Monday, February 27, 2012

MN HOCKEY: Top seeds rolling

Minnesota Prep Hockey Sectionals: The top seeds combined to score 90 goals in seven games Thursday night (Hill-Murray yet to play). In Lakeville South's 19-0 win, they handed out 30 assists. U-recruit Justin Kloos had 8 and finished with 10 pts.

1) Lakeville South 19-0 over Winona, 2) Edina 15-1 over Kennedy 3) Eagan 12-0 over Rosemount 4) Hill-Murray Sat. vs Tartan 5) Maple Grove 16-1 over North Metro 6) Minnetonka 12-0 over Minneapolis 7) Duluth East 7-0 over St. Francis 8) Moorhead 9-0 over Monticello

Big Fat Nothing

I don't know what to blog, so I won't. Just trying to make sure I update this for the first time in years. Looking for a better way to consolidate my my efforts in social mediums.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Big 10 Football: Minnesota Gophers coach Tim Brewster is an idiot

"I thought it was a poor decision by a head football coach, and he will have to live with it."
-Tim Brewster shaming Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema for going for two points late in



Why not start taking action on if Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster will finish out the season?

Will there be a player mutiny? Will the school's president or AD Joel Maturi--who might be on thin ice for hiring Brewster in the first place and last winter extending his deal despite a 6-7 record--be forced to make a change before the Gophers limp through the rest of their schedule, likely to finish 1-11.

Will he be able to admit this didn't work, and he had made a mistake?

Time will force those questions to answers, but after Saturday's loss at Wisconsin and his tizzy fit in the post game handshake with Badgers coach Bret Bielema, Brewster looks like a defeated man full of self-pity and perhaps resigned to the fate that hangs over his head.

Maturi fired Glen Mason on New Year's Eve of 2006--abruptly--after an embarrassing loss to Texas Tech in the Insight Bowl, a record-setting defeat that saw the Red Raiders score 31-unanswered points to force overtime and ultimately win 44-41.

Unnerved by the collapse and the clock ticking on the calendar year that would bring Mason a scheduled bonus, Maturi pulled the plug on Mason and called a hastily put together press conference long past dark on New Year's eve to make it official.

Mason seemed slow or perhaps incapable of reaching the Rose Bowl, and Gophers fans settled for a string of Music City or Insight or Sun Bowls. In 10 years that his Gophers teams went 67-57 overall, Mason went to seven bowls and won three of them. All the while, developing a pipeline of NFL running backs and running a Big 10 program that was mediocre at worst.

Plateau-ed out perhaps, or the proverbial sin of trading a bird in the hand for the prospect of two in the bush, Maturi and Minnesota overreached.

They have a two-year-old outdoor stadium on campus that draws far less interest than it ought to be afforded for a beautiful piece of architecture in its infancy. And why should they come to see this year's team (Brewster's fourth) lose to the likes of South Dakota (the Coyotes?), and Northern Illinois. USC filled the stadium for an afternoon, but the Gophers blew that too, falling hard in the fourth quarter that made the eventual 32-21 score seem to be almost a lie.

Minnesota has bleed in-state talent for years to Notre Dame or USC in particular, but Mason was able to keep some of those 3 or 4 star guys from the state staying in Minneapolis. Brewster has not only failed terribly at that, but it turns out the top-notch talent that made his recruiting grades exciting...those guys turned out to be a bunch of thugs who largely didn't pan out.

Perhaps Brewster ought to consider himself lucky that he plays in a market and city where the Vikings' legacy endures, the Twins have a new ballpark and won the AL Central again, and the Wild and Timberwolves are starting up again.

Huh, the Gophers football team sucks? Who knew.

Watch this clip of Brewster complaining about Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema running up the score on his team. The noise from a tired and defeated man.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Happy Dawn to a new Decade…2010!

When you were a kid, what did you think 2010 would look like and what does it look like to you now? It’s a big change, this New Years, if only we start to refer to years with “Twenty” as the prefix, rather than “Two thousand and ___.”

Both Iowa football teams are headed to a Bowl Games and the Hawkeyes got the Orange Bowl for the second time in seven years and Iowa State plays my beloved Minnesota in that NFL Network Insight Bowl. If you know anything of Gophers football, it’s the third time there in four years. Last year, Kansas beat Minnesota and in 2006, Texas Tech came back from a 38-7 deficit with 7:47 left in Q3 to defeat Minnesota 44-41 in overtime, a loss that cost Glen Mason his job as head coach of the Gophers.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009