Annual reminder: This is the last Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey of 2022. For variety's sake, we are going to change the Day of the Week for 2023. It will be on the day January 8, 2023 falls, so the WMNSS for next Year will be published on Sundays. The next WMNSS (the first of the new Year) will encompass all Games from today, December 31, 2022, through Saturday, January 7. All subsequent surveys will, or at least should, cover all contests from the previous seven Days.
#-1: Vikings (Last Week: -4). I don't know how this club still has fans since it seems determined to give them all heart attacks Week after fucking Week. They once again showed their resilience/proved that can't put any team away Sunday, allowing the New York Giants to tie their Game before pulling out the Win at the gun. This time around, it was the Kicker, Greg Joseph, who was the conquering hero. Kirk Cousins's Game-winning drive actually stalled; Joseph's career-high Field Goal is 56 Yards, but the Vikes only got to the Giants 42. No matter; Joseph drilled it from 61, and The Purple escape again with a 27-24 victory.
They remain a Game ahead of San Francisco for the NFC's #2 Seed. Also intriguing, they are only a Game behind Philadelphia for the top conference seed and the attendant bye. I doubt they'll catch the Eagles. Minnesota needs to win out, and they're on the road for the rest of the regular season, starting with resurgent Green Bay Sunday/New Year's Day. Meanwhile, the Eagles need to lose out, and they on the same Day host New Orleans, who is already eliminated from postseason play. But I have to think there is a sizable subset of Iggles fans who are worried that Jalen Hurts is more, uh, hurt than the team is letting on, and that Gardner Minshew will throw four picks against the Saints, lose, and forge a tie with Minnesota with Week 18 looming. What I guess I'm saying is that for us Vikings fans, as many doubts this team continues to raise, things could be worse.
#-2: Wild (Last Week: -1). Beat the Bastard Atlanta Thrashers but lost to The Team That Was Stolen From Us at home, and badly, 4-1. It's a burden only the Wild must deal with, but I dock more severely whenever they lose to The Bastard North Stars. Those extra demerits don't show up because, frankly, the three teams below the Mild on the survey have lost all their Games. Also, they are in playoff position right now (even though it's by no means safe), and they have played better as of late.
In St. Louis tonight/Saturday night, host Tampa Bay Wednesday, at Buffalo Saturday.
#-3: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -6). This remains a program out of its depth, I'm afraid. If this squad is playing mid-majors, usually no problem. But once they get into conference play, they themselves turn into a mid-major. Their three-Game winning streak came to a crashing end with a 22-Point beatdown yesterday/Friday afternoon at Maryland and former Head Coach Brenda (Oldfield) Frese. They also got their asses kicked at Iowa. And they needed to go to Double Overtime for their only conference Win, at home versus Penn St. I'm afraid nothing has changed.
Host Ohio St. Thursday.
#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -8). Now it's time to panic. Losses this screening Week at Miami, New Orleans and Milwaukee stretch their losing streak to five tilts, and they are currently 11th in the West. The last two defeats were particularly awful. On Wednesday, the Woofie Dogs had a six-Point lead at Halftime, but Zion Williamson scored the last 14 Points for The Bastard Charlotte Hornets and eked out a 119-118 Win. Then last/Friday night, the Woofs blew an 11-Point Halftime lead and lost to the Bucks by nine.
Karl-Anthony Towns has been away for a while, and he will continue to be away. But this team has too goddamn much talent on paper to keep losing, let alone losing like this. What is very disconcerting right now is how the acquisition of Rudy Gobert has not contributed at all to the improvement of this squad -- not on Defense, and certainly not on chemistry. These Wolves remain a confused band of underachievers despite swinging for the fences for a player who should have solved a lot of problems. But the Stifel Tower has not defended up to snuff yet this season. And he didn't play against the Bucks because he was sick (not with COVID, presumably).
Sure, there's more than half the season left to go. And they've been on the road for their last four contests, so maybe a four-Game homestand for the Week (vs. Detroit, Denver, Portland and The Bastard Buffalo Braves/San Diego Clippers) will cure what ails them. But what if it doesn't? Meanwhile, after some talk that they didn't have the money, Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez made good on their promise to acquire another 20 per cent of the organization. How much responsibility they should bear for the Gobert trade remains to be seen.
#-Infinity: Gopher volleyball (Re-Entry!). I didn't have the time nor the energy to give this team the ... well, I won't say "proper," more like "fitting" sendoff it is entitled to once their season officially ended on the 8th. But now that I'm home from vacation, and since nearly all the Minnesota Golden Gopher sports teams are taking the holidays off, I have the space in this WMNSS to revisit what has happened to this program this month.
By all accounts, Hugh McCutcheon is a nice guy, and he has forgotten more volleyball than I'll ever understand. Still, I insist that his tenure has been marked by a crusty layer of underachievement, I'm afraid, capped off by yet another Sweet Sixteen exit, this time at the hands of fellow Big Ten Conference member Ohio St., who was seeded third while the Gophs were seeded second. For his 11-Year tenure at the U., he has three Final Fours and two more appearances in the Elite Eight, and only missed the tournament once. His predecessor, the late Dr. Mike Hebert, got Minnesota into at least the Regional Final only four times in his Gopher stay, but he got the Golden Gophers to three Final Fours and, more importantly to me, he got to the National Championship Game, in 2004 (losing to Stanford), and that's something McCutcheon, I'm afraid, did not do. And yes, people point to a brand new level of recruiting under his watch; Minnesota got an AVCA First-Team All-American for the eighth Year in a row when Taylor Landfair was picked. But shoot, if he recruited so well, why didn't he ever get the U. to the title Match, or win the whole thing?
So no, I'm not completely against finding a new Head Coach. And a few Weeks ago, Athletic Director Mark Coyle found his person, and like with USC and UCLA, the B1G raided the Pac-12 and plucked the Head Coach from Washington, Keegan Cook. He hasn't been as successful with the Huskies as McCutcheon was with the Golden Gophers, but the Big Ten is of a tier more lucrative than the Pac-12, so maybe Cook can, uh, cook with a bigger budget. Similarly, they both are considered to be "holistic" Head Coaches, where they both are not just interested in players as far as how they can contribute to the program, but also as people with their own goals and values. Caring for student-athletes as human beings off of the volleyball court is a noble, progressive and "woke" idea. I endorse it. But can Cook win?
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