This is a way different Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey than previous, for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, there were a couple of teams that did play Games this screening week, including one that technically ended Thursday morning our time. Plus, you know, the Vikings.
So there is one final sports-related survey for the time being. I may or may not do a wrap-up WMNSS next week with an idea I'm batting around in my head. But that would be for next week. As for this week:
#-1: Gopher softball (Last Week: -3). The top spot goes to the Gopher softballers. With such a small sample size, the factor I relied on to rank these clubs this week is prospects for the season ahead. And with a 3-2 comeback victory over Hawai'i in Honolulu, the ranked U. was going to remain a very good team for the entire year. It would have been nice to see how good of a season they could mount after getting to the Women's College World Series for the first time in program history in 2019. Alas.
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -6). Maybe believing that the U. Nine was mounting a comeback is far-fetched, but the Gophers swept Creighton in their midweek two-Game series at U. S. Bank Stadium with a 5-4 win over the Bluejays last Wednesday evening. The season was cancelled before they even got to the end of their non-conference schedule; they were supposed to visit Air Force this past weekend. But again, maybe this was a sign that Minnesota was finally rounding into form and would be a contender in the Big Ten regular season. Alas.
#-3: Vikings (Re-Entry!). I really do want things to be done old-school. But with this fucking coronavirus lurking (where are those damn tests?!), maybe it's not the worst thing in the world to start the NFL year and free agency without making signings face-to-face. Besides, this crisis harkens me back to 9/11 in the sense that, when real life turns to shit, the NFL somehow is able to dominate the headlines.
Anyway, the NFL "year" began with a flurry of player transactions. And I'm putting the Vikings this low because, well, the transactions for this club is going only one way -- out. Xavier Rhodes, Linval Joseph, David Morgan, Josh Kline -- all of them were let go. Stephen Weatherly, Trae Waynes -- both free agents, both signed elsewhere (Carolina and Cincinnati, respectively). They did re-sign people: C. J. Ham, Eric Wilson, Britton Colquitt, Sean Mannion. Oh, and they extended the contract of Kirk Cousins.
This is going to be a very important year for the Vikes. They made all those cuts because they are sorely capped, so all those holes will have to be filled on the cheap, either through the draft or free agency. But this franchise will have to hit on most, if not all, the new signings to get back to being a playoff team, and that's going to be difficult to do.
Toward that end, maybe the most stunning news of Vikings free agency has a method to its intrinsic madness. Stefon Diggs, after a year of rumors and abrupt misgivings, was traded to Buffalo for several picks, including the Bills' First-Rounder in this year's draft (assuming it takes place). Diggs was the team's deep threat and, according to at least one analyst, the league's best route-runner. But the extension to Cousins shows that the Vikings offense will not be predicated on the deep ball. It'll be focused on running with Dalvin Cook (who might be in line for a big payday with The Purple ... or a trade) and play-action off of that.
With the slew of picks the Bills gave Minnesota, they will have chances to plug up the holes they needed to punch into the ship this week. That will include Wide Receiver, and lucky for the Vikings, this is considered to be one of the best draft classes for WRs in a long time. (May I suggest the steady hands of Michael Pittman, Jr., out of USC?) They needed to get under the cap and they needed to get younger, and while the future isn't promised for Minnesota, they at least have the chance to rebuild on the fly with players who, if they draft correctly, could be big additions to the team. We will have to wait and see what happens, but the changes made have been understandable ones.
In the meantime, Stefon Diggs, go luck shuffling off to Buffalo. Hope you'll be happier there. And we'll always have the Minneapolis Miracle.
#-4: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -5). They started the B1G Tournament last Wednesday in Indianapolis with a 74-57 win over Northwestern. That advanced them to the next round where they would have faced potential Player Of The Year Luka Garza and Iowa Thursday but, alas, the conference (and eventually the NCAA) decided to cancel the whole rest of the year. The Gophers probably would get killed anyway.
So, what about Richard Pitino? On Friday Gophers Athletic Director Mark Coyle announced that Pitino would come back for another year, his eighth. There is an incomplete season by which to evaluate Pitino, so even though the season would probably end without any postseason appearance, I think giving him another year under these circumstances is entirely appropriate.
But I'll go one step further. Even if his squad got the shit kicked out of them at the hands of the Hawkeyes, I think Pitino deserves one more year. First of all, who in the hell would Coyle find that would be better than Pitino? Common argument, but it holds up. But second of all, there are many Pitino haters who point out that he's failed to put a fence around Minnesota for the state's best recruits. Remember Pitino's first full year leading the U.? That was the year Minnesota hoops really skyrocketed, and there were three five-star recruits in The North Star State. And Pitino got none of them -- Tyus Jones went to Duke (and won the title in his only year in college), Rashad Vaughn went to UNLV, and Reid Travis went to Stanford. This year, there are four Minnesotans in the ESPN 100 -- and none of them are staying home. That includes the best of the four, five-star recruit and fifth-best overall player Jalen Suggs, who's headed to Gonzaga.
But who has Pitino gotten instead? Pretty good players. This year the club was led by Daniel Oturu, who finished this abbreviated year part of the Big Ten All-Defensive Team and Sporting News All-America Third Team. He might be a first-round pick in this year's NBA Draft -- if there is one. Oh, and he's One Of Us; he's from Woodbury. Marcus Carr may not be an All-American First-Teamer, but the Toronto native was a solid wingman for Oturu. Remember Jordan Murphy? He's from San Antonio, and he slapped. Amir Coffey may have been the best in-state recruit Pitino kept home, and he developed him into a pretty good player. And what are Nate Mason (Decatur, Ga.), Reggie Lynch (Edina), Andre Hollins (Memphis), Maurice Walker (Scarborough, ONT), and DeAndre Mathieu (Knoxville, Tenn.) to you? All of those players received some end-of-season plaudit somewhere. And with the possible exception of Coffey, none of them were heralded recruits. Add to that one victory (yes, it's one, but I think that's an accomplishment Minnesota should reward) in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, and I think you have someone who can coach. And even if you're not wowed by any of that, I circle back to my first question: Who are you going to get who's better? You're not.
So maybe Pitino knows what he's doing. Sure, there are only two high school recruits coming in for next year, one of them being four-star Point Guard Jamal Mashburn, Jr. -- wow, what a name. Pitino will need to scour the transfer portal and the JC levels to find the depth that plagued this team all year. But maybe Pitino has earned the right to keep doing what he's doing, flipping good players and turning them into ... well, good-to-great players for the U. This wasn't a great season, but to me, he's earned enough credibility to give him at least one more year, even without the complication of this goddamn COVID-19.
So there is one final sports-related survey for the time being. I may or may not do a wrap-up WMNSS next week with an idea I'm batting around in my head. But that would be for next week. As for this week:
#-1: Gopher softball (Last Week: -3). The top spot goes to the Gopher softballers. With such a small sample size, the factor I relied on to rank these clubs this week is prospects for the season ahead. And with a 3-2 comeback victory over Hawai'i in Honolulu, the ranked U. was going to remain a very good team for the entire year. It would have been nice to see how good of a season they could mount after getting to the Women's College World Series for the first time in program history in 2019. Alas.
#-2: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -6). Maybe believing that the U. Nine was mounting a comeback is far-fetched, but the Gophers swept Creighton in their midweek two-Game series at U. S. Bank Stadium with a 5-4 win over the Bluejays last Wednesday evening. The season was cancelled before they even got to the end of their non-conference schedule; they were supposed to visit Air Force this past weekend. But again, maybe this was a sign that Minnesota was finally rounding into form and would be a contender in the Big Ten regular season. Alas.
#-3: Vikings (Re-Entry!). I really do want things to be done old-school. But with this fucking coronavirus lurking (where are those damn tests?!), maybe it's not the worst thing in the world to start the NFL year and free agency without making signings face-to-face. Besides, this crisis harkens me back to 9/11 in the sense that, when real life turns to shit, the NFL somehow is able to dominate the headlines.
Anyway, the NFL "year" began with a flurry of player transactions. And I'm putting the Vikings this low because, well, the transactions for this club is going only one way -- out. Xavier Rhodes, Linval Joseph, David Morgan, Josh Kline -- all of them were let go. Stephen Weatherly, Trae Waynes -- both free agents, both signed elsewhere (Carolina and Cincinnati, respectively). They did re-sign people: C. J. Ham, Eric Wilson, Britton Colquitt, Sean Mannion. Oh, and they extended the contract of Kirk Cousins.
This is going to be a very important year for the Vikes. They made all those cuts because they are sorely capped, so all those holes will have to be filled on the cheap, either through the draft or free agency. But this franchise will have to hit on most, if not all, the new signings to get back to being a playoff team, and that's going to be difficult to do.
Toward that end, maybe the most stunning news of Vikings free agency has a method to its intrinsic madness. Stefon Diggs, after a year of rumors and abrupt misgivings, was traded to Buffalo for several picks, including the Bills' First-Rounder in this year's draft (assuming it takes place). Diggs was the team's deep threat and, according to at least one analyst, the league's best route-runner. But the extension to Cousins shows that the Vikings offense will not be predicated on the deep ball. It'll be focused on running with Dalvin Cook (who might be in line for a big payday with The Purple ... or a trade) and play-action off of that.
With the slew of picks the Bills gave Minnesota, they will have chances to plug up the holes they needed to punch into the ship this week. That will include Wide Receiver, and lucky for the Vikings, this is considered to be one of the best draft classes for WRs in a long time. (May I suggest the steady hands of Michael Pittman, Jr., out of USC?) They needed to get under the cap and they needed to get younger, and while the future isn't promised for Minnesota, they at least have the chance to rebuild on the fly with players who, if they draft correctly, could be big additions to the team. We will have to wait and see what happens, but the changes made have been understandable ones.
In the meantime, Stefon Diggs, go luck shuffling off to Buffalo. Hope you'll be happier there. And we'll always have the Minneapolis Miracle.
#-4: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -5). They started the B1G Tournament last Wednesday in Indianapolis with a 74-57 win over Northwestern. That advanced them to the next round where they would have faced potential Player Of The Year Luka Garza and Iowa Thursday but, alas, the conference (and eventually the NCAA) decided to cancel the whole rest of the year. The Gophers probably would get killed anyway.
So, what about Richard Pitino? On Friday Gophers Athletic Director Mark Coyle announced that Pitino would come back for another year, his eighth. There is an incomplete season by which to evaluate Pitino, so even though the season would probably end without any postseason appearance, I think giving him another year under these circumstances is entirely appropriate.
But I'll go one step further. Even if his squad got the shit kicked out of them at the hands of the Hawkeyes, I think Pitino deserves one more year. First of all, who in the hell would Coyle find that would be better than Pitino? Common argument, but it holds up. But second of all, there are many Pitino haters who point out that he's failed to put a fence around Minnesota for the state's best recruits. Remember Pitino's first full year leading the U.? That was the year Minnesota hoops really skyrocketed, and there were three five-star recruits in The North Star State. And Pitino got none of them -- Tyus Jones went to Duke (and won the title in his only year in college), Rashad Vaughn went to UNLV, and Reid Travis went to Stanford. This year, there are four Minnesotans in the ESPN 100 -- and none of them are staying home. That includes the best of the four, five-star recruit and fifth-best overall player Jalen Suggs, who's headed to Gonzaga.
But who has Pitino gotten instead? Pretty good players. This year the club was led by Daniel Oturu, who finished this abbreviated year part of the Big Ten All-Defensive Team and Sporting News All-America Third Team. He might be a first-round pick in this year's NBA Draft -- if there is one. Oh, and he's One Of Us; he's from Woodbury. Marcus Carr may not be an All-American First-Teamer, but the Toronto native was a solid wingman for Oturu. Remember Jordan Murphy? He's from San Antonio, and he slapped. Amir Coffey may have been the best in-state recruit Pitino kept home, and he developed him into a pretty good player. And what are Nate Mason (Decatur, Ga.), Reggie Lynch (Edina), Andre Hollins (Memphis), Maurice Walker (Scarborough, ONT), and DeAndre Mathieu (Knoxville, Tenn.) to you? All of those players received some end-of-season plaudit somewhere. And with the possible exception of Coffey, none of them were heralded recruits. Add to that one victory (yes, it's one, but I think that's an accomplishment Minnesota should reward) in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, and I think you have someone who can coach. And even if you're not wowed by any of that, I circle back to my first question: Who are you going to get who's better? You're not.
So maybe Pitino knows what he's doing. Sure, there are only two high school recruits coming in for next year, one of them being four-star Point Guard Jamal Mashburn, Jr. -- wow, what a name. Pitino will need to scour the transfer portal and the JC levels to find the depth that plagued this team all year. But maybe Pitino has earned the right to keep doing what he's doing, flipping good players and turning them into ... well, good-to-great players for the U. This wasn't a great season, but to me, he's earned enough credibility to give him at least one more year, even without the complication of this goddamn COVID-19.
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