Positive Numbers: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: 0). No, sweeping a pair of matches at Maryland, a school that I don't believe the university invests in, isn't spectacular. But I have to note that through two series and four Games the U. has won 12 Sets and lost zero. Plus, I'll be honest -- with eight local teams playing this Week, I feel pressure to push some of them upward. So, going 4-0 to start the season is, at least for this WMNSS, good enough to push this team up to Positives. This weekend they visit Purdue for a pair.
#0: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: Positive Numbers). Scoring 30 Goals in the past four Games? Not too shabby. Swept Ohio St. in Columbus last week by scores of 5-1 and 5-2. Those wins float the U. up to second in both polls, behind only Boston College.
Quick notes on the tournament ... in case you haven't heard, the city of Manchester, N. H., has backed out of hosting its Regional. No word yet on a replacement site or replacement plans, but for all I know, the NCAA is forging ahead with their regular tournament schedule and format. Meanwhile, the main metric used to select which teams get into the 16-team tourney, the PairWise, is useless this Year. The PairWise only works when there are inter-conference Games, and because of the coronavirus pandemic, all the teams are playing league Games only. So, similarly, the NCAA has not come out with a plan on how to seed the field, let alone rank them. Will they still do the PairWise (which would work when comparing teams in the same conference, will they only say so many teams for each of the six conferences will get in, a hybrid of both, or something else entirely? The tournament is less than two months away, so I hope the NCAA comes out with a plan soon.
Border battle tonight/Friday night and tomorrow/Saturday night; Gophers host Wisconsin.
#-1: Gopher wrestling (Last Week: -5). In the second and final of these pandemic-created "tri-meets," the squad went to New Jersey, octupled Purdue, 32-4 Sunday morning, then outlasted host Rutgers in the early afternoon, 21-18.
I should talk about that great escape vs. the Scarlet Knights a bit. Two ranked Gophers -- #17 Michael Blockhus at 149 lbs. and #16 Jake Allar at 174 -- were upset by unraked Rutgers rasslers, the latter via Technical Fall by the Knights' Jackson Turley. So it was a good thing that 125-lb. #9 Patrick McKee started the Dual with Rutgers by pinning #15 Nic Aguilar and #15 Andrew Sparks got a Major Decision on Brett Donner at 165. Still, the Scarlet Knights were leading, 18-16. Thank goodness the U. has as good a closer (in Heavyweight) as any school can in top-flight wrestling; #1 Gable Steveson racked up a Technical Fall on Rutgers' Boone McDermott for the three-Point team victory.
They host Illinois this/Friday evening.
#-2: Gopher women's hockey (Re-Entry!). A disquieting split at Ohio St. Won Friday's match, 7-4, but lost to the Buckeyes on Saturday, 3-1. The squad now has lost three of their last four Games. Sure, they're still second in the USCHO.com poll, but still.
Wisconsin is #1. And it just so happens that the Badgers, like their male hockey counterparts, will be coming to Dinkytown for a two-Game series. When was the last time both Badger hockey teams played here on the same weekend? Man, if times were normal, this would be the only thing sports fans in town would be talking about -- #1 vs. #2 on the women's side, the resurrected Gopher men trying to introduce the Wisconsin men to a little bit of prison sex ... I gotta think tickets would be at a premium!
#-3: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4). This is damning with faint praise, but the Woofie Dogs may not ever be this high up in the survey the rest of their season. That is mostly due to the fact that the four clubs below them all had worse weeks. And even though they lost to Philadelphia, Cleveland and San Antonio this past screening Week (the last two by only two and three Points, respectively, but they can I fucked up at the end of both Games, so whatever), a win Sunday over the Cavaliers gets the Wolves here. In the meantime, D'Angelo Russell continues to be a high-volume, inefficient shooter. And by the way, Karl-Anthony Towns is still out because of COVID. It's been a long time.
Tonight/Friday night and tomorrow/Saturday night begins the first of what probably will be several pandemic-influenced two-Game series, these in Oklahoma City. They then travel to Dallas before coming home for the only contest at Target Center in a stretch of eight tilts, Wednesday versus the Clippers.
#-4: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -2). Got destroyed at home by 26 to Iowa Sunday afternoon to snap their winning streak at three. The team was supposed to play in Michigan last/Thursday evening, but the entire Wolverine athletic department has been shut down for two Weeks due to an outbreak of cases. (This will be a theme for the rest of the survey.) This Week: At Ohio St. Sunday afternoon, then Illinois in The Barn Wednesday.
#-5: Wild (Last Week: -3). They were 1-2 versus The Bastard Quebec Nordiques in what essentially was a four-Game regular season series (and by the way, that win happened when they were wearing their "Reverse Retro" jerseys of the Wild logo in North Stars colors -- coincidence?) before the team got shut down because of a COVID-19 outbreak. Five or six players for Minnesota have come down with it, and so on Wednesday the NHL forced the entire organization to shut down for a Week. That means that the last Game in Colorado, a two-Game set at Xcel vs. The Bastard Winnipeg Jets this weekend, and the first of two against St. Louis at home will now have to be rescheduled (and let's see if they're able to play the Blues Thursday).
This is leading age of what appears to be a bad storm for the league. Right now, technically, there are five teams that are ceasing operations; Colorado, New Jersey, Buffalo and Las Vegas have all been mandated to shut down, although the Golden Knights appear ready to resume their schedule tonight/Friday night. These teams have crossed paths; earlier this week, the Devils and Sabres played each other, and later, Buffalo officials were pissed that they played the Devils when they learned a Devil had a positive test. The Sabres were shut down shortly thereafter, and you cannot tell me that team didn't catch the virus from Jersey. Similarly, the Avalanche were told to shut down shortly after the Wild were told to shut down, so it stands to reason a Wild player or players infected Colorado during their series.
Such is the problem with not playing in a bubble. The NHL, NBA and MLS, after some early rough patches, were able to complete the previous seasons after hermetically sealing all the players in a venue. (The NWHL, not so much; see below.) But reports are that the players were lonely and getting very homesick. They were not going to go through a bubble situation again, so the leagues are trying to play in venues as normal, and you can see that acting as if things are normal has not stopped this virus at all. Was it worth trusting players to be careful on their own? The league is tightening protocols in the face of this rash of coronavirus spread, but now they'll have to find a way to shoehorn all these missed Games in the back half of the season.
#-6: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -6). OK, we now need to start worrying about this team. Their losing streak now is at three with losses at Purdue and Rutgers. The defeat to the Boilermakers Saturday was a familiar one: The U. hung tough at Halftime, but then the opponent started to pull away at the beginning of the Second Half and the Gophers could not respond.
The loss to the Scarlet Knights last/Thursday night was much more troubling, and part of the reason I have them ranked this low. This was an extraordinarily tight Game at the end, but within the last, oh, 90 Seconds or so, the U. stopped making their shots while Rutgers made theirs. And then, with about a dozen Seconds to go and the Knights up by four, they missed a Free Throw but got the Offensive Rebound. Now again, it was a two-possession Game at that point. But shit, man, couldn't anyone muster up the energy to grab the loose ball? And even when they didn't, wouldn't the game situation require you to foul again, even if the possibility of tying the Game was remote by that point? I heard the end of the Game on the radio, and the way the club just ... gave up is very, very disturbing.
These Goofers host Nebraska Monday and Purdue Thursday. This was supposed to be the easy part of the schedule, and they're now in danger of throwing their whole season away because they're underachieving against it.
#-7: Whitecaps (Last Week: -1). Well, that turned to shit in a hurry. The Whitecaps were supposed to play Buffalo. Then the NWHL rejiggered the format because the Metropolitan Riveters left the bubble/tournament/season. Then the Connecticut Whale pulled themselves out. The Rivs left because of an outbreak of COVID-19; the Whale did not say that was the reason they exited, which made me wonder then just why the hell they were leaving. (The team later said they took off out of an abundance of caution for the wellbeing of their players. OK. ...)
With four teams, the league just decided they were going to have Semifinals and Finals (the former set to be played today/Thursday), the 'Caps going up against the Boston Pride in what would have been the 2019-20 Isobel Cup Final, and both Games (and the Final) airing on NBCSN, the first time professional women's hockey would be broadcast on television. But then even more positive tests popped up, and so on Wednesday the NWHL said they were "suspending" the season. Unfortunately, well-placed sources, on condition of anonymity, have said that this Year, and this experiment, is over. And that will mean this fledgling league, which had just picked up two major sponsors (and some shit over playing footsie with the alt-right sports media organization Barstool), will not have crowned a champion the past two Years.
I feel bad for the Whitecaps, who, as far as I know, is not a source of the coronavirus. (They lost in a hastily-arranged match vs. Toronto, where they dropped to the second seed and were going to play the third-seeded Pride.) But it does bring into question how in the hell did an environment supposedly in a "bubble" get riven with the virus? It apparently wasn't a "bubble" in the strictest sense; some players were brought in to Lake Placid, N. Y., while the tournament was going on, and the NWHL still hasn't fully disclosed what health protocols were in place to keep out the virus. Those disclosures should result in an embarrassing black eye for the league, but they now have to worry about how to maintain visibility in the midst of failing to complete a second straight season. And considering a rival startup league is trying to get an exhibition Game off the ground in the hopes of providing a replacement for the NWHL, professional women's hockey may be in a very precarious spot.
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