#0: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -1). OK, this is impressive. And if results like this continue through the rest of the year, I now understand why Richard Pitino made all of us suffer through such a shitty season last year.
Unlike their home contest versus Michigan St., these Gophers did not fold in Overtime, making their free throws late in a 91-82 victory over ranked Purdue New Year's Night -- in West Lafayette, which is a huge get on this team's resume. On Thursday they went to Northwestern, a team that's pretty good but a program that has never reached The Big Dance, and escaped with a 70-66 win. A pair of road wins, both of them against pretty decent teams, one of which is and probably will be ranked for most of the season? That is the sign of a very good team, and one that deserves to rise above negative numbers for the first Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey for 2017.
Can they keep it going in the B1G Sunday Night game, tonight against Ohio St. at The Barn? After this they will travel to Michigan St. (they will have already played the Spartans twice before MLK Day? There should be more balance to the schedule) and Penn St. this week.
#-1: Gopher men's hockey (Re-Entry!). They began the second half of their season by walking over Mercyhurst and UMass in winning the 26th annual Mariucci Classic. Gophers claimed all three Stars from the B1G, announced on Tuesday, but that might be because Minnesota was the only conference team playing over New Year's Weekend. This is good, but they need to continue to roll up wins in-conference. Even though there are three other conference squads currently ranked, there's a possibility that the Big Ten may be a low-major/one-team conference for the NCAA Tournament again, so every win counts.
They have this weekend off, but they host a pretty good Michigan outfit next weekend.
#-2: Gopher football (Re-Entry!). Wow, that shit went down fast.
I don't know if Tracy Claeys's tweet supporting his team's proposed (and 48-hour-only) boycott because of the U. administration's handling was the thing that got him fired, or even if it was the final straw. Claeys was in a tough position; I mean, I can understand taking the side of the players you need to win games and, in so doing, keep your job. Plus, I'm sure that he truly cares for them. But a lot of the reasons behind the move are politics, not completely untinged with real serious matters. Without placing blame or knowing full culpability about the due process regarding the players allegedly involved in this gang rape/fuck train, the U. had a lot of heat coming from people who are sick and tired of players acting as if they control the campus. Now, the players may have been emboldened by that Rolling Stone investigation into rape on the University of Virginia that turned out to be a total lie. But those on the left know -- and that is the fact -- that campus rape is a severely underreported crime on colleges, and I believe they put up a stiff fight against the team and to Claeys. Add that Athletic Director Mark Coyle did not hire Claeys; if it wasn't pressure from victim's rights groups calling for Claeys's head -- and it would be fair to all parties involved if Coyle could just say that if it were true -- that tweet was a damn good excuse to relieve him of his duties and find a new guy.
The U. football team, coming off just its third season of nine or more wins since 1903, is up here because, in this extremely late date in the college football coaching search calendar, they grabbed up the one hot candidate that confoundingly had not moved on up until now: P.J. Fleck, formerly of Western Michigan. And, hey, this is a guy who ... doesn't do decaf:
"I eat difficult conversations for breakfast?" Does he eat life-altering decisions for dinner?
I'll be honest: To me, with his outdoor voice and Harold Hill pep, Fleck went from welcome optimism to awkward, Music Man-level suspicion. We all know that Minnesota is a stepping-stone job, especially for you. If he does what he did in Western Michigan (go from one win in his first year to an undefeated regular season in his fourth), he'll be off to one of the premier jobs in college football -- and frankly, Minnesota will understand. But good lord, man, you got the job, settle down!
During his press conference, I was starting to regret that Coyle didn't hire Les Miles instead. He would probably be surly with the press, but at least he could speak with an indoor voice. And Fleck's detractors probably preferred Miles's resume, which includes the 2007 title. Hey, Minnesota actually had an abundance of good candidates to choose from at this late date.
Many people watching who hated the hire noted his unbridled derring-do looking very familiar to that of one Tim Brewster. But remember, then-AD Joel Maturi was suckered into hiring Brewster from his job as Tight Ends Coach of the Denver Broncos. He had never been a Head Coach. In fact, he had never been a Coordinator, either. In that sense, Fleck has a much more extensive track record. For that alone I am willing to give Fleck a chance. He probably will be able to convince the recruits who were about to be off to Kalamazoo to go to Minneapolis instead, and that's a good thing, because Western Michigan's recruiting rank is much higher than the U.'s. And not for nothing, of all the places Fleck could have gone, he wound up here. All eyes on us, all eyes on us.
Sometimes, waiting late to blow things up for no apparent reason turns out to be a good thing.
#-3: Wild (Last Week: Positive Numbers). Well, in the first regular season matchup in North American sports history where both teams had winning streaks of at least 12 games, the Mild were exposed as incapable, getting blitzed at home New Year's Eve to, of all fucking teams, the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-2. (The BJs were able to win in Edmonton before getting shut out 5-0 in Washington, thank Buddha. That ended their winning streak, finally, at 16 games, and therefore the NHL record for consecutive games won is still the 1993-4 [I think] Pittsburgh Penguins at 17. By the way, those Penguins did not win the Stanley Cup; they lost in the second round. So there's hope that Columbus, of all fucking franchises, are not the juggernaut they've exhibited themselves to be.) It's not the worst thing to have a winning streak snapped to a good team, but it happened at home, and it would've been nice for a Minnesota team to come out on top in a big game for once.
They rebounded with a 5-4 victory in San Jose where they ripped off four goals in a row. That assured the Mild led the Central Division in time for the All-Star Game cutoff; that means that Head Coach Bruce Boudreau will coach the Central All-Stars. The Wild, however, then lost in Los Angeles in Overtime, 4-3. This feels like one of the organization's customary mid-season swoons. But for now their 12-game winning streak has put them at least close to the top of the division. And the defeat to Columbus was only the second loss where they lost but more than one goal. I think that's something.
They finish their California swing tonight (Sunday night) vs. Anaheim. Then then come home to host Montreal before blasting off to play The Team That Was Stolen From Us Saturday.
#-4: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -3). This is starting to get ugly not just for this club, but also for the program. I don't care about their 88-60 shellacking of Wisconsin last (Saturday) night. They've beaten the Badgers nine times in a row, and unlike other programs, the University of Wisconsin will not invest money in them. (They're not investing in the academic side of Wisconsin, either, but that's another blog post.) They started conference play with three losses in a row, which included Maryland (and Brenda Frese) walking into Williams Arena and walking away with an 83-72 win on the day Rachel Banham had her #1 jersey retired New Year's Day, and a humiliating 78-62 curb-stomping at the hands of Indiana in Bloomington on the 4th.
Seriously, where is this squad heading? They host Northwestern Wednesday night.
#-5: Timberwolves (Last Week: -2). Holy fucking shit, this team is finding excruciating ways to lose. Forget their win over the Bucks. They won that last year. (That's the deciding factor for me putting the Woofie Dogs below the Goofer women ballers.) They were down by, like, 26 points to a team that is similarly tanking without tanking, the Philadelphia 76ers, before tying it on a Ricky Rubio three with, like, 1.2 seconds left. Unfortunately, the Sixers drew up an ingenious inbound play to win the game, 93-91, with .2 seconds left:
So that's the nailbiter way of losing. Last (Saturday) night was the dreaded collapse way of losing. This fucking team had a nine-point lead with about 3 1/2 minutes left in the game, and The Bastard New Orleans Jazz scored the last 11 points to win, 94-92. I am so glad I wasn't in the stands to see that one, mostly because I would have been so angry I would have thrown something onto the court after that abortion was over. There is a blowout way of losing, and this squad has done that, but I wouldn't count the 95-89 result at home to Portland and the 112-105 contest in Washington blowout losses, just ... losses.
In the latest heat (or lack thereof) check on the team, MinnPost's Britt Robson noted that, until recently, Head Coach Tom Thibodeau has settled on an eight-man rotation, one that a coach usually relies on in the playoffs: a starting 1-5 of Ricky Rubio, Zach LaVine, Andrew Wiggins, Gorgui Dieng, and Karl-Anthony Towns; and substitutes Kris Dunn (whom Thibodeau has made no bones about wanting to supplant Rubio), Nemanja Bjelica, and Shabazz Muhammad. (Cole Aldrich and Jordan Hill, Robson notes, were brought in by Thibodeau as important reserves, but haven't played until recently.) You usually don't throw so many young players into the deep end of the pool so soon, but Robson suggests that all the shitty ways this club is losing has forced him to put on his General Manager hat and see just what kind of sack KAT, Wiggins and LaVine actually have. So it looks as though those three are going to play massive minutes to see if they will sink or swim. Right now, according to advanced stats Robson has looked over, LaVine, often thought of as a 4 sometimes forced into playing the point for no good reason, is playing up to the ceiling that is relatively low compared to Wiggins and Towns. As for those two? Well, their defense sucks, as you could see in the team's 1-4 screening week.
The loss to Utah started a four-game homestand that lasts all week, and the three opponents reside in the red south-central U.S.: Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City.
#-6: Gopher wrestling (Re-Entry!). This appears to be the post-J Robinson reality for the Gopher grapplers: A 33-6 ass-kicking at home to Penn St. They are headed towards the middle of college wrestling -- dependably victorious over bad teams, reliably losing to championship teams. Brandon Eggum will have a hell of a hard time getting this program where it used to be half a decade ago. They're in the middle of a three-game homestand, but they don't have to play Wisconsin until the 15th.
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