine understood its importance at that moment, and how he couldn't have done it without such a worthy competitor.)
I can't believe it. As astonishing that a team with this much talent has won only 17 games (and you might have to put the blame on that on Sam Mitchell), I have look and compare and contrast the fortunes of the Woofie Dogs with that of the other pro team in the area, the Wild (which, spoiler alert, appears at the very bottom of the WMNSS). Before their seasons began it was the Mild who had all the high hopes and the Timberwolves who needed to prove all the naysayers wrong. Seems that, in a minor way, the shoes are on the other feet -- that it's the T-Wolves that may finally have gotten their shit together while the Mild have not proven to be the scrappy, professional crew its fans perceived them to be. This has become Bizarro World, essentially.
They get back into the swing of things with an excruciating back-to-back tonight (Friday night) at Memphis followed by a home game Saturday against New York. They then host Boston on Monday before visiting Toronto Wednesday.
#-2: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -4). This team was in a no-win situation. Lose even one game in their series at woeful Ohio St. and they can pretty much kiss their at-large chances goodbye. That didn't happen, although both games were one-goal affairs and Justin Kloos had to score in Overtime to give the Gophs the 5-4 win on Friday. (Kloos had two goals and two assists for the weekend, as did teammate Hudson Fasching; thus, Kloos was named the B1G First Star and Fasching the Second Star Of The Week.) Unfortunately, they did just what was expected of them, therefore the squad gained no ground in the PairWise rankings. All they have right now is the technical league in the regular season, which counts for diddly squat because the automatic bid is awarded to the tournament winner.
Wow. This is a weird time to have a week off.
#-3: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -5). As shitty as this team and this season is, there is one thing I regret that I didn't emphasize enough: Moral victories are pitiful to hang your hat on, but seeing this club do it time and time again does prove that the players are playing for their Head Coach. The results mean very little when it comes right down to it. But in the middle of what turned out to be a 14-game losing streak the players easily could have quit on Richard Pitino. Instead, they fought hard, then played a competitive first half, then led until late in the second half. They are competing, and you only have to look back to last week to see how ugly it can get when the players decide not to compete (see below).
They lost by seven points at home vs. Indiana. They lost by five at Michigan. They took Illinois to OT at The Barn before giving way. They were there late before losing by four to Purdue, also at home. They almost got the Hoosiers in Bloomington before losing by six. They fell to Michigan at Williams Arena by eight. And finally, on Valentine's Day, they hung around before losing at fourth-ranked Iowa by four. There is a significant talent deficit they faced against all of their teams. Michael Rand of the Star Tribune noted that of the six recruits in Pitino's 2014 class (his first full one), three of them left the team and two of the remaining three stay glued to the bench. But the scrubs that are still with Pitino at least work hard. "At least" can be a virus of mediocrity if used long enough. But it's correctly applied here.
And, surprisingly, all those close defeats finally motivated this team to win for the first time in conference play and for the first time since December 16. And they did it by beating the sixth-ranked team in the country. WHA'??????????????????
Yeah, whodathunkit? But Jordan Murphy (17 points, 11 rebounds) helped the U. race out to a commanding lead at halftime. The Terrapins reeled them back, and even led late in the game. But the Gophers made their free throws at the end and outlasted Maryland, 68-63, to finally get that "0" off of the B1G win column. People say that there is no dominant basketball team this year, and I think this game is a big sign of that.
This club was supposed to pop their Big Ten win cherry at Williams against Rutgers Tuesday, but now their actual goal is getting their first winning streak since late November.
#-4: Gopher softball (Re-Entry!). The problem with the softball and baseball programs (BTW, baseball begins its season today [Friday]) is that since they always begin their season away from, they are out of sight, out of mind. The softball team started off last weekend in Vegas, where they started off the Sportco Kickoff Classic with a three-game winning streak (including a 1-0 win over Top 10-ranked Oklahoma) and followed that up with a two-game losing streak (most disconcerting of which was a 13-2 rout by unranked Long Beach St.).
Still, they began the season ranked in the Top 20 in all the softball polls I can see, and even after their 3-2 tournament they are still ranked in the Top 20. They will be a contender in the B1G, maybe battling with Nebraska to be second-best in the conference, with Michigan considered head and shoulders the class of the league (and, in fact, ranked second nationwide). Pitcher and Third Baseman Sara Groenewegen will lead the team for one final year; she easily is one of the 20 best Pitchers in top-flight softball. The rest will do their best to pick off the dregs of the league while trying to fight off the Cornhuskers and the Wolverines for Big Ten supremacy. (Looking at the schedule, though, the Gophers don't play Michigan. They will, however, host Nebraska for three.) This weekend they participate in softball's version of the B1G/ACC Challenge in Tallahassee, Fla. They play Virginia Tech this (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon, then play two against ranked Florida St. tomorrow (Saturday) evening and Sunday afternoon.
#-5: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -1). Rachel Banham is going to go down as one of the best women's college basketball players in University of Minnesota history. I didn't truly understand or appreciate her scoring prowess until Mondays' Pink Game against Iowa. The Hawkeyes really controlled the game early, especially down low, where the U. had absolutely no answers. It took Banham all she could to keep the deficit at halftime to ten points.
In the second half, however, the U. started to battle back. I don't understand why the Hawkeyes didn't keep pounding the rock inside; Minnesota got their hands up and stole the ball a lot more after half, but Iowa still had a height advantage. (Oh yeah; I should add that the Hawkeyes had a huge edge at the free-throw line. I think the U.'s first charity strip attempts came in the fourth quarter.) Anyway, the U. stormed back to make it a game late. A free-throw miss (the only one by either team that evening) was followed by a lay-up by Iowa's Ally Disterhoft to give the Hawkeyes a 76-75 lead.
You'll see that lay-up in the video below. Anyway, with eight seconds and no Time Outs left, Banham did this:
Banham, in case you didn't know, has already scored more points than legend Lindsay Whalen. The reason why she will not get the legacy Whalen does is because she hasn't had as successful a tournament career as Whalen. Not only has Banham not gotten to the Final Four (and sadly she won't this year, her final year; more below), she hasn't even won a tournament game yet. That will obscure how damn good she is; as of Monday's buzzer-beater, she was only 79 points away from scoring the most points in a career in Big Ten women's basketball history.
That victory gave them four in a row and eight-of-nine. Still, bracketologists don't believe Minnesota has much of a chance of making the Big Dance. Their RPI is too low; they didn't have a challenging non-conference schedule, they lost too many of those games, and the club hadn't faced the most challenging teams in the league yet. That four-game gauntlet began last (Thursday) night in Indiana ... and they got spanked, 93-79. No, it's not looking good now. But hey, at least Banham scored 29, so she has, what, three games to get the 51 to pass Kelly Mazzante of Penn St. and get the all-time record? She'll chip away at that at Michigan St. Sunday and then home for her final-ever game at The Barn, Wednesday against Ohio St.
#-6: Gopher wrestling (Last Week: -3). Kind of thought that after winning consecutive bouts on the road they may have figured things out and could beat ranked Illinois at Illinois. Uh, no. Each team took five matches, but the Goofers' one Major Decision was outmatched by the Illini's two Majors, and one Technical Fall, so the U. lost 19-16.
They finish the regular season with a non-con game against Iowa St., which also is having a down year, at the Sports Pavilion. I usually would absolutely go because of the attraction of a non-conference team, and one as decorated as the Cyclones. The more think about it, the more I really do want to go to the dual, which starts at 7:30. But at 7 there is another game featuring an opponent with seemingly equal skill to the U.: the women's hockey team, ranked third in the country, play Wisconsin, ranked second in the country, at Ridder starting at 7. The Badgers have been the better team, but the Gophers recently got back Amanda Kessel; could she be the difference? So shit, what to do? You know, the Pav and Ridder are within walking distance to each other, and I think I can get in free to both games. Maybe I'll just spend this evening going to both.
#-Infinity: Wild (Last Week: -6). Last week I rhetorically asked, "Will Yeo survive this?" Well, the answer is no, although the answer could also be, "Forget it, he didn't really even make it to this."
Apparently, Saturday's 4-2 loss at home to Boston was the final straw, and Head Coach Mike Yeo was fired late that afternoon. And I guess the players got their wish.
Maybe some other time I'll talk about how I see head coaches of sports differently. Let me say that in the end, I doubt any of us will ever really know how and why Yeo got shitcanned. I for one can't completely discount nor totally believe the reasons that have been thrown out there. One reason in particular sounds contradictory to me: That he was favoring the veterans over the youngsters. If that's the case, how come it looks like that the veterans on the team quit on Yeo, and in fact even some of them passive-aggressively sold out Yeo during postgame interviews? If he was favoring the vets, you'd think they would be more publicly supportive of him. Is it because he wasn't able to get through to the young talent? Well (and I'll get into more of this later), they showed this week they still have talent, so that opens up the possibility that it's the player or, if they really aren't as good as the contracts they have signed indicated, the General Manager, Chuck Fletcher, who definitely is on the hot seat now. And I always hear something to the effect of, "Sometimes you need a new voice in the locker room because the old voice just falls on deaf ears." I still have no idea what that means. Joel Quenneville has been coach of the Chicago Blackhawks for the past seven years, more than two more than Yeo, and apparently they still hear his voice. So is it really on the coach, or is it really on the players who should just be professional because they signed contracts for a lot of money to just fucking play?
That's where I'm leading to this. Now that the Mild have won three in a row under Interim Head Coach John Torchetti, it seems more and more obvious that the players could have played better but didn't. The prevailing wisdom when it comes to the fanbase is that you need to win. Since they are winning now, the fanbase should be happy. But you know what? I'm not sure about that. I think there are a lot of people who did not like that this squad lost eight games in a row and 13-of-14 ... and in fact had their negative feelings about this team confirmed with their three-game Prairie Provinces sweep this week. To them, it showed that they were being petulant, if not childish. They just wanted Mike Yeo gone, and therefore were going to dog it to the point where they would imperil their chances of making the playoffs this year until Fletcher and Owner Craig Leipold had no choice but to fire him. They did, now they're all happy-clappy and they will start playing again. And I think that pisses off a lot of Wild fans, to the point where they cannot support these players unless they win the whole thing. I'm serious about that conclusion. And that's why I'm giving the Mild a midseason -Infinity.
Again, we'll never know what happened in the locker room. But work with me on this: If Mike Yeo was such a bad person that players would rather quit than play for him, why hasn't any of the leaders on this team -- Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, Mikko Koivu -- just fucking say so? I don't know how a player can throw Yeo under the bus without making himself look bad. But I tell you this: Without any definitive proof that Yeo was somehow either an idiot or an asshole -- John Tortorella losing his mind and going after the Calgary locker room after a game is the kind of suicidal mistake I'm thinking of -- the fanbase is looking at any empty space for a narrative. So, to figure out what the hell happened and who to blame, they look at Yeo, see that he's taken them to the playoffs three straight years, beaten a first-round opponent the last two years, shepherded a team through a mid-season swoon the past three seasons, and general was a stoic, hard-working man who always took responsibility. Minnesotan qualities.
And then the fans look at the players, who were on the ice for those three mid-season swoons, and who ran into the Chicago Blackhawks last year and got swept, and then stopped winning after the New Year. They look at the contracts people like Matt Dumba and Nino Niedereitter and Jason Zucker signed and see that they weren't producing as soon as the ink dried. They also look at Thomas Vanek and Jason Pominville not score. (And they remember seeing both layabouts sign contracts even with the reputation of not being team players and the fans cast a side-eye at Fletch. Fair point.) And then they finally look at Koivu and Suter and Parise and they're not living up to their contracts. Unless someone has the guts to go to the media and say something like, "Mike Yeo was not a good coach for us, and here's why," what is the fanbase supposed to think other than a good man was fired just because people didn't like him?
So I don't think it matters that the Wild are now on a winning streak. I don't know if Torchetti, who was promoted from his job as HC for AAA Iowa, is the guy. I think the players are playing now that it's "Not Mike Yeo." All I see (and I think a lot of people agree with me) is a bunch of babies who didn't do their jobs because they wanted to cashier some dude who did nothing wrong except try to do his job. And I don't think fans want to reward what they consider to be unprofessional behavior just now (and I can't believe I'm saying this) that they've won three games in a row. And, honestly, I think this is permanent. This is a fatal blow for fan relations, and it won't be repaired until nearly every single person on that team leaves. I'm serious about that.
So I'm going to Sunday's outdoor game against Chicago. Paid a pretty penny, but at least we'll have semi-decent weather. I wonder what kind of reception this team will get. If they win, will everybody be back on the bandwagon? Honestly, though, I kind of want to see the team lose. I want to see how many fans, if any, turn on the team -- not just for losing such a big game to a rival, but also for thinking they can beat the defending Stanley Cup Champions after they got their coach fired.
Oh, they also play the Islanders at the X and go to Philadelphia this week.
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