The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Gopher women's hockey (Last Week: -8).  Hmmm.  This is a very unsatisfying week.  In terms of wins, the Minnesota lady icers get the top spot hands-down by virtue of their sweep of Minnesota State-Mankato at Ridder, their final home games of the season.  And yet, because the squad's current records stands at 12-6-2 in the Big Ten and 19-8-2 overall, they remain in big danger of missing the NCAA Tournament.  They didn't gain a whole lot in the PairWise; they sit in seventh, still firmly on the bubble.  And now they finish up the year on the road, beginning with what should be a pair of gimmes against St. Cloud St.  It used to be that these Goofers would steamroll teams like the Mavericks, however they kind of struggled in putting them away Friday, winning by a score of 4-2.  Could the Huskies give them as many problems -- maybe more, since the U. is playing on the road?

#-2: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -2).  So I managed to get to Friday's Notre Dame game even though it started an hour after I could leave work.  I thought I would be late, especially with traffic I didn't anticipate, and yet I got from my parking ramp to a parking spot in 20 minutes, then walked, found my scalper, bought a ticket from him and got in in another 20 minutes.  That left almost 20 minutes to buy my food and program and to stake out a good rail to watch the game standing up.

And I've got to tell you that Friday's game against what was the #1 team in the nation was one of the best ones I've seen in some time.  In fact, dare I say it, it was better than Vikings-Saints.  The good plays made far outweighed the bad ones, on both sides.  There were great passes, great individual efforts, and great saves, and yet it headed to Overtime scoreless.  Then, with 85 seconds left in the extra session, this happened:



I gotta tell ya, this Casey Mittelstadt kid is a special one. He may be the best Gopher player to lace up the skates in some time.

Now, the Fighting Irish fought back by crushing the U. Saturday, 4-1.  And seeing the PairWise now, I don't know if Friday's victory or Saturday's defeat changed them from their current ranking of tied for eleventh -- squarely on the bubble.

Meanwhile, only two points separate sixth-place Minnesota from third-place Wisconsin.  And it just so happens that those two squads will meet in Madison two weeks from now.  With an odd number of teams in the B1G, schools get byes in-conference; next week is the Gophers' turn.

#-3: Timberwolves (Last Week: -5).  We're in the middle of a logjam of teams that finished at .500 for the week.  I give the nod to the T-Wolves (who sandwiched road losses to Portland and Golden State with wins at the Clippers and at home to Brooklyn) because two of their players, Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns, were named as reserves for the All-Star Game.  Congratulations to them.

This team has a busy week coming up.  They have a horrible back-to-back tonight (Monday night) and tomorrow (Tuesday) night of at Atlanta and at Toronto -- huh?1  They then come home for a pair: Thursday vs. Milwaukee, where they will debut their new "City" jerseys, and then the Boogie-less New Orleans Pelicans on Saturday.

#-4: Wild (Last Week: -3).  Finished the first half of the year with a win over Ottawa at the X and then a 6-3 thumping at Pittsburgh where the Penguins scored all their Goals before the Mild scored all of theirs.

This weekend was All-Star Week.  The squad's only representative was newly rejuvenated Center Eric Staal.  He participated in a new event in Saturday's Skills Competition, the Passing Challenge.  He finished runner-up, but eight seconds behind the winner, Alex Pietrangelo of St. Louis.  Later, Staal said that his son said his performance passing was "respectable."  Yeah, that's an anodyne way of saying it.  And then Staal and the rest of the Central Division got bounced by the Pacific Division in Sunday's All-Star Game(s).

As of right now, the Mild sit at 57 points and a four-way tie for the final spot in the West with Colorado, Los Angeles and Anaheim.  (Chicago is dead last in the Central?)  They resume play tomorrow/Tuesday at Columbus, then have an arduous back-to-back of home to purposefully-stacked Vegas at the X Friday and then at The Team That Was Stolen From Us Saturday.

#-5: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -6).  Light schedule, just one game.  And yet that one game managed to drive the nails into this club's coffin even further.  They hosted Northwestern, one of the more disappointing schools in the nation, and promptly lost to them Tuesday, 77-69.  They have now lost three in a row, six-of-seven, and stand 3-7 in-conference.  They may not make the NIT.

It gets worse: They play a pair of road games this screening week -- Iowa tomorrow/Tuesday, Michigan Super Bowl Eve.

#-6: Gopher wrestling (Last Week: -7).  Oh, pew.  I am fairly certain there has been a weekend in the past, oh, five years where the grapplers played two duals and lost both, but I can't remember it.  Regardless, this weekend's 0-fer, where the extremes of losing were both on display, can firmly put the kibosh on this club's season.

On Friday they were marching into the belly of the Tiamat, the #1 ranked Penn St. Nittany Lions, current overlords of men's top-flight college wrestling.  I was afraid they would be shut out; turns out that the U. won two matches, but only after Penn St. racked up an insurmountable 25-0 score and thus trotted out newbies for the matches at 125 and 133 lbs.  Minnesota responded by forfeiting the last match, at 149.  Can you do that?  Moreover, why in the hell would Head Coach Brandon Eggum forfeit?  I mean, does he not have wrestling at that weight?  Strange.

It got worst yesterday (Sunday) afternoon against Northwestern, the team's last home game.  The Goofers were leading 18-14 heading into the final match at ... 149.  OK, the club does have a grappler at that weight, Ben Brancale.  And he may not have been ready to face the Wildcats' Ryan Deakin -- who, by the way, was ranked fifth in the country at the weight.  So maybe Eggum had no choice but to throw someone out there.  I guess he told Brancale to not drop a decision majorly.  Looks like he tried to do that ... but at 2:45 Deakin felled Brancale for the six points and the come-from-behind win for Northwestern.  (sigh)

Minnesota was ranked 14th in the country.  How can a team ranked at all lose via blowout and then through excruciating nail-biter?  It truly doesn't matter if this program disbands.

And now these guys finish up with four duals on the road.  And look, the first of the four is another lamb-to-the-slaughter contest, at Iowa Friday.  Don't leave Iowa City without your balls, gentlemen.