It really was a great crowd with great enthusiasm. For the first time ever the supporters unfurled a tifo, an homage to Daft Punk with the phrase "Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger" on the bottom. (The team is using Kanye West's "Stronger" instead of The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil" for the player introductions.) Everybody started waving their scarves on Corner Kicks -- me included. And people started to get into "Wonderwall" after the home team won. Keep this up, and there's another huge fanbase that'll make the Twin Cities a great place to watch sports in-person.
Oh, the game. The key apparently was to maraud the Fire down the flanks, and that's exactly how they scored both their Goals. Miguel Ibarra, finally winning the trust of Manager Adrian Heath, took the place of Kevin Molino (who I didn't know as of WMNSS press time last week that he tore his ACL in last week's game and is out for the rest of the year) as a de facto #10. Usually that means he passes and creates down the middle, but his slashing style took him to the Endline in the Second Half and a cross to a pestering Ibson, who knocked in the first Goal of the game off his own miss. The Fire quickly countered (in an echo all-too familiar from last season), but United was able to hold its own and score the knockout punch. Gathering a double team from the Touchline, he crossed to a wide-open Sam Nicholson, who headed the ball to the far post.
Passing, winning 50/50's, crossing, finishing, staying composed after conceding a Goal -- all of those were on display in Saturday afternoon's 2-1 victory. It's very early, but they're tied (on Points) atop the Western Conference. Things may change this Saturday at the New York Red Bulls; Francisco Calvo, Michael Boxall and Rasmus Schuller are all on international duty. But the only thing I wanted to see from this club is improvement from last year. And three matches in, they've definitely improved. So for being the only team in this week's survey to go undefeated (yeah, yeah, they only played one game), and because the teams just below the Loons had very good weeks, I'm pushing these guys up to their first-ever Positive Numbers. Congratulations!
#0: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -6). The next three teams overall had very good screening weeks. They really are equally good, and it's only my mood that makes me put them in a somewhat-arbitrary order, because really, they should all be tied. While these teams had wins that are conspicuous, they each had a loss that also sticks out.
The Golden Gopher baseball team finished 3-2 for the week. The squad began by beating George Washington (in Dallas of all places) Tuesday, 12-5. The next night they went to the Dallas suburb of Arlington and lost to Texas-Arlington, not a good team, 13-5. They then spent this past weekend in Fort Worth against the ninth-ranked team in the nation, TCU. Or was the ninth-ranked team, because, inexplicably, they won two-of-three at the Horned Frogs! And the contest the U. dropped, which began on Saturday but was finished on Sunday due to rain, went 13 Innings before they lost, 5-4. How in the heck did these guys win a series at a Top 10 team? Guess TCU overlooked them.
They finish non-conference play at 14-8. They open up Big Ten play at Nebraska and Manager Darin Erstad this weekend.
#-1: Wild (Last Week: -3). Historically, the Wild have the number of The Bastard Quebec Nordiques. Not this year. Those guys crushed Minnesota at the X on Tuesday, 5-1. (After years in the wilderness, Colorado currently holds down Western Conference Wild Care 1.) That's really bad, and portends bad things if they somehow meet in the playoffs.
And yet they then go to the Southwestern United States and come away with the W on back-to-back nights. First they double-up the (Las) Vegas Golden Knights Friday, 4-2, somehow sweeping the season series from the possible Pacific Division champions. They then go to Phoenix (or the Phoenix area, I don't know where the hell they play) and beat The Bastard Winnipeg Jets, another squad who somehow have the Wild's number this year (which is even weirder because Arizona is The Worst Team In The NHL) Saturday, 3-1. They remain entrenched in third place in the Western Conference, five Points clear of ninth place. With about ten Games left to go in the season, they should make the postseason for the sixth year in a row. But not without a tricky Hat Trick this screening week: Los Angeles, Nashville, Boston -- all good teams, but all playing in St. Paul.
#-2: Gopher softball (Last Week: -7). This club's bad loss was the first game of a three-game series vs. New Mexico St. in Las Cruces, N.M. The softballers, in fact, got shut out Friday, 3-0. No matter; they shut out the Aggies, 7-0, then tripled them up, 15-5 in a Saturday Doubleheader to take the series. But even better than that is that these women floated to Tucson, Ariz. on Wednesday and defeated ninth-ranked Arizona, 1-0 in eight Innings. (What is up with the Golden Gopher diamond teams beating teams ranked ninth in the country?) It is a fluky one-off, but this is their first impressive victory of the year.
They finish the non-con at 17-11 and start B1G play with three at Northwestern.
#-3: Vikings (Re-Entry!). OK, so it's official: Kirk Cousins will be a Viking. Three years ... well, at least three years of guaranteed money. First of all, a commemoration for Case Keenum, a guy who, once he replaced Sam Bradford as Quarterback early last season, meant that this team was doomed for the year. I was totally wrong about him; put in the proper system, he flourished. And while it petered down in the end, culminating (so to speak) in a horrible NFC Championship Game performance, I will always remember him for this after The Minneapolis Miracle:
He cemented his bond with the Minnesota Vikings franchise with that throw and this Skol Chant afterward. I understand that this is a business, and that the front office (as well as many experts and pundits) believe that Cousins is an upgrade of Keenum and that this move had to be done. But Keenum stepped in and stepped up, and so I was going to be OK with riding into 2018 with him at the helm. Dance with who brung you, you know? Besides, there are others (myself included) who are not totally sold on Cousins being the last piece to this club finally winning a Super Bowl. I, for one, question how mobile Cousins is. Unless there is a huge upgrade on the Offensive Line, the QB will be on the move. Who do you prefer throwing on the run: Cousins or Keenum? Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, but you just know this shit's going to backfire on them.
But I want to highlight the other big signing the Vikes made to open up Free Agency: They signed Defensive Tackle Sheldon Richardson to a one-year deal from Seattle. That gives the squad another disruptor on the D-Line, and that is a very, very good thing.
#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4). Came back to beat Washington on the road Tuesday by five, then traveled to San Antonio to get toasted by the Spurs on my birthday (and without Kawhi Leonard), then came home last (Sunday) night to lose by nine to Houston, a team that went 3-crazy and is making Head Coaches of other teams crazy.
If you look at the team's Schedule page, you'll see that the team lists the Timberwolves who led the team in Points, Assists and Rebounds for each game. For this week, do you know which player you don't see listed as a leader in any of the three categories? Andrew Wiggins. Just sayin' that maybe he and not Zach LaVine should have been traded to Chicago.
This week host The Bastard Buffalo Braves Tuesday before a back-to-back at New York and Philadelphia this weekend. There is still a good shot that this squad fails to make the playoffs for the 14th season in a row.
#-5: Twins (Last Week: -5). This club's here, and down here, because yesterday (Sunday) Shortstop Jorge Polanco was busted for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug and is suspended for 80 Games. Polanco was going to be the starting Shortstop for this squad, and now, well, he's not. They're probably going to make do with Eduardo Escobar, but they might have to rely on Erick Aybar, who was recently signed for depth. Good timing for the Twins, and yet bad timing for the Twinks.
#-Infinity (tie): Gopher women's basketball, Gopher men's hockey, Gopher wrestling (Last Week, respectively: -1, Re-Entry!, Re-Entry!).
You remember the Clint Eastwood movie The Good, The Bad And The Ugly? That's how I'm describing the three teams that anchor the bottom of this week's survey, and in order.
First, The Good: OK, so the University of Minnesota women's basketball team got their asses beat last (Sunday) night at Eugene, Ore., as the Ducks rolled up a 101-73 beatdown on them. But hey, on Friday the program won its first NCAA Tournament game in nine years by upsetting the 7-seed, Wisconsin-Green Bay, 89-77! They were down by five entering the Fourth Quarter, but the U. blitzed the Phoenix 30-13 to win. Seeing that at least one writer thought Green Bay was underseeded, I think this should be regarded as a very noticeable upset, and so this year should be seen as very positive one!
So Carlie Wagner finishes her Gopher career honorably. And Marlene Stollings proved that she can coach. Wagner and Bryanna Fernstrom are the two starters who graduate, but the other three starters (Kenisha Bell, Gadiva Hubbard and Destiny Pitts) who provided the bulk of the balance that unlocked the surprising success this team had this year are coming back. Here are the new recruits -- none of them stick out, none of them certainly are in the Top 100, so maybe Stollings needs to continue to recruit nationally, or she needs to find the best Minnesota players and keep them in the state, such as #95 Emma Grothaus, going from Mahtomedi to Lehigh. This year has shown that some of what Stollings is doing is working. Keep what works, fix what doesn't, and Minnesota is on its way up. Fingers crossed.
Next, The Bad: When it comes to understanding how the PairWise works and who is in or out based on conference tournaments, Adam Wodon of College Hockey News, with a gigantic assist from John Whelan, a man who apparently developed the web tool where you can see who would make the Tournament based on hypothetical champions, are the best when it comes to Conference Championship Saturday. And yet, even though the PairWise is objective (let's leave behind the debate over whether or not it should be the metric from which to decide which teams get into the tourney for another day), Wodon's explanation(s) show that this ranking is not always clear.
In Wodon's Saturday morning breakdown of the conference title games going on that afternoon and evening, he said that if Minnesota-Duluth lost to North Dakota in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference Consolation Game (and if you read his article, you'll come away believing that game was The Most Important Consolation Game Ever), Minnesota would most likely make it into the NCAA Tournament. Barely, but they'd be in.
But when I came back from walking around St. Paul in the evening and looking up the scores and the running blog on CHN, Wodon said something somewhat different. Apparently the Bulldogs' loss to the Fighting Hawks didn't award the Goofs a postseason birth after all. In fact, the championship games from all six men's hockey conferences would decide which team would be the last at-large team to make it. To be specific, UMD would make it -- and Minnesota would not -- if the following six teams won their championship games:
- Notre Dame in the Big Ten;
- Boston University in Hockey East;
- Denver in the NCHC;
- Princeton in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference;
- Michigan Tech in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association;
- and Air Force in Atlantic Hockey.
Well, guess what the fuck happened?!?!?! The ECAC and B1G games went to Overtime, at least. Before I left for the stripclub and Caffetto Saturday night I saw on Twitter that Princeton won. While at Caffetto I saw on Twitter that Notre Dame won, and I think I and a few of the U. players, as well as Head Coach Don Lucia, wanted to throw their laptops against their windows in disgust. A 1-in-64 shot meant that that the U. tied the Bulldogs in the number of PairWise Comparisons won. In cases like this (and I could be wrong; College Hockey News has this PairWise primer) the tie-breaker is one of the three criteria used to compare teams for the PairWise -- the RPI. And with that unholy combination above, our Goofers slipped behind UMD by .0001 for the last at-large spot in the NCAA Tournament ... one
And you know what? I think that should result in Lucia getting fired.
I'll admit that this hot take is a visceral reaction based on angry superstition -- "The only reason this fucking six-team shit parlay hit is because you're a bad omen, Lucia. You're fired!" But don't forget that this team ended their season with four consecutive losses at Penn St., a team not too far above the Golden Goofers in the PairWise. Considering the talent that is on that club and the recruits that will continue to automatically gravitate to Dinkytown, a Head Coach makes sure he wins at least one of those fucking games. Do that, and Minnesota isn't even in this fucking situation, getting eliminated from playing for a championship in your home area by a perfect storm akin to getting struck by lightning twice.
It's been 19 years. Time for Lucia to go.
Finally, The Ugly: In the wrestling NCAAs, Minnesota, once (and long, long ago) a power in the sport, finished an irrelevant 17th. They finished right behind Lock Haven. Lock Haven? Fucking Lock Haven! J Robinson would be rolling in his grave if he were dead, which he isn't. The only rassler of any note on this club was Ethan Lizak, and he only finished fourth at 125 pounds.
To contrast, take a look at which school finished second: Ohio St. I had always considered the Buckeyes to be irrelevant in wrestling. But somehow they jumped up this season to finish second overall. And going into the final day they were leading Penn St. before the Nittany Lions chased them down and nipped them by seven Points for their third straight title and seventh in eight years because of Cael Sanderson. If Ohio St. can rise up from the murk and give Penn St. a run for its money, Minnesota can ... right? Right?! RIGHT?!?!
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