Author Archives: Sean Scallon

The Cold Spring

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We’re in between baseball and snowfalls even though it’s spring.

One of the aspects of the new Big Ten hockey conference which is appealing is more opportunities for non-conference scheduling and better non-conference scheduling at that. Who did Wisconsin play in the non-conference portion of their schedule? Northern Michigan, Alabama-Huntsville, Miami of Ohio and Penn State. Not exactly Murder’s Row there. The Badgers were swept by NMU and split with Penn State. Does that sound like a national championship team in retrospect? Not after a very good UMass-Lowell team got done with them. It’s same thing with Minnesota. The best non-conference teams they played and beat were Boston College and Notre Dame, both teams first round losers in the NCAA tournament along with them, for the second time against a No. 4 seed. The only way Wisconsin and Minnesota could advance to the Frozen Four is if the WCHA was a very strong league. Well, that wasn’t the case as five out of the six teams in the league lost in the first round (St. Cloud State made it to the Frozen Four). The Big Ten may not be a better league necessarily, but at least games against eastern schools and others are now possible.

Speaking of the new college hockey league, Wisconsin could be a strong favorite to win next season if it’s able to keep most of its players from going to the pros along with adding Minnesota’s Mr. Hockey Grant Besse to their roster. Minnesota has lost of the players who helped it win back-to-back MacNaughton Cup like Nick Bjugstad, Zach Budish and Nate Schmidt. Michigan will also be a favorite.

Usually when you fire a coach and hire a new one, you want to make sure the person you hire is clearly better than the one you fire. So is Richard Pitino, Rick Pitino’s son, better than a future hall of fame coach who has national championship ring? The U better hope so otherwise he’ll be another Tim Brewster. And so much of the elements of the search for Tubby Smith’s successor were similar to way Brewster got his job: a coaching candidate way down on the list as others turned down the job, a candidate from left field, a willingness to work cheap, a willingness to accept the facility situation at Minnesota as being what it is. Pitino is young (very young) enthusiastic and has a lot of energy but so was Brewster (especially in comparison to their predecessors who won games but not enough to satisfy Gopher fans). All of these are good qualities but they can’t trump intelligence and good judgement. We’ll see how it all works out and if he does well in his first season, where the Gophers will have just eighth scholarship players and no recruits coming in, and is able to snag at least one recruit from what’s reported to be one of the most talented prep classes in Minnesota history, he’ll dispel a lot fears he’s another Brewster, just on the hardwood.

As much grief as Joel Maturi gets from Gopher fans for his tenure as University of Minnesota Athletic Director (and he did made his share of mistakes) he did not have the university pay $800,000 NOT to play North Carolina in football; spend a half a million to PLAY New Mexico State, including a date in Las Cruces, MN (where Gopher fans may want to take flak jackets to the game in case of cross-border gunfire from Mexican drug wars) being unable to lure the top candidate for the U’s men’s basketball coaching job (and reportedly making an offer which was a waste of Shaka Smith’s time) and not informing Tubby Smith he had lost his job well after the media and others found out. No, this is all Norwood Teague’s doing and if U fans and the media are going to hold Maturi to pretty high standard of performance, I hope the hold the same standards for Teague in judging his tenure as AD.

Jay Weiner offers a more balanced assessment of Maturi’s tenure than you’ll find in the Twin Cities media.

Both the Brewers and Twins will have to resist temptations to bring up their young, talented pitching prospects up to the majors too fast. Both teams can hit the ball well enough to stay in semi-contention for much of the season (although the Brewers have been hurt more-so by injuries) but they can’t let that fact goad them into moving up their young pitchers before they are ready or they’ll waste whatever future they have. Fortunately for the future, both team’s pitching staffs are so bad right now (especially the Brewers’ bullpen) such considerations probably won’t be made.

That the Minnesota Wild struggled so mightily and find themselves on the edge of making the playoffs without Matt Cullen in the line-up shows this is a team while talented, also lacks depth, which doesn’t bode well for a lengthy playoff run. This situation wasn’t helped when an injury ended Dany Heatly’s season.

The big focus for the MinnesotaTimberwolves is make sure they can come back which much of their team in tact, including head coach Rick Adelman so at least they can go through a whole season with much of the team playing instead of injured and see how good they can be, which could be quite good. Despite being beat-up for much of the season, the T-Wolves still won 30 games, which is more than some of their recent squads which were relatively healthy, just poorer in talent by comparison.

The Bucks will have the dubious distinction of being the only team in the NBA playoffs with a losing record. Indeed, there are teams not in the playoffs who are playing better than the Bucks right now (like the T-Wolves for example) an it’s not like they’re losing to good teams (they’ve lost to the awful Bobcats twice and the Magic recently). Given their first-round fodder status against the defending champion Miami Heat, one gets the impression Milwaukee fans are treating this playoff berth with contempt rather than anything to get excited about. That’s not good for a franchise with a lot of question marks about its future. The Bucks are committed to stay in Milwaukee and the Bradley Center until 2017 but after that all bets are off. The NBA has said the team will not be allowed to sign another lease with the building after that year and given the shenanigans the league pulled to move the Seattle Super Sonics to Oklahoma City, the league has shown itself capable of doing anything fair or unfair to get what it wants, even if Herb Kohl doesn’t sell the team or hands off the team to new owners with the clause to keep the team in Milwaukee. The easiest thing to do, to get a new arena or remodel the Bradley Center would be to shift the five-county Milwaukee metro sales tax from Miller Park to the arena but anti-tax sentiment which exists in the counties outside of Milwaukee (and really, outside the city of Milwaukee) is still very strong even if that very tax built Miller Park and kept the Brewers in the Cream City. But while the Brewers still have a large and pretty loyal fan base across the regional and much of the state, one doesn’t get that impression about the Bucks outside the city. Any successful pro sports franchise has to have that deep bond to fans far away from the city they’re in because ultimately, they’re the ones going to be paying the taxes for the arenas for that team to play in. And let’s be honest and blunt, an NBA franchise where 70 percent of the players are black in a deeply segregated, racially and politically polarized region where some of the wealthiest suburban counties are 99 percent white, isn’t something the residents are going to demand to pay for. Plus, said black players are going to demand an awful amount of money to play ball in a city which has the reputation of not exactly being a hip destination, which the Bucks can only get from having a new arena with new revenue streams.  Unless attitudes and perceptions change (which is always possible with a few wins and playoff success and actual economic growth), the Bucks may be on their way out of a city which is still a big basketball town. Don’t be surprised if the one playoff game the Bucks have this season is not a sell-out and not even close to being one.

 

Thy Lions of March edition

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Someone once said being involved in wrestling isn’t really about having fun, it’s about fulfillment. You dream of something like a gold medal in the Olympics or the state or NCAA tournament, you work your tail off night and day to achieve it. See the goal – achieve the goal. Considering the amount of sweat equity and pain put into this sport having covered it for over 20 years, I get that. To have a bunch of elites and aristocrats take those dreams away just so they can have wushu in the Olympics is just sickening.

Although wrestling is one of the most popular participatory sports around the world, it doesn’t have the mass media appeal other sports have to the casual Olympic viewer. Thus, the wrestling community tends to be rather isolated from other athletic endeavors. And that isolation often times leads to feelings resentment. Wrestlers often feel put upon by people who don’t understand them or who take their sport for granted and these feelings I do concur with out of sense of fairness. After all, it’s a sport which really has no scandals in it (unlike say, cycling, one of the dirtiest sports man has ever created and it still has its Olympic slot). Nobody gets into wrestling for the money. Wrestlers live a hand-to-mouth existence, especially when training for the Olympics.  Wrestling champions, at least in the U.S anyways, never receive the fame or the endorsement deals other Olympic gold medalists get like gymnasts, swimmers or track stars. For the most part, these largely middle class boys and girls are the kinds of people (most, not all, but most) you want representing your county and being a good example to children. So why, given all these positives, and given the fact wrestling has been around since Biblical times when Jacob wrestled an angel, would the Olympics simply say “Nahh, we don’t want you around here anymore. Get lost.”? Why is it wrestling, which is one of the cheapest sports in comparison to others, is the one to feel the budget ax at many colleges and universities?

I would hate to think wrestling would no longer be in the Olympics  because wrestlers refuse to engage in politics or because they didn’t supply enough hookers and blow to those folks making the decisions at the IOC or because they didn’t “sex up” their sport just for the sake of the cameras. It’s a sad commentary on what the world values most these days if true. Wrestling’s only hope is that broad numbers and the outrage this decision has caused would be enough to make the IOC change its mind. It’s a hope, but not something I want to bet my life on knowing how one has to take a shower after dealing with that crowd of elites. It’s sad, it really is when a whole community which generally tries and usually does do things the right way, ends up being punished for it.

If and when the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team loses its final game of the 2012-13 regular season, it will happen in this way: The Badgers won’t be able to hit the broadside of a barn door (and it will be the kind of shooting slump that you really don’t want to play a drinking game to, like downing a shot every time Matt LePay says “off the back-iron, no good.”); they will commit more than 10 turnovers; they’ll be lousy from the free-throw line if they get there at all and their defense will let some player or players on the opposing team get obscenely hot from the field (like Purdue’s D.J. Byrd did) which will put an end to their season.

Now it’s easy to be cynical about this year’s Badger team but considering that some thought they’d be lucky to make the NIT this season after the loss of Josh Gasser to injury and Jordan Taylor to graduation, let alone finish tied for fourth in the toughest college basketball conference in the country, it’s not a bad bit of coaching from Bo Ryan. Still, the team has had enough recruiting misses since their last Big Ten title in 2008 to prevent it from winning more championships since then or go on to the Final Four. That the program has still remained so consistently good is attributable to the coaching staff as well and to the talent which has made its way to Madison. And besides, if the opposite is true, and the Badgers do make their shots, they’re pretty good. But hopefully recruiting has gotten and will get better to the point where such scratching and clawing really won’t be necessary.

When it comes to recruiting, next year’s Badger class led La Crosse Aquinas’s Bronson Koenig along with the team’s newest players like Sam Dekker, Zak Showalter and a Frank Kaminsky, suggest the Badgers may well be heading in a more up tempo and quicker, more shot creation direction rather than the more outside shot-post offense they’ve run in the recent past.

This past weekend’s WIAA State Boys Basketball Tournament shows clearly the Class of 2013 of collegiate prospects in the state is as deep and talent as any class of high schoolers which has come before it. Rarely has a state tournament featured so many players who have D-I scholarships waiting for them next fall like Koenig (Wisconsin), Whitefish Bay Dominican’s Duane Wilson (Marquette), Germantown’s Luke Fischer (Indiana) Pulaski’s Cody Wichmann (UW-Milwaukee) Onalaska’s Matt Thomas (Iowa State) plus many more. Even those players who didn’t get to state like Sun Prairie’s Nick Fuller (Nebraska) and Milwaukee Vincent’s Deonte Burton (Marquette) have also got full rides. And with future prospects like Dominican’s Diamond Stone and Randolph’s Duke Vander Gailen playing in the tourney and other great players like Milwaukee Hamilton’s Kevon Looney and Rice Lake’s Henry Ellenson out there as well, the future looks bright for more good classes of high school talent. The word’s out, you can find some good high school basketball players in Wisconsin.

At this point, the only way Tubby Smith isn’t coaching at Minnesota next season is if he doesn’t want to. This is a possibility but with the U planning on announcing a facilities master plan which would satisfy one of Smith’s demands from the university, one suspects unless he has something else in mind Smith intends to keep coaching in Minneapolis. Now many Gopher fans may not like this considering once again another great start to the season was ground up in the Big Ten grinder six years into his tenure. But there simply is not the money available to pay for all the buyouts needed plus pay for a new coach (this is what happens when you have to borrow money from the school’s general fund to pay to get rid of Tim Brewster, Dan Monson and Glen Mason). While little is expected of the current Gopher squad in the postseason, I’m curious to see if part of the team’s problem is simply that it’s better suited for non-conference competition than for the Big Ten (12-1 vs. 8-10, you be the judge).

Minnesota fans may not want to hear this either but in the context of the history of Golden Gopher basketball, Tubby Smith is actually one of the best coaches the school has ever had. Including this season he’s 123-78, he’s never had a losing season and will have gone to three NCAA tournaments. And he’s done all this clean unlike some of his predecessors. As was stated earlier, Smith may not be reaching expectations, but if the Gophers want a better coach they’re going to have to pay a lot of money for that person. Money they don’t have.

Injuries have rendered any kind of broad judgement on Timberwolves’s season pointless but they should be worried that Rick Adelman might decide to dump the T-Wolves at the end of the season more so than the team would dump him.

Speaking of pointless, the Milwaukee Bucks are heading in that direction. It sounds like Brandon Jennings is making demands of the club which are the kind one knows the other side won’t accept or are incapable of accepting. If a good, not great, player like Jennings after few years in Milwaukee openly seeks fame and fortune elsewhere, it’s a sign no matter what young stud the Bucks draft they will eventually want to leave after a short period of time because the small-market franchise can’t put the players around them to make them into a club people want to watch on national TV or go deep in the playoffs. This cycle has repeated itself again and again over the past 15 years. But it’s not just a question of trying to give small market teams a chance to compete in the NBA. Top-notch players simply don’t want to play in Milwaukee. Any free agent with a choice will choose someplace else. Any free agent who doesn’t have a choice, if they want to keep playing, simply becomes another bust-out collecting a check until he can find a better gig or retire. Indeed, unless the city can figure out a way to become, well, “more hip” (which seems to be more of a basketball problem than a baseball problem) there’s not much the team can do to remain competitive other than continue to be caught up in the same vicious cycle or dissolve the franchise and move to Vegas or some place similar after Herb Kohl croaks. After all, there’s a reason why they’re the Brooklyn Nets and no longer the New Jersey Nets.
Not only does the newly proposed Central Division in the NHL realignment plan mean less overall travel for the Minnesota Wild it also means rekindling old rivalries from the North Star days against Chicago, St. Louis and Winnipeg and also keeping those against Dallas and Colorado. Having all the teams in the same time-zone (with the exception of Nashville) helps a lot too.

If the Big Ten had started its hockey league this season it would not be a very strong league. In fact it may well be worse than the current WCHA is right now. One hopes this is a direction which will help grow the sport over time because as of right now now the schools who are bolting are giving up a lot: good competition and a well attended league tournament in the best hockey venue in the United States. One hopes after a decade one doesn’t come back to write for a blog called Desktop Sportsman and ask “Why did they give all this up?”

Another fellow who isn’t interested in playing for his team right now is Percy Harvin. In case you haven;t read the tea leaves, Harvin wants out of Minnesota and the Vikings, which got to the playoffs in his absence, probably wants to get rid of him too. But right now they’re playing it coy and hopefully if they do trade Harvin it better be for a king’s ransom because despite his temperamental behavior, he’s still good enough to demand plenty of franchise building draft picks from a potential suitor.

Up one week down the next

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It seems like pro and college teams in these parts are never really all bad or all good. They’re up one week and down the next. Looking like champions today until tomorrow comes and they’re bums again.

I guess it’s some consolation that the Packers had their season ended by the eventual NFC Champs, the 49ers but it still doesn’t take the sting away of watching a quarterback runs for as many yards on your defense as Adrian Peterson would. The sad thing is the Packers’ defense was actually better this year statistically and at times even from a visual standpoint until the moment came when they couldn’t get the job done. So yes, more playmakers on defense, especially up front, are needed. But it would help Green Bay if they picked-up a decent running back, either through the draft or free agency, to take the pressure off Aaron Rodgers to continually have to find ways to convert on third down and keep opposing offenses off the field.

No Vikings fans, Joe Webb could not have run the way Colin Kaepernick ran against the Packers’ defense because Joe Webb cannot complete a pass. Kaepernick can and he has receivers like Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis who can catch them. Minnesota actually should feel grateful to get into the playoffs considering how dependent they were on offense to Adrian Peterson’s legs in the pass-happy NFL these days. But it goes to show why having a dependable back-up QB in the pros is usually a good thing. The question of whether Christian Ponder is the “answer” to seemingly eternal Viking quarterback question is really beside the point for right now given the way Peterson dominated the league this past season. Presumably if the Vikings can pick up such a quarterback and another wide receiver in the draft or free agency or if Percy Harvin gets his act together at some point, the Vikings, with their young talent up front on offense and an improved defense, will be in the playoffs again next season. Perhaps even knocking the Packers’ off their NFC North perch.

If it’s true Barry Alvarez backed off in terms of personnel and playing calling in the Rose Bowl, I kind of wished he hadn’t considering the boneheaded “Barge” formation call near the goaline or the fact back-up QB Joel Stave could have used another series or two to try and loosen up Stanford’s defense. Still, as much as another Rose Bowl loss hurts, given how good Stanford is, being in the ballgame until the end is some consolation.  Perhaps the best Alvarez did was providing the stability the team needed to prepare for the game considering the upheaval the program had been sheltered from for so long.

New UW head Gary Andersen notched his first big win yesterday by convincing the state’s top prep player, Alec James from Brookfield East, to stick to his UW commitment, which wasn’t easy to do with Michigan State, Oregon and Brett Bielema and Arkansas trying to change his mind. It’s tough for a new coaching staff of of college football team to come in and start recruiting from scratch thus the best thing Andersen needed to do was to keep the commitments UW already had. So far he’s done an excellent job. National Signing Day is next Wednesday.

Yes the University of Wisconsin’s men’s basketball team does not shoot the ball very well (either on the floor or the line) and will lose their share of games because of it. But the Badgers play defense well and rebound and so long as they do, they will be competitive despite the inexperience of their backourt. Two out of three ain’t bad because UW has gritted out wins shooting poorly (see Minnesota) and there’s always that 50-50 chance each game they will be able to make their shots, which make them very tough to beat.

Minnesota avoided a meltdown to its season by beating Nebraska at home Wednesday and with with several ballgames coming up at Williams Area the Gophers, who are still 16-5 overall despite their .500 Big Ten record, can still make the NCAA Tournament without sweating it out. But this team’s potential will be limited unless they learn how to play half-court basketball, not go into a funk because their opponents don’t play the way they want them to.

The NBA is a players-GM league and coaches are generally cyphers. But it helps to actually have at least a presence on the bench the players either don’t mind playing for or at least respect. Thus coaching has tied into the fortunes of the Bucks and Timberwolves over the past month. Scott Skiles decided to end the charade he was going to be the long-term coach of the Bucks by basically quitting (you couldn’t exactly say he was fired because he’s happy not to be coaching this particular team) and letting popular assistant Jim Boylan run the show. So far so good as the Bucks are ensconsed in the NBA playoff picture and above .500. The Timberwolves by contrast have stumbled without veteran coach Rick Adelman (who caring for his sick wife) and went 2-9 while Terry Porter was running the team. Granted injuries have hurt the T-Wolves this year (no Kevin Love double-doubles and Ricky Rubio trying to do too much coming back from injury) but someone like Adelman could have helped the team avoid losses to the lowly Bobcats and Wizards. The T-Wolves will have to regroup after the all-star break to any chance of salvaging its season.

The Wild are going to have an interesting dilemma now that they’ve survived their early-season lull because they have a lot of young talent down at their minor league franchise in Houston ready and waiting to play in the pros. How they integrate them into the current team and its stars like Parise and Ryan Suter, what lines they play, how they ease out the aging veterans and how the talented youngsters will play once they hit the big time will go a long way to determining the Stanley Cup potential of the team this season.

Minnesota is truly the State of Hockey once again and it’s not just braggadocio. You’ve got the Wild back on the ice of course and one of the top teams in the NHL but also the top two Division I programs in men’s and women’s hockey at the University of Minnesota with the women’s team holding an NCAA record 34-game winning streak. And yet, leading the WCHA on the men’s side is not the Golden Gophers, its St. Cloud State with Minnesota State in fourth place and ranked in the top 20. Indeed, the U and even Wisconsin may find the competition in the WCHA was a lot tougher than it will be in the Big 10 next season.

The Phoenix Coyotes are still owned by the NHL after the latest attempt to find a buyer for the team fell through because, well, he didn’t have enough money at closing time.The comical tale of the Coyotes and the NHL unsuccessful to unload them off their balance sheets (unless of course you’re Jim Balsillie) it really a backdrop for why the NHL lockout happened in the first place. The league was simply trying to once again its buck up its weaker franchises by extracting more from the players. Of course, if the Coyotes were in say, Hamilton, Ontario or Quebec City, they might not be losing $25 million a year but NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will not give up on his insane dream of hockey in the Sunbelt and thus we’ve had two work stoppages as a result.  Yes the Los Angeles Kings did win the Stanley Cup and the LA media still finds a losing, disfunctional Lakers’ squad more interesting than covering the world champions. It’s just not fertile expansion ground and they’re lucky the Kings, Ducks, Stars and Lightning at least have some foothold enough to survive (which wasn’t true for Atlanta and jury is still out on Nashville and Carolina). When Bettman gives up on this is when the NHL will truly have labor peace.

 

 

 

          

Looking forwards and backwards edition

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January is named after the Roman god Janus who’s field expertise was “beginnings and endings” so what better time to do both for 2012 and 2013 than the week between Christmas and New Year’s?

Adrian Peterson took a Minnesota Vikings teams which on paper at the beginning of the season looked like it had 7-9 talent along with quarterback problems, put it on his legs despite coming off of knee surgery, is close to setting a league record and has led it to a playoff berth if they beat Green Bay Sunday at home. If that’s not an MVP season, I don’t know what is.

Percy Harvin is a great talent given his penchant for being a problem in the lockerroom, is it any coincidence his absence has helped the Vikings get into position to make the playoffs to begin with?

Hopefully an MVP season for Peterson will convince NFL execs and GMs once again there’s value in having a top notch running back on your team rather than just a plugger you hope gains 1,000 yards behind a good offensive line.  If Peterson does gain the NFL single-season rushing record the Vikings will be well on their way to beating the Packers.

Green Bay may have been 15-1 last season but there were many concerned fans who thought the team was playing well down the stretch in spite of the team’s record and were ripe for a playoff upset. The Packers may have a worse record this season but after last Sunday’s thumping of the Titans, nobody thinks their coasting right now, which is a good thing. Hungry teams are many times the most difficult to beat in the playoffs regardless of their records given the momentum they have on their side as the Packers proved in their Super Bowl run.

Why did Bret Bielema suddenly bail on the University of Wisconsin football job for Arkansas? Was it just more money for himself and his assistants, better facilities, better league to coach in? I would say all of the above played a part in his decision-making process. But I suspect, and I’m surely not alone, there was more behind the scenes, at least on the part of Bielema than his former boss and mentor Barry Alvarez, who was blindsided by Bielema’s announcement. Put yourself in his shoes. Your boss has a statue outside the stadium, he’s always at practice, he always wanted to go on walks and give advice. Maybe Bret got tired of it and said “I want my own program, not one still addressed to Barry Alvarez.” It’s same reason sons break away from their fathers (Alvarez said Bielema was like a son to him) and don’t want to run the family business.  In the end, Bielema refused to be Tom Osborn to Barry’s Bob Devany, the Nebraska influence Alvarez has put on this program since his first day there in January of 1990. This was always the plan and for a time Bielema believed in it too, until after three straight Big Ten titles he’s begin to believe he’s a pretty good in his own right, which he is. We’ll see how it carries out in Fayetteville. But if Bret thought criticism of him in the state was too much for his ego, he should wait to see what the reaction will be if Arkansas loses to Ole Miss at home. He made need to go to work in a suit of armor.

Gary Andersen certainly sounds like a good fit as the new University of Wisconsin head football coach. He certainly has said the right things since taking the job and hopes his speaking skills and apparent warmth will help him win over fans and high school coach and prospects in a part of the country he doesn’t know much about since he’s spent nearly all of his football career in the state of Utah. Those of us old enough to remember former UW head coach Don Morton remember his track record at North Dakota State and Tulsa was impressive too  and he said a lot nice things as well (Morton was called “Coach Sunshine” by the press until the bright sunny day turned ugly by 1988 after losses to Western Michigan and Northern Illinois). One keeps one’s fingers crossed knowing full well a bad hire at coaching could hurt not just the football program but the entire athletic department too.

The Big Ten is considered the best conference in college basketball and it will be in Big Ten play where fans will see how Wisconsin and Minnesota really stack up. The Badgers are 9-4 but in the games against legit competition their record is 2-4 (their only wins over California and Arkansas) and they’ve played poorly in those losses. It’s going to be tough playing in the league with such an inexperienced backcourt and the Badgers have an 11-game stretch of games from January 12th through to February 17 with nothing but games vs. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Minnesota and Iowa which pretty much will decide whether they go back to the NCAA Tournament again. Minnesota seems impressive on paper and in the way they’ve played so far. But the best team they’ve faced, Duke, throttled them good and Gopher fans have been teased the past few seasons by good starts only to be scrambling to get into the Big Dance by late-February. Again, conference play will say a lot about these two teams.

Marquette and the other Catholic schools of the Big East finally made the smart play and left the sinking ship know as the Big East. Now free to add members for basketball purposes only (rather than let football drive the decision-making) maybe now some sanity can enter the conference realignment process.

If the NHL lets another entire regular season get canceled within a decade due to labor problems, you might as well let the Stanley Cup be awarded to the champion of the American Hockey League, for the supposed “pros” will be no better than a bush league to begin with.

Kudos to the Brewers and Twins for trying to bolster their pitching staffs this past offseason, the Brewers in the bullpen and the Twins with their starting rotation.

One has enormously patient and understanding to be a University of Minnesota football fan given the way the Gophers gridders can disappoint time and again just as they did in their bowl game which they should have won. But nobody, myself included, thought the U had a chance in this game. That they held the lead until the last four minutes shows an enormous amount of progress against a team from a turned out to be a very good Big 12 this season. Now one knows Gopher fans have heard this way too many times over the last 50 years, but that where the program is right now, on the cusp just like Wisconsin was at the beginning of Barry Alvarez’s tenure if continue along the same path. So long as Jerry Kill’s health holds up, they can at least get back to the level that Glen Mason had them around 2006 which I believe is Kill’s long-term goal at this point. 

 

 

 

 

Indications weekend

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There are a number of interesting sporting events going on this weekend that will provide some solid indicators to the future for a number of Upper Midwest sporting teams:

Tonight the Bucks and Timberwolves will play at the Target Center and after some initial success to start the NBA season, both teams have been struggling of late looking for consistent line-ups and rotations among the players they have healthy. Obviously for Minnesota Ricky Rubio and his health and recovery from knee surgery will play a big factor in the rest of their season. While the Bucks really have no injury excuses at all. They have to put together the puzzle from all the pieces they have.  Right now both teams are .500 playoff squads which is where they were on paper to start the season. It will be interesting to see if the winning team from tonight’s cotest can springboard from this game to something better.

How one perceives the University of Wisconsin’s football season will come down to how well they play in the Big Ten Championship game. A win will be an historic one for UW and head coach Bret Bielema and that history (Only Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler have take teams to three straight three-straight Rose Bowls) should trump all negatives which have happen this season. If not, then a .500 season at 7-7 is a real possibility. Not that quarterback and offensive line problems wouldn’t have some effect on a team’s fortunes but the fact UW has lost so many close games and had so many players make the All Big Ten teams suggests there was plenty of talent on hand to overcome such handicaps.

Both the Packers and Vikings have back-loaded scheduled of NFC North games, so the winner of Sunday’s game in Green Bay is going to have a huge lift mentally in playing out the rest of the schedule over the other.  This leaves the Vikings in a very precarious state because they are just 6-5 and will probably be without Percy Harvin in the contest. The Packers have enough playmakers (although they’re banged up too) to eke out a victory.

Pat Reusse believe this will be the season the University of Wisconsin’s men’s basketball team has it’s NCAA tournament streak snapped and after watching the UW-Virginia game on Wednesday, he might be right. Josh Gasser’s season-ending injury robbed UW of the only experienced player returning this season in their backcourt. The frontcourt of Ryan Evans Jared Berggren and MIke Brusewitz could make-up for this if they were playing well. Unfortunately they are not and thus every good team UW has faced so far this season with the possible exception of Arkansas (an NIT pick at best) they have lost to decisively. Heck, they had to rally in the second half just to beat the Razorbacks. And there are plenty of good teams in the Big Ten this season. Freshman Sam Dekker has shown he can be real asset on offense but his defense and rebounding are keeping from getting consistent minutes if not a starting role.    A win over California, however, Sunday, would certainly help their tournament resume and spark a run just before Big Ten play starts.

It would be more than a little unfair to ask Nic Kerdelis to be the next Wayne Getzky but in a sense that is what UW’s men’s hockey team is asking him to be in order to turn around a struggling team. The problem is Kerdelis’ first WCHA series is at first place Denver this weekend. Rather than asking for wins, perhaps if he can put some life in the Badgers’ offense actually make them competitive maybe all one can ask for. As for Minnesota, they have a big weekend series against Nebraska-Omaha, the best team they’ve faced all season so far. We’ll see how solid they are against stepped up competition.

Also this weekend we’ll see if anybody this season can defeat the University of Minnesota women’s hockey team as they face on their best opponents so far, Wisconsin, at Ridder Area in Minneapolis at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

 

Bush League edition

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Use bush league employees get bush league results. That’s why many of these NFL Replacement referees were working junior college football games instead of the pros.

Ultimately it was up to the owners to settle this thing since a miserly NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell works at their behest. And as much as they may want to hoard their cash they also don’t want their teams to be robbed a playoff berths (and the money you make from them) because of some bush league official and his bad call. Not to mention the fact the games were getting darn near close to the point of violence between players themselves and coaches and officials for their bad calls.

All of this goes to show that expertise does count for something. Not everyone is an interchangeable part for the function of the machine. You wouldn’t put Little League umpires in the middle of calling a World Series, so why anyone would think a small college football ref could seamlessly weave themselves into calling an NFL game, would be beyond comprehension unless one understands modern business practices in this globalized world. Maybe the best thing that can happened from Tate Golden’s illegitimate catch is reaffirming the faith knowing what you are doing still counts for something.

Of course we can’t mention Tate Golden without mentioning the Packers and Green and Gold fans should forget about the referees (especially when the refs essentially bailed them out against the Saints) and think long and hard why their defensive backs couldn’t make a clean, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt interception or prevent two rookie quarterbacks from leading their respective teams to wins against them.  Once again the problems with the defense and the running game (Cedric Benson’s loss doesn’t help) that were problems last season despite a 15-1 record apparently haven’t been fixed and now that everyone is three years older from the last Super Bowl they’re starting to become real problems. Playing the Texans this week in another road game, the Pack picked a bad time to blow a 21-3 lead.

What the Vikings are showing so far is that Christian Ponder didn’t have to be the next Johnny Unitas so long as he got the ball to Percy Harvin and Adrian Peterson and let them be the best at their spots on the field in the pros. And when you have Jared Allen doing the same on defense, then you have a team no one thought would be 4-1 right now.

Wisconsin’s game Saturday at Purdue will be a good indicator as to how this team will finish the season. A solid win on the road will certainly show the Badgers have survived their early season stormy weather and are headed to calmer seas (or at least to Indianapolis and the Big Ten Championship Game). A loss pretty much sends UW into a week-to-week struggle for survival which is not going to be very pretty to watch. What’s also at stake is the sense there still is a captain at the helm is still in charge making good decisions instead of throwing darts at the charts hoping one will point out the way. Also, the team’s MVP award needs to be given to Jared Abbrederis, right now. Just think how bad the offense would be without him (Actually we don’t have to think. We already saw it against Oregon State and Utah State).

Minnesota faces a similar situation in Saturday’s Homecoming game vs. Northwestern. As as stated before, Minnesota’s schedule is backloaded with strong opponents and the Gophers missed the golden opportunity to beat a reeling Iowa squad which had just lost to Central Michigan at home. The U needs just two wins to be bowl eligible and beating a defensively challenged Northwestern squad is very doable. They’re not going to get more chances like this the rest of the season. Having MarQueis Gray back this week, assuming he’s at 100 percent, would be a big help.

So in order to shakes things up after another 90-plus loss season, the Twins fire all coaches except for the coach of the lousy pitching staff, which is the main culprit for all those losses, and the guy in charge of the back-to-back 90-plus loss seasons. What was I saying about bush league?

By playing like they still cared throughout August and September the Brewers concluded their season with fans believing wholesale restructing is not needed except for a God-awful bullpen (which, thanks to John Axford’s sudden improvement, helped the Brew Crew win a few games). Let’s hope so because the Brewers can’t do a lot of moving around given Ryan Braun’s big contract, which he deservedly earned this season.

With the NHL on hiatus, the winter sports focus of the Upper Midwest will be on the NBA (and the Lynx championship run in the WNBA) with the Bucks and Timberwolves both looking to be improved teams for the 2012-13 season. Good starts will go a long way to setting both teams on their way to the playoffs. They cannot afford to wait until January and given the experience both teams have, they should be expected to begin things right.

The suspension of University of Wisconsin highly touted freshman forward Nic Kerdelis from the Badger hockey team by the NCAA shows again the Pharisee-like mindset the organization has. A full-year suspension because candid snapshot picture made it look like he was endorsing a sports drink? And the NCAA does nothing when North Carolina football and basketball players are involved in widespread and university complicit academic fraud to keep their eligibility? No wonder this organization can’t gain any credibility with sports fans. They sweat the small stuff while the big fish swim away.

The 2012-13 season will be the last normal one in college hockey. Next season everything changes with new leagues like the Big Ten and NCHC. While the WCHA still will remain (realignment destroyed the CCHA) and the Final Five in St. Paul one supposes, will be played, it will be nothing like what it once was. Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota are the favorites for the McNaughton Cup. Seems right.

As for the NHL, all one can do is play them a song…see if it fits.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes it’s just better to wait edition

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Instead of making predictions on paper or making one’s conclusions before it’s all said and done, perhaps it’s best to wait for more information to come in before saying anything. I’m glad I waited to until now before I said anything about the beginning of football season and before the end of the baseball season.

 

They say a team gets better between its first and second game in football. Well we can throw cliche out the window. Sometimes that doesn’t happen as everyone saw Saturday between Wisconsin and Oregon State. Indeed, it was the Beavers who had the advantage having seen Wisconsin play and understanding their weaknesses while UW had no chance to see if OSU improved any from the 35-0 shutout loss in Madison last year.  Perhaps the worst feeling in the world as fan is losing confidence in your team’s best players after watching them struggle for the better part of four quarters. It also doesn’t help your morale when the TV announcers are making better playing calling judgements than the offensive coordinator. It stands to reason UW fans were naive in thinking the loss of so many talented players from the past two seasons to the NFL and six assistant coaches to other jobs would have no effect on the whole program. An elite program may overcome such losses, which means UW really isn’t an elite program then. A very good one yes, but not elite.  I have no idea what the future has in store for the 2012 UW football team. That’s up to players and coaches to right the ship. Who would have thunk two supposed blow-off games against Utah State and UTEP before Big Ten play may very well determined the Badgers’ season.

 

If there was one play from Saturday’s Gopher football game against New Hampshire which should have everyone feeling positive towards the direction of the program, it was Marqueis Gray’s 75-yard TD run from scrimmage shortly after New Hampshire had scored in the first quarter. Instead of panicking, Minnesota responded. That’s what good football teams do. That’s progress for the U and sets them up to make a nice run IF they don’t let success go to their heads (perhaps the next stage in their evolution.)

 

U head coach Jerry KIll came in for some criticism when it was found he was trying to cancel the Golden Gopher football team’s future scheduled home-and-home series with North Carolina. There was talk he was taking the Glen Mason approach to scheduling dainty cherry tarts for non-conference games for the Gopher grids to feast on. I buy Kill’s argument that playing Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern and Wisconsin every season is enough of a headache to deal with. But with the Big Ten demanding its schools schedule more BCS opponents, with Twin Cities ticket market being very fickle and with costs rising to schedule certain FCS opponents (some cost a million bucks an appearance), it would behoove Minnesota to play at least one decent BCS opponent a season, even if it means a road game.

 

Speaking of progress the Vikings may make some this season. They have the personnel to finish .500 (7-9 through 9-7) if the trio of Adrian Peterson-Percy Harvin-Jerad Allen stay healthy. Christian Ponder doesn’t have to be the “the man”, at quarterback. He can be “half-the-man” so long as the Vikings run the ball effectively and can play semi-decent defense. Big plays will go a long way to making Minnesota a surprise team in the NFC North.

 

If there are any more surprises in the NFC North it could be the Packers aren’t quite as good as everyone thinks they are. You don’t necessarily need a stud running back to rush for over 100 yards a game but somebody has to do it and right now the Pack doesn’t seem to have such a runner. Likewise the Packers’ defense seems to lack playmakers too outside of Clay Matthews. Granted San Francisco is a pretty tough match-up on opening day, but if this happens to be a playoff preview, then the early signs could be very ominous for Green Bay.

 

Early last month, after the Brewers’ closer John Axford blew another save, UW-Madison’s freshman hoops-star-to-be Sam Dekker tweeted that Axford shouldn’t close another game. Axford tweeted back he wasn’t going to take any crap from any freshman. Well, how about quit blowing saves Ax Man! Because Dekker wasn’t saying anything different than any Brewer fan was at that time. Not going to take any crap from them too? Well fast forward to September and what-do-you-know? Axford is now starting to close out games again (27 saves this season) and combined with Ryan Braun’s hitting, has actually pulled the Brewers into contention for a wild card bid. The Brewers were always a good team, even without Prince Fielder. It was their abysmal bullpen which kept them down all season. Now that it has been fixed for the time being, they’re starting to play like everyone thought they would. The only question is, is it too late? There’s a lot of wins they still need to pull it off but at least they’ve made themselves interesting this September.

 

Which is unlike the Twins, who are playing only to prevent themselves from losing 100 games. The only thing interesting they’ve done recently is to put feelers out to other Major League clubs to see if they would deal for Joe Mauer. Only a few clubs could afford to take up Mauer’s contract and it’s tempting to think he could bring in several pitching prospects the club desperately needs. But Mauer reminded the Twins’ front office, if they didn’t remember, he has a no trade clause in his contract and would prefer to stay in the Twin Cities thank you very much. It means no quick fix to the Twins problems (if there was any to begin with) but it also means the Twins won’t once again part with a popular, marketable star ballplayer (who is having a very good season) in his prime to another club. The Twins will actually have to find pitchers the old fashioned way, through good scouting and development.

 

Someone needs to get the NHL owners and player on the suicide hotline because that’s what they’re contemplating if the current lock-out extends towards the start of the 2012 season. The owners want more revenue sharing to protect weak franchises and the players are balking at it. Someone needs to tell NHL Gary Bettman to pull the plug on franchises like the Florida Panthers or Phoenix Coyotes if they can’t hack it, because cancelled season is going to help their bottom lines either. The cancelled 2004-05 forced the Wild’s original ownership group to sell to Craig Leipold and the outcome could worse if the season is cancelled again.

 

 

Middle Earth edition

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What Tolkein had mind in writing about the Ring of Power in his Lord of the Rings books concerned an inherit evil in the manner of power itself which would lead men to either destroy each other fighting for it, or if they possessed it, would become so disfigured by its corruption they could hardly be recognized anymore.

So when former players or coaches or others in media say they can hardly believe or recognize the Joe Paterno that described in the Freeh Report, all one can say is the power the man wielded and tried to maintain over a major university and a city, a state and perhaps even a country did much to make him unrecognizable to those who thought they once knew him.

 

Does Penn State’s football program deserve the death penalty? Only in two regards: 1). As a deterrent to other schools and towns and cities where college sports play an unavoidable outsized role – Watch yourselves or the same thing can happen to you! – and 2). As a way of changing the “culture” surrounding Penn State. The only that’s going to happen is if the very thing which the culture is based upon is taken away and not just for one year but for several. Persons may  debate whether the NCAA has any jurisdiction in this case but the case does concern athletics  and when four top administrators at major university are engaged in a criminal conspiracy and the Board of Trustees which is supposed to oversee them are no better than potted plants, then there’s a “lack of institutional control.”

 

Once again the Big Ten Network was caught flat-footed when a major story broke about the Penn State scandal. The BTN can claim all it wants it is not a “news service”, but when the network routinely breaks into its programming to show us press-conferences of new football and basketball coaches hired by its member schools, then such statements are quite hollow. If the BTN can go to Happy Valley to introduce PSU’s new basketball coach (Quick! Anyone know his name?) they can go there for the press conference on the Freeh Report. No one is expecting the BTN to come up with its own investigative reporting unit, but it’s not too much to expect it to cover major events involving its member schools regardless of how embarrassing they are.

 

The new playoff system cooked up for college football is much better than the BCS, until you’re the team that gets left out the top four. At least in this case you get to blame a committee, just like basketball, instead of a computer. This writer can once remembered how fans liked the BCS system when it was first introduced to replace the old bowl tie-ins. Then it was actually put in and tried out. Needless to say, nothing is ever fool-proof.

 

Despite good seasons at the plate from Josh Willingham, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau and Ryan Doumit, the Twins are in last place and have one of the worst records in baseball because their pitching is awful. They’ll be dumping players as soon as the wheeling and dealing begins. However, this was not unexpected going back to the preseason. The Brewers, on the other hand, have good starting pitching and hitting, so their 41-46 record is a big disappointment. The reason for this is a God-awful bullpen which seemingly cannot save a dime. However, unlike the Twins, all is not lost at the midway point of the season. They’re not far below either .500 or the top of the standings being eight games back. They can go on a hot streak if they quit blowing leads in the ninth inning. It is a lucky deal for Milwaukee that there’s a dearth of good teams in Major League Baseball this season to have the opportunity for a comeback.

 

The Bucks surprised many by resigning free-agent Ersan Ilyasova to a pretty sweet deal. Many thought with all the forwards they already had and drafted, like first round pick John Henson out of North Carolina, Ilyasova would be as good as gone. But Ilyasova is a proven player (at least from last year’s numbers alone) compared to a rookie and if the Bucks want to make the playoffs they need all the frontline players they can get to go with the Monta Ellis/Brandon Jennings backcourt. Now, assuming Ilyasova doesn’t become another one of those free-agents who tanks it after signing a big contract, the Bucks have shown that with his resigning, their drafting and bringing in Sam Delambert as a free agent, they’re not going to tolerate another draft lottery, nor should they.

 

Sometimes big free-agent signings work out another times they don’t. It’s not a lock the Minnesota Wild will be in the NHL playoffs next season after signing their biggest free agent haul ever with Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, but they had better make it because they were will be no excuses if they don’t if both players healthy for a full season (although the goaltending issue still needs to be addressed). Give credit to the Wild for realizing they needed a shot in the arm and going out and doing so. Now it’s just a question putting the pieces together for upcoming season. And it really doesn’t matter where the team finishes in the standings just so long as they get in the playoffs. As the Kings showed by winning the Stanley Cup, the playoffs are a completely different season altogether.

 

Oh by the way, when you pick up that next can of Pledge Furniture Polish at store, just remember your contributing to S.C. Johnson Wax fortune down in Racine which Wild owner Craig Leipold tapped into to buy the team and sign players like Suter and Parise. I think there’s a popular country music about marrying for money…

 

 

Desktop Sportsman – Spring into Summer edition

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And what a busy, important spring it was…

With the i’s finally dotted and the t’s finally crossed, the Minnesota Vikings now have a new stadium and the long, long process of getting all of Minnesota’s pro and college teams new facilities (Williams Arena is not even on the radar so don’t even start Gopher fans) has finally concluded. The process begun in 1993 with Minnesota North Stars leaving town because the digs were not modern enough for the NHL of the 1990s and beyond finally came to an end in 2012 with the Vikings the last of bunch to get a stadium for the NFL of the 21st Century.

There’s been a lot of heartache and headaches to go with all the hot air and the head-shaking at what politicians, team owners, governors and league commissioners have said or have not said publicly over the last 19 years, not to be mention at what they’ve done. Ultimately Minnesota had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world of professional sports, which is that new stadiums and other facilities have public subsidies like it or not and if you don’t like it you don’t get the teams. The North Stars left, the Timberwolves nearly left and the Twins were nearly eliminated altogether. It didn’t take long for the stadium bill to get moving through the Minnesota state legislature once NFL commissioner Roger Goodell showed up to show how serious the league viewed the situation.

Most cities just went out and built the darned stadiums (as St. Paul did with the Xcel Energy Center) regardless of the costs. Minnesota dragged the process out for two decades. But in so doing so won an important concession from owners: They would have pony up some cash to get their new playgrounds built. Thus the Pohlad and Wilf families had to make substantial investments, far more than owners of most teams would be willing to do, otherwise it was no deal. And for once, the leagues also kicked in money as well to take the complete burden off the taxpayer.

It’s not Minnesotans fault everyone else was willing give away their tax money for a new arena or ballfield but them, which only made the costs of such facilities, plus the windfall enjoyed by the owners as the value of the franchise appreciated, rise to astronomical levels. But at least they extracted their pound of flesh before opening their checkbooks. Along with avoiding being a “cold Omaha”, it’s no small victory.

 

Don’t worry Milwaukee, you turn to play the Stadium Game is next. I hear the Bradley Center is outdated and I also hear Herb Kohl’s money plus naming rights aren’t going to cover all the costs of a new basketball arena for the Bucks. We’ll see how this plays out although there are two factors which should make this a short process 1). A popular local owner and 2). An already existing sales tax which pays the bills on Miller Park. It can also pay the bills for a new arena too.

 

The Bucks were smart to keep their leadership in tact with GM John Hammonds and Scott Skiles as head coach. The Bucks are only a big, physical rebounder and scorer away from being a decent playoff team and starting from scratch made no sense at this point and time. While the team made no progress in the NBA Draft Lottery, this year’s draft is deep enough to be able to find the player they are looking for.

 

The Packers drafted for need and the Vikings for the best available player given they need everything. Both should be winning strategies for the upcoming season. I think Pack’s first couple of draft picks of Perry, Worthy and Daniels have the potential of being very high impact players if they can be motivated to play every down or at least the one’s which make a difference in the ballgame. Worthy and Daniels have certainly shown Upper Midwest fans what they can do at their best.

 

It may well have been Bo Ryan stepped into a free-fire zone when it came to persons wanting to lift the NCAA student-athlete transfer restrictions concerning UW basketball player Jarod Uthoff. But the kind of opprobrium he received, especially from national figures who cover the sport like Jay Bilas or Seth Davis was utterly underserved considering how restrictive other coaches have been with the transfer rule and how utterly clumsly Uthoff/family/handlers have handled this. No, there must a deeper dislike of Ryan out there to make a mountain out of this molehill. Oh by the way, Uthoff still hasn’t decided what school he’s transferring to.

 

You can criticize UW’s football program taking advantage of the graduate student transfer rule (Which Bo Ryan, ironically, does) all you want but it’s been a Godsend to a program which has seen injuries wipe out the careers of two scholarship quarterbacks (Curt Phillips and Jon Budmayr), and stunt the growth of a third (Bart Houston, who will have to redshirt after shoulder surgery). Danny O’Brien made his way to Madison this week to compete for the UW starting job but unlike last fall, he’ll actually have to win the job over Joel Stave, who had good spring practice.

 

Bad springs have put the Brewers and Twins well behind with the first two months of the baseball season in the books. Both teams are playing better right now. The difference is the Twins were so bad catching up may be impossible given how weak their pitching staff is. The Brewers weren’t quite as bad and at least have the talent to get on a hot streak so long as they avoid hotel accidents to their best players.

The Twins poor play this past spring has led some to wonder on the future of Ron Gardenhire as manager.  Tom Kelley managed to stay at the helm despite the God-awful Twins teams of the late 1990s because he won two World Series titles and because the Twins had a built-in excuse: We’re poor and the Yankees are rich, we can’t compete. Not anymore, not with a $100 million payroll and a new stadium. This isn’t to say Gardenhire has been a bad manager, far from it. But his playoff record even when he did have the talent leaves something a little less than desired. How the team plays the rest of the way will determine his fate. If they collapse and they’re just as bad as last year or worse he’s gone. But if he can lead them to a .500 finish or close to it, he’ll certainly be back.

 

 

 

Confusing winter and spring

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Strange weather we’re having. When it’s winter it feels spring (almost summer like) and when it’s spring it feels like winter. In this way you can wrap up a lot of different sports in one post.

 

It’s a sad irony that even with making the right move in trading 7-0 center Andrew Bogut for Monta Ellis still may not be enough to get the Bucks into the playoffs because they lost a game to the Knicks when New York scored 32 of their first 28 points inside in the first quarter alone.  Obvious the Bucks will need to draft and or pick-up a decent big man but the problems the team has, especially if they miss the playoffs altogether, may go a lot deeper. To continuously play so poorly at the beginning of games, not beat teams with winning records or play consistent may mean another coaching change. It’s certainly a lot easier than blowing up the roster once again.

 

The Minnesota Timberwolves are going to have to figure out a way to play effectively without Ricky Rubio because the extent of his knee injury may sideline him until January 2013. If the T-Wolves play like they did without him since he went down, they will be in last place in the Northwest Division and out of the playoff hunt by the time he gets back.

 

I didn’t yell at my TV screen watching the last few seconds of the Wisconsin-Syracuse game in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament because I have seen Jordan Taylor take the shot he did so many times before. Or at least that’s the way it seemed. If you want the ball in your best player’s hands with the game on the line, what controversy is there? Everyone knew he was taking the last shot, just as everyone knew Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or Larry Bird took the last shot for their respective teams. It wasn’t the best look in the word but it got off with a chance to rebound. What more of an opportunity can one team get? The ball didn’t go in and that’s the bottom line and a chance for a Final Four lost. That aside, UW could be a better team next season because without Taylor and the arrival of the talented 6-8 wing players Sam Dekker, Wisconsin may now have the inside-outside balance on offense which keeps them from relying too much on outside three-point shots like they have the past four seasons. Maybe then they’ll have a higher seed and less need to rely on last minute heroics to win.

 

Minnesota also lost an opportunity to put a silver lining to its season by getting pummeled in the NIT championship. But the like the Badgers, next year’s Gopher team could be much better. especially if injured power forward Trevor Mbakwe comes back for his senior season. The key will be to integrate Mbakwe’s strength and power game inside into the up tempo game, fullcourt fast break game Tubby Smith wants to play and which the U played well in the NIT with Ralph Sampson III on the bench with an injury.   It wasn’t a coincidence.

 

Criticize the graduate transfer rule if you wish. That’s for the NCAA to decide. But you can’t criticize UW head football coach Bret Bielema for looking out for his team in making sure the Badgers have an experienced quarterback to go with what should be a pretty decent group. To be stuck with one quarterback who may never play again, one coming off two knee surgeries, the incoming freshman stud having to have shoulder surgery and two untested signal callers, one of whom is walk-on means you try to get someone like Danny O’Brien on your team if he wants to come to Madison.  No one is expecting Wilson-like brilliance, just someone who can make the key throws on play-action and to the tight end which an important part of UW’s offense so Montee Ball and James White have holes to run through.

 

Reqiuem in Pacem, Gary Tinsley. The University of Minnesota football program has often been the source of its own problems. And sometimes they’ve victimized by cruel bad luck, as in this case. No athletic program deserves that.

 

The Brewers are going to have to rely on pitching more at the start of this season  than least simply because they don’t have Prince Fielder or a slump-free Ryan Braun. When they get their offense going to go with what picthers like Grienke and Axford can provide, then they’ll rise to the top of the NL Central standings.

 

With the Twins it’s the exact opposite. They need their sluggers Morneau and Mauer to lift the team because their pitching is so poor and losing Scott Baker doesn’t improve the situation. And yet, looking at the line-up casually, you have to wonder “Who in the heck are these guys?” This is a franchise which needs to rebuild but it can’t do so stuck with huge contracts to the perpetually injured M&M crew who may not be suited to open air Target Field as compared to the Metrodome (and no, you can’t move back).  Just finishing with a winning record will be enough to lift the sense of dread Jim Souhan wrote about in his latest Strib column about the Twins heading into Pirates/Royals/Mariners/Orioles-land  where one or two fatal errors player personnel bring a whole club down and leads to more and more mistakes trying to resurrect themselves. It’s certainly happened before in the club’s history. After winning the AL West in 1970, the Twins stupidly fired manager Billy Martin and went 15 years until they made the playoffs again. They also went nine years absent from the postseason from 1992-2001. Another cycle could be happening again.

 
Winning the women’s national title and getting to the Frozen Four in the men’s game certainly has restored a little bit of “Minnesota’s Pride on Ice”.  Now we’ll see if the Golden Gophers can sustain it, especially on the men’s side by keeping their young talent around.

 

Consider at one point the Wild were at 20-7-3, the best record in the NHL. At season’s end the Wild were 35-36-11 and missed the playoffs for the fourth season in a row. That’s a 15-29-8 finish to the season. Yes injuries played a role and maybe the young players and young head coach Mike Yeo hit a wall. But the fact that Dany Heatly had just 24 goals and the Wild were one of the lowest scoring teams in the NHL, suggests that even if Minnesota picks up a high priced free agent in the offseason it may not matter much unless other parts of the club are improved greatly next season.