#-1: Gopher softball (Last Week: -4). Well, it appears as though this week, the best local teams are the ones that aren't even close to playing at home. It's going to be a case where a pair of squads that have enjoyed nice weekends won't fully be appreciated because they essentially are out of sight, out of mind. The softball team, for example, have somewhat righted their ship by running the table in last weekend's Diamond Devils Tournament, finishing with wins over St. Francis (PA) and taking a pair from Houston. Neither of them are ranked, but at least Minnesota is. However, they get to defend that ranking in this weekend's Georgia Tournament in Athens tomorrow and Sunday. The host Bulldogs are around the #10 ranking, and the U. will face them in the back end of doubleheaders the next two days, sprinkled in with games vs. Western Carolina and Jacksonville.
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -5). Credit to the local college nine for coming back from a series-opening defeat to Campbell by taking the next two games at their place by scores of 3-1 and 7-5.
That's all I've got.
For each of the next four weeks they have three-game series, all of them purely on the road against just one opponent. They start with Georgia St. in Atlanta this (Friday) afternoon.
#-3: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -7). I don't know how they do it, but technically, because they are the current leaders in the B1G, they are still projected into the Field of 16. Lord knows they won't get in as an at-large. They remain well below the PairWise cutoff, and the split at Mariucci to real best team in the league, Michigan, didn't help. What would have been worse is if they lost both games, which they were about to do after getting trounced by the Wolverines on Thursday. But Hudson Fasching scored in Overtime to give the U. the outright (at least in the standings) 3-2 win, putting them a point ahead of Michigan for the regular season lead.
The bad news is that it appears that any chance to garner any PairWise-boosting wins is now gone. The good news, if you can call it that, is that the Gophers get to feast on the shit stains of the B1G for the final two weeks of the season. Really, now that it appears to be tournament title or bust, does it really matter if Minnesota gets swept at Michigan St. this weekend?
#-4: Wild (Last Week: -Infinity). You know, hockey is weird. We were all ready to bury this club after their shitty start to 2016. Yet I had heard reports that advanced metric sites said that this team still had a better than 50/50 chance to reach the Stanley Cup Playoffs even though they were pissing away the postseason spot they had to start the season.
It certainly hasn't felt like they had the upper hand, especially shortly after I finished up last week's WMNSS when the Mild were up at Washington 2-1. They choked on it and lost 3-2. But, they have turned it around, registering home wins over Florida and Colorado (the latter of which whose eighth spot Minnesota took from them) and a victory at woeful (but rich and tradition-laden!) Toronto. The main reason the percentages still favored the Mild was the relatively easy schedule they have the rest of the way. I think two of their three opponents this screening week fall into that category. However, the club has an awkward home-and-home where they visit Buffalo Saturday afternoon but then host St. Louis Sunday night. They then play Edmonton at the X Thursday.
#-5: Timberwolves (Last Week: -6). All the local hockey teams rank higher than all the local basketball teams? I say things are now back in order. This time it's the pro team -- excuse me, the "pro" team -- that is the last rat standing, so to speak. Yes, they got crushed in Dallas and let an early lead slip away at Target to Washington. But hey, at least they beat The Bastard Charlotte Hornets (I know there is a Charlotte Hornets, but they became the New Orleans Pelicans) in the Crescent City, 112-110. Add that Karl-Anthony Towns was named the Western Conference Rookie for the month of February and that Kevin Martin, the three-point specialist who never really became the long-distance threat he was hyped to be (and was also often injured and couldn't play a lick of defense) was bought out and you can see the future for the Woofie Dogs is bright. Then again, the future for this franchise has been bright for a long, long time.
They play four games in five days, for crissake. They are at Milwaukee tonight (Friday night) before returning home to face Brooklyn the next night, then- at the Charlotte Hornets (the current iteration of the Charlotte Hornets) Monday before flying all the way back to Target Center to host San Antonio the next night.
#-6: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -1). You know last week when I said that the close losses gave Richard Pitino at least all of next year to right his ship? Yeah, fuck that shit. I get to change my mind when out of the blue something as program-shattering as suspending three players for the rest of the year happens. Apparently, on one of the social media accounts for one of the players there was a sex tape featuring a threesome where the other two student-athletes was railing on some chick. I would not mind seeing that.
The question becomes whether a team that is as bad as the U. is this year is drastically affected by their absence. Really, it's kind of like asking if a tree fell in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? I think. Anyway, those three were suspended just before their game vs. Wisconsin, and they lost, just like they would have if those three were not suspended, 62-49. Oh, and they got blown out at a weak Illinois club earlier in the screening week, 84-71.
They finish the season at Rutgers Saturday afternoon. They will then lose in the first round of begin the B1G Tournament Wednesday in Indianapolis. And the noose that had loosened up around Pitino's neck has already begun to tighten, and it will do so throughout the off-season. Did not know this: There have now been six players Pitino recruited that have either been suspended or left the team. That's an average of two a year. You can do that if you have your pop's pedigree, but frankly, he doesn't, and that's why he might not have all of next year now.
#-Infinity: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -3). When the final corrective on this Gopher women's basketball team is published, people will doubt they will ever see a collection of players quite like this ever again. No offense to Carlie Wagner, who will now have to be the star of this program, but basically the whole year, but really starting in February, this team was Rachel Banham and the Banham-ettes. That no one else on this squad was capable of being a wingman (again no offense to Wagner) provides further testament to what she Banham did without any help.
On Monday, the Big Ten Conference named her Conference Player Of The Year. Remember that Banham missed nearly all of last season because she tore her ACL. Obviously she was also an All-B1G First Team selection, unanimously, but both the coaches and the media. (I have to continue to apologize to Wagner; she was named to the Second Team by both entities.) And last (Thursday) night she reached not only 3,000 total points for her career (3,008 to be exact, only the 11th Division I player to do so) but she reached the Top Ten in most points scored in the NCAA's all-time scoring list.
And Banham was able to achieve that while her team lost both games. The miracle win to maybe vault the U. into the Big Dance in the season finale at #6 Maryland was shattered utterly and quickly -- 110-77, ouch. And any hope that the Goofers could make a run in the postseason conference tournament were quashed last (Thursday) night when they were beaten in Indianapolis by Northwestern, a team that they swept albeit by margins of three and six points (remember that that second game was a two-overtime affair, happened on Super Bowl Sunday, and was the game where Banham got on SportsCenter because she dropped an NCAA-tying 60 points on the Wildcats). The adage that it's difficult to beat the same time thrice was true in this case. That the Goofs were upset by a much-lower-seeded team all but vanquishes them to the WNIT.
Too bad for Banham, whom Kobe Bryant gave "#mambablood" in his few tweets about her. For all her individual accolades and the notoriety she's received in the past month, team success has eluded her her entire career. She will not win a single NCAA Tournament game. The only time Minnesota even reached the NCAA Tournament was last year, when she was injured with that ACL. It's a coup for the U. that eventually her 1 jersey will reach the Williams Arena rafters. But why couldn't she get more talent and thus success around her? Should be blame former Head Coach Pam Borton? Current Head Coach Marlene Stollings? Should Banham have been less of a ball hog in order to get the Banhamettes more love? Could everybody just play a bit more defense, for God's sake? Look, maybe Stollings knew that the team's meal ticket was Banham and so she needed to get the ball and shoot as much as possible in order to even get this far. But Banham is going to go down, essentially, as the Mitch Richmond of Minnesota women's basketball. You get a sidebar in the novel, not a chapter, and you're certainly not the main story.
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