Nevertheless, when looking at what the Golden Gopher softball and baseball teams are doing, I noticed that the men's tennis squad is making some big noise in the NCAA Tournament. Unranked in the tourney but ranked 37th in the polls (what poll? Beats me!), they upset #19 Georgia in the First Round, then swept 14-seed (and Regional host) Oklahoma in the Second. For the first time since 2000, the Golden Gophers are in the men's tennis version of the Sweet Sixteen! Congratulations to them!
The rest of the racket bracket will be held at Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., next weekend. Friday at 11 Central they have a rematch with Big Ten foe, and third-overall tournament seed, Ohio St., who beat the Gophs in the regular season and eliminated them in the Semifinals of the B1G Tournament. Good luck!
#0: Gopher softball (Last Week: -2). Did not know this: The U., in winning the Big Ten Tournament yesterday/Sunday, have won their their straight conference tourney title, fourth in five years, and fifth overall. That is a hell of an accomplishment, and so congrats go out to them on a successful weekend in Madison, Wisc.
It was a wet weekend, too. It is weird that while the Twin Cities had great weather (besides a cloudy and cool Friday), Madison, a city not too far from here in the global scheme of things, was racked with "inclement weather." The league wasn't able to squeeze all four First Round games in on Thursday, and that started a domino effect (including more weather delays) which resulted in the Final, which was scheduled for Saturday night, getting pushed into Sunday morning.
No matter for the softball Nine. Despite playing as the road team (why is that? They were the higher-seeded team), the second-seeded Gophers dispatched 4-seed Northwestern (top-seed Michigan was bounced in the Quarterfinal by 8-seed Michigan St.) post-haste, 9-6. The most challenging of the three matches the club had was the Quarterfinal vs. Indiana. The U. coughed up a 3-0 lead as the Hoosiers plated four in the top of the Fifth Inning. But Minnesota scored two in the bottom of the frame to take back the lead, then cemented the win with four in the sixth.
The team finished the season winning 19 of their last 20 games, and records of 17-4 in-conference and 39-15 overall. I had a passing thought that the U. might actually get to host a Regional this year. Oh, silly me. Not only are they shipping out to Seattle to be a part of 5-seed Washington's Regional, they are the 3-seed in the four-team pod. Well, that formidable non-conference slate, and going only 22-11 against it, kind of doomed their chances of being seen at least as one of the 16-best teams in College Softball Nation. (I also overlooked, for most of the season, that the U. is only in the Top 25 of one of the three polls I could find on the Internet.) That uphill climb, along with the sour taste I still have in my mouth about how the NCAA done the Gophs dirty, and then subsequently proved them right, busts them down to non-positive numbers. Nevertheless, this is a damn good team, led by B1G Player Of The Year Kendyl Lindaman (who has replaced Sara Groenewegen as The Next Legend In The Golden Gopher Softball Program), Outfielder and Tournament Most Outstanding Player Maddie Houlihan, Second Baseman MaKenna Partain and Pitcher Amber Fiser. They can make noise this year and the years to come.
#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: 0). Surprised that the fam did not schedule any Mother's Day festivities for the weekend, so any potential time crunch whereby I would not be able to watch either the United match (on second thought maybe that wasn't such a good thing; see below) Saturday or the Gopher baseball home finale versus Michigan St. Sunday completely went by the wayside. I was able to take in my annual sojourn to Siebert Field and watch the Gophers beat the Spartans 3-1 in a tight contest. I was more impressed with the relievers who relieved the starters. Mitchell Tyranski struck out three and allowed only two baserunners (one of which turned into Minnesota's insurance Run) in two Innings of work; Max Meyer replaced Jake Stevenson with two outs in the Sixth and a 2-1 lead and got a ten-Out Save, his 13th Save of the year. Half of those Outs came via Strikeout. I knew that the lineup could rake, even though they really didn't do that yesterday/Sunday. But that Meyer man, man is he lights out.
But the Gophs did not sweep. They doubled-up the Spartans on Saturday, 10-5, coming back from a 4-1 deficit to score eight in the Seventh Inning. But Sparty broke a 5-all tie with a Run in the top of the Sixth to take Friday's series-opener. I don't know how much margin of error this club has. I would love to see these guys host a Regional at Siebert. But that loss Friday may prove to be very damaging.
Nevertheless they have chances to re-burnish their bona fides in the final week before tourney play. On Tuesday they go to Queens to face St. John's for a fourth time this season; they won two-of-three against the Red Storm in the Gophers' final games at U.S. Bank Stadium. (I was at the final game, a 6-3 win Saturday, March 31. And by the way, playing four games against St. John's is one more than the U. will have played against most teams in their own conference. There will be teams in the B1G the Gophers won't play at all this season. Weird.) They then finish up league play with three at Rutgers this weekend.
#-2: Twins (Last Week: -3). Took both ends of a week-beginning two-fer at St. Louis, then split four matches against The Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Angels Of Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Angels Of ...
Heard Gleeman And The Geek on my way home from the Gopher baseball team's win Sunday/yesterday and they were sort-of touching on how the Twins' season changed, and maybe was saved, when Fernando Romero was called up and stanched the bleeding from that horrible stretch by beating Toronto 4-0 back on May 2. I, and many others, are really psyched of what this Romero kid can do. I've never heard of this guy until he got called up, and now Gleeman and The Geek believe he could turn into something special. The main thing Romero has got going for himself is that he is capable of striking out pitchers with his fastball-slider-change arsenal. He struck out six on Sunday vs. Anaheim, and he allowed his first major-league Run, in his third start in The Show.
Unfortunately, for the third straight time, he didn't last long. He got pulled to start the Sixth and was hung for the loss because his counterpart on the mound, Shohei Ohtani, struck out 11, albeit in 6 1/3 Innings. And then Zach Duke coughed up the game-ending score ... 2-1 Anaheim. I remain very ambivalent about the relief corps. But this Romero kid? He's got potential. I just want to see him last into the Seventh or Eighth -- you know, be the superstar that gives the bullpen a day off.
While the bleeding has been stanched, the effects still ripple; right now the Twinks stand at 17-19. Maybe some home cooking will do them good. They have yet another maximum-sized homestand that commences this week. And in what might be a first, four teams are coming into Target Field for this homestand, three of them this screening week. This (Monday) evening Seattle, which is stopping here before going home after finishing up a series in Detroit, makes up the April 8 date that was snowed out. Then the Cardinals return the favor by playing Tuesday and Wednesday here. Gosh, should I go to that Tuesday game? Thursday they have off, then The Bastard Seattle Pilots are here for a three-game series over the weekend.
#-3: United FC (Last Week: -1). This may have been the most horrible on-pitch week in the Loons' short history. Forget the 2-0 loss Wednesday at LAFC (which I will start to refer to as "Laugh-See"), because the side did. Facing a quick midweek game sandwich between weekend dates at home, with several people out injured and several more hurt, and facing a very
But what the fuck do you do when you can't even do that? After shaking my head, spacing out and then detaching from my emotions at the end of that horrid 3-1 loss to the Earthquakes, I felt, and I still feel, that this was the first time I regretted being a season-ticketholder. The preview/buildup by David Martin of FiftyFive.One made me believe that a Loons triumph in this match was both probable and necessary to show this team has made real progress. Well, they through seemingly the entire trajectory of the whole organization into the shitter when the Quakes scored on the Penalty Kick in only the Second Minute when Jerome Thiesson -- no, not him too! -- fouled in the box. However, Christian Ramirez scored off a San Jose backpass/fuck-up that was so surprising, I didn't even see it until it was humping over the Earthquakes Goalie and into the net; that was the spacing out part. And then MNUFC was on the front foot for the rest of the First Half. They were close, clanging shots off the bar and juuuuuust misconnecting on passes. But it felt as though the better team on paper was finally asserting its talent; the tallies were going to come.
But they didn't. Yet another Backline screw-up cost us the game, when Francisco Calvo didn't pressure the ball on the Loons End Line because he didn't want to concede a Corner Kick but conceded an entry pass that found the back of the net for the deciding goal. Calvo handballed the third Goal, a second PK for the Quakes. And for the first time with this squad, I felt that I had totally wasted my money and time.
Another writer for FiftyFive.One, Alex Schieferdecker, kind of talked me off the ledge in his regular review piece. He, like many fans, thinks it's time to sit the Centerback pairing of Calvo and Michael Boxall. Calvo in particular has been conspicuously bad lately, and he has responded by beginning to get surly with reporters. According to Megan Ryan of the Star Tribune, he got fed up with a question by the scrum surrounding him and he asked the Public Relations department to throw that reporter out of the locker room. Thank Buddha the PR people told him no. I have begun to notice how shittily Calvo has been playing, and I'm not a soccer expert. And I really, really don't like how he is trying to manipulate the media. Who the hell does he think he is, Donald Trump?
However, Schieferdecker is continuing to emphasize how Calvo may only be the person making the most conspicuous mistake, pointing out that his mistake is the result of others', and that he has been capable of outstanding play at times this season. (There is also the mysterious issue regarding his son, who he cryptically worried about in a previous press conference.) Moreover, he points out, logically, that he and Boxall continuing to play and being in the middle of many Goals allowed this season is in fact a coaching problem, and so he has turned the heat up on Manager Adrian Heath. He has a very good point there, too. I still am flummoxed why Brent Kallman, who at times played spectacularly last year (and, by the way, is One Of Us), still hasn't seen a second of play this year. Why not start Rookie Wyatt Omsberg alongside him and see if that CB pairing is better? It sure as shit can't get any worse.
Regardless of the fallout and what United FC does, I think this loss is a turning point for the franchise, and its relationship with the Twin Cities fanbase. I believe that many casual fans who want to follow the Loons looked at the Earthquakes' record and went, "Well, that should be a win!" Many writers thought that, too. The loss, and the incompetent way that they lost, I believe angered many people in the stadium, including the supporters. I don't think that the Dark Clouds and True North Elite are going to start throwing flares and smoke bombs onto the pitch like Hamburg fans did after Saturday's relegation for the first time in both Bundesliga and club history. But this humiliating defeat means that the honeymoon period for the Loons is over. They are now just any other Minnesota team, scrutinized for their bad play and questioned about what they're going to do about it. It sure as hell isn't pretty, but it's inevitable to be considered a real pro sports franchise.
Any changes might prove futile for their next match, Saturday afternoon vs. Sporting Kansas City, who are the best team in the Western Conference. But if Calvo's and/or Boxall's name is announced in the Starting Lineups, I'm going to fucking hear some boos. Welcome to the big time, MNUFC.
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