#-1: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4). Is it wise to give the top spot in this week's survey to a club clinging to seventh place in the Western Conference and is only 1 1/2 games ahead of ninth place? No, but because we take this week-by-week, and they did have a 2-1 screening week (losing only to Philadelphia), and no one was better, and I highly doubt the Gopher baseball Nine is going to reach the NCAAs, I'm giving these guys first.
They outdistanced The Bastard Buffalo Braves-cum-San Diego Clippers, a team behind them, at Target on Tuesday and hung on for dear life to defeat New York at MSG Friday. Better still for the pups as they pursue a playoff birth for the first time in 13, 14 seasons: Their screening week, albeit busy, is littered with teams that have packed it in. They host The Bastard Vancouver Grizzlies tonight (Monday night) and The Bastard St. Louis Hawks Wednesday, then travel to Dallas Friday before returning home to face Ricky Rubio and The Bastard (and good) New Orleans Jazz in a rematch of a pugilistic defeat of the Woofie Dogs on Easter/April Fools' Night. Could they sew up a spot this time next week?
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: 0). Kicked off their B1G sked winning two-of-three at Nebraska. Wish I had more to this, but I don't. Hey, good job, Nine, and I'll probably see you at the Saturday Getaway Game against St. John's (the big university in New York, not the small college in Minnesota) at Das Bank v.2.0.
#-3: Wild (Last Week: -1). This club should still not feel safe after its 1-2 week. A confident 4-1 shellacking of a real good Nashville squad (who may or may not have been mailing it in) was sandwiched around Overtime defeats to a pair of playoff-bound teams, Los Angeles and Boston. That both losses came at the X kind of pops the balloon that the Mild is able to hold the fort. (ETA at 12:19 p.m. on March 26 that I would be remiss if I didn't say that the Mild were leading the Kings late in regulation, 3-2, before coughing up the game-tying Goal in the final minute. I had turned off the radio thinking they would win. Later, I went onto ESPN.com to see that not only had they given up the lead, they lost the game in OT, 4-3.) Hey, these guys are only four Points clear of ninth in the West, and even if they do make it, there are just too many questions and too much inconsistency to believe they are anything more than one-and-done.
Two weeks left. This week: At Nashville, then a home-and-home with The Bastard North Stars.
#-4: Gopher softball (Last Week: -2). I did not know that there is a rule that no game (maybe it's just softball, but I'll soon it's any "diamond" game) can start if the temperature is less than 27 degrees. That's why the softballers' contest vs. Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., was delayed an hour to 2 o'clock. Another reason why southern schools excel at softball and baseball and northern schools don't.
The Golden Goofers lost that game, by the way -- 11-10, in Eight Innings. They got nipped in the Friday game as well, by a score of 3-2. But at least they won the Getaway Game. Mercy-Ruled the Wildcats too, 8-0 in just Five Innings. But it's still a series loss, and another nail in the coffin in regards to the possibility that this squad will return to the NCAAs.
This weekend they start the home portion of their con sched with three versus Illinois.
#-5: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -Infinity). Not that there has been any need, but I feel the need to more precisely define the term "jumping the shark." It's been used to mark an event, the time after which something (usually pop culture-related, usually a TV show) that was good turns irredeemably bad. What gets lost in the definition, in my humble opinion, is that the event itself, before the decline into awfulness, has to be unforgettable, even notorious, something so gob-smackingly ridiculous that no fan can ever really say that it could ever be topped -- and that in fact because that TV show or pop culture property went there, it paid with such bad karma that it was never good ever again. (The creator of the term "jumping the shark," who got the idea when Fonzie did just that on Happy Days, actually created a website about such moments. TV Guide bought the site and incorporated it into its own site, but it appears as though it hasn't even updated articles that mention that phrase in passing since 2014.)
I mention this because if you can apply the term to sports, the University of Minnesota men's hockey program's jump the shark moment, at least in The Don Lucia Era, was most surely this:
That's right -- Justin Holl in the 2014 Frozen Four Semifinal, beating North Dakota with the game-winning Goal with .6 Seconds left in regulation to reach the championship. I mean, to get a rebound shot, at the virtual gun, doing it against your hated rival the North Dakota Fighting Racists ... and shorthanded? It doesn't get any better.
Turns out, it hasn't. They faced the Union Dutchmen in the final, and they got their asses kicked by a Division III school, 7-4. Union was seeded as the third-best team going into the NCAA Tournament, so this wasn't a David team at all, but the program itself hasn't even sniffed that success since. (They've been to the tourney once since, last year, and they were the opponent that gave Penn St. its first-ever NCAA Tournament victory, getting blasted, 10-3.)
Neither has Minnesota. In the four years since they've been eliminated in the first round twice and have been shut out from the tourney twice, including this year. If you're superstitious, it's as if the Golden Gopher hockey squad has been paying for the miraculously good fortune from the Hall Goal ever since. And, finally, it cost Lucia his job last Monday, the day after the field was announced.
I don't believe for a second that Lucia left "on his terms," as he insisted in his farewell news conference. Athletic Director Mark Coyle told him the writing was on the wall, but because of everything he has done for the program he permitted Lucia to say he's resigning. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I mean, the knives have been out for him ever since that ass-kicking by fucking Union four years ago. Yes, he won back-to-back titles in 2002 and 2003, but that is more than a decade ago and, as some of his true haters insist, he won those championships with Doug Woog's guys. Those same detractors will say that recruiting, where the best players go the junior route, has passed him by, and/or that players don't develop for the NHL the way other schools do, and/or that other Minnesota players went to the other four top-flight Minnesota schools and have regularly beaten the Gophers in recent years. There is truth to those criticisms (even if the tenor of hate seems to be overblown, especially by Pete Kotz of City Pages, who seems to have something personal against Lucia, as evidenced by this fuck-you piece here), and paired with each successive season of not winning the title, the Notre Dame Of Hockey decided enough was enough.
But while it was time, it is concurrently fair to give Don Lucia his due. The Grand Rapids native finishes as the longest-tenured coach in U. hockey history. He ends with a record of 722-409-110 overall, 64-31-9 in the tournament. He ran, as far as I know, a clean program. And, yes, he returned the U. to prominence (and raised expectations of what the U. should expect) with those back-to-back titles 15 and 16 years ago. As much as I don't believe he quit, neither do I believe that he'll remain as a "special assistant to the AD" for long. A team will give him a fourth tenure somewhere. (Wacky thought? American International. Not-so-wacky? Bemidji St. Saner still? Back to Colorado College.)
As I said last week: It's time to turn the page. Nevertheless, thank you, Don Lucia. And Mr. Coyle? Don't blow this. (ETA at 12:19 p.m. on March 26 that, as a writing flourish, I should have said, "And Mr. Coyle? Don't jump the shark." But that doesn't make sense, does it?)
#-6: United FC (Last Week: Positive Numbers). Maybe we should have seen this coming. With injuries and international call-ups, the Loons started five new guys, four of which constituted a reconstituted Backline. And that, combined with the preternatural mastery of Bradley Wright-Phillips, resulted in the first real turd this side suffered, 3-0 at the New York Red Bulls.
As broken down astutely by FiftyFive.One's Alex Schieferdecker, the Backline of (from left to right) Marc Burch, Rookie Wyatt Omsberg, Brent Kallman and Rookie Carter Manley failed to hold the line on defense and failed to build up play on offense. The surge on the forward half never materialized, and some fans speculated that was dictated by Manager Adrian Heath, who, without many of his offensive-minded Backs, decided to play defensively and try to get his high guys, such as Christian Ramirez and Miguel Ibarra, to counter-attack and basically steal a game in Harrison, N.J. Didn't work. Really didn't work.
The missing five will be back for Saturday's game (which was scheduled to be played Easter Afternoon but was changed because, well, it's Easter) against Atlanta United. The match also is at Das Bank v.1.0, so it should stand to reason that United FC won't get shut out 3-0.
No comments:
Post a Comment