|
Post by Kapitan on Nov 23, 2019 15:53:34 GMT
HUGE game today for the Gophers, who are at Northwestern. Granted, Northwestern has been bad and Minnesota is the favorite, but we're 6-1, leading the Big Ten West. Wisconsin is 5-2, second in the Big Ten West, and playing at home against Purdue today. We play at home next week against Wisconsin.
Our starting (and unexpectedly, star!) quarterback, redshirt sophomore Tanner Morgan, has been in concussion protocol all week after a late hit by Iowa last week. The feeling is it's a game time decision. If he doesn't play, because our intended starter, sophomore Zach Annexstad got hurt just prior to the season beginning and is out for the year, we'll go with true freshman Cole Kramer, true freshman Jacob Clark, or some combination thereof.
(We also have a redshirt junior Seth Green, a powerhouse of a human with Daunte Culpepper size and a strong arm, but for some reason despite having originally signed with Oregon and then to us as a highly rated QB, he has been moved around to TE and WR and now is almost exclusively a Wildcat QB who basically never even hands off, much less throw. I don't know what's the story there. Can he just not read a defense? You'd think he would be a better option than a pair of true freshmen, but what do I know?)
Anyway, that game gets underway in an hour. It's going to be Mexican food, beer, and a bundle of nerves.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Nov 23, 2019 16:43:11 GMT
Promising news from Evanston, Ill., apparently Tanner Morgan has been cleared and will play. Hopefully he can lead a couple of early scoring drives, build a comfortable lead, and take a quarter or two off... (Yes, I'm optimistically dreaming. I actually expect a tough game from a desperate Northwestern team looking to be a spoiler.)
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Nov 23, 2019 19:39:42 GMT
This is infuriating, the most Minnesota game ever. Off to a great start, looks like a walk in the park, only to watch Northwestern's backup QB take advantage for the past two quarters and our team just fall apart. It still seems like it should be a Gopher win, but what a crap couple of quarters on both sides of the ball.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Nov 29, 2019 19:48:01 GMT
Gophers basketball is a bit of an afterthought around here with the football team doing so well (and such a HUGE game tomorrow hosting Wisconsin). But in 15 minutes or so we host DePaul, which is surprisingly 7-0! The Gophers have played three legitimate teams--Butler, Utah, and Oklahoma--and are 0-3 against them. Their three wins are against Central Michigan, North Dakota, and Cleveland State. So today's game is really an important one to show any real promise whatsoever by topping a Big East team.
It's a relatively talented team but full of newcomers. Things aren't jelling so far. Obviously. And the bench has been virtually nonexistent. Heck the PF position has been virtually nonexistent, even with the starter (grad transfer Alihan Demir, expected to be a legit contributor right away). So it's basically four against the world...
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Nov 30, 2019 15:53:17 GMT
#8 Minnesota (10-1) hosts #12 Wisconsin (9-2) for the Big Ten West title, a trip to the Big Ten Championship Game, Paul Bunyan's Axe, and bragging rights.
It's Minnesota's biggest game since our days as a national power in the '60s: we last won the Big Ten in 1967 and a national title in 1960!
Last year the Gophers pulled an upset of Wisconsin in Madison with then-redshirt freshman Tanner Morgan as a newly instated starter, subbing for the injured true freshman Zach Annexstad. Today, Morgan is capping off a record-setting season (TDs, wins, completion percentage) even though he is again filling in for the injured Annexstad. We're a far better team than last year's, but Wisconsin will no doubt be looking for payback, being a perennial power not used to losing to their little rodent western neighbors.
The weather in Minneapolis is right around freezing. We've had snow two of the past three days and are supposed to have combinations of thunderstorms with rain, sleet, ice, and snow falling throughout the day and into tomorrow. Field conditions at Target Field should be terrible. Both teams have good running games, and one suspects they'll put them to use today.
I. Am. Psyched. (And psychotic, somewhat terrified of impending failure. Stupid Minnesota mentality!)
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Nov 30, 2019 23:27:06 GMT
fuck.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Dec 18, 2019 14:00:44 GMT
Hayden Fry, a coaching legend at the University of Iowa, died yesterday of cancer. He was 90.
Fry not only went 232-178-10 over two decades at Iowa, but was the trunk of a coaching tree off of which branched 13 assistants and players who became head coaches, including Barry Alvarez, Bill Snyder, Bob Stoops, Bret Bielema, and Kirk Ferentz.
I really appreciate Iowa's stability, having had only two coaches in the past 40 years! Fry began in 1979, and Ferentz is still there today. Amazing. RIP to Coach Fry.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Jan 1, 2020 21:00:24 GMT
I've got to say, my heart is beating 100 mph as the Gophers lead Auburn 31-24 halfway through the 4th quarter of the Outback Bowl.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Jan 1, 2020 22:25:13 GMT
I've got to say, my heart is beating 100 mph as the Gophers lead Auburn 31-24 halfway through the 4th quarter of the Outback Bowl. Huge game, huge win! Literally the best moment in Gophers football in ... 60 years? You'd have to either say since the 1967 Big Ten championship or 1960 national championship. Of course, this year was neither championship, but the 10-win season is the best since 1905 and this bowl win against a very good Auburn team ought to land us in the Top 10.
Very exciting afternoon to kick off the new year.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Feb 8, 2020 17:56:38 GMT
Today, legendary and controversial coach Bob Knight will return to Assembly Hall and Indiana University for the first time since being fired in 2000, the occasion being the 40th anniversary of his 1980 Big Ten championship team. Obviously this isn't the biggest of his accomplishments at IU, but it seems the opportunities may be few going forward: Knight, 79, is reportedly not in good health, and has moved back to Bloomington, Ind., "because Knight wanted to be back in the place where he is most revered and cherished."
Here is a story on the moment from John Feinstein.
|
|
|
Post by Sheriff John Stone on Feb 8, 2020 20:46:51 GMT
Today, legendary and controversial coach Bob Knight will return to Assembly Hall and Indiana University for the first time since being fired in 2000, the occasion being the 40th anniversary of his 1980 Big Ten championship team. Obviously this isn't the biggest of his accomplishments at IU, but it seems the opportunities may be few going forward: Knight, 79, is reportedly not in good health, and has moved back to Bloomington, Ind., "because Knight wanted to be back in the place where he is most revered and cherished."
Here is a story on the moment from John Feinstein.
Thank you for sharing and especially the heads up. I wasn't aware that Knight was appearing at the game today. I watched it and it was very emotional. The outpouring of love from the fans and his ex-players was very touching.
It's obvious that Bob Knight is struggling physically and emotionally, so I hope I'm not being insensitive. Bobby Knight was a great coach who taught his players discipline, playing the game the right way, and becoming better persons. He also won a lot of games with several different teams. I admired that about him. However, I also thought that he was an arrogant bully who thought he was powerful enough to get away with it. He did for a long time but eventually it caught up with him. I wish him the best with his health issues, but other than that, well, let's just say I lost a lot of respect for him through the years because of some of the things he said and the way he treated people, people he could bully.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Feb 8, 2020 21:10:04 GMT
Like many of us, he is certainly a complicated figure.
Unquestionably, he was a great coach. He also ran as clean a successful D1 program as I've ever seen and his players succeeded academically at a level beyond most of their peers.
But as you said, he was an ass, quite frankly. Often. A bully. Yet funny, too. I've told this story before, but humor me...
As some of you know, I was a journalism major and did quite a bit of basketball writing during and just after college. My junior year was the Gophers' great Final Four team (which was wiped off the books, which is another story). Combo guard Bobby Jackson was amazing that whole season, obviously en route to an all-conference if not POY season, and so every game most of the writers would hunt for comments about him that they could then use for their eventual celebratory stories. It was obvious what was going on the whole time.
When Indiana came to town, a very prominent local sports journalist asked Coach Knight about Bobby Jackson. Knight, refusing to play along, said, "If I could have one player from this team on my roster, I'd take John Thomas." Now, Thomas was a solid player and even (shockingly) a 1st round pick. But he was a workmanlike guy, a 6-9, burly screen-setter. An 8-and-7 kind of player, nothing like the gaudy numbers (to say nothing of highlights) Jackson put up nightly.
"John Thomas? Why?" the reporter asked.
"Because I know a hell of a lot more about basketball than you do," Knight said. And that was our press conference.
|
|
|
Post by Sheriff John Stone on Feb 8, 2020 21:15:00 GMT
Yep. Typical Knight.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Feb 8, 2020 21:28:36 GMT
Yet I have to say, that showed the good and bad in him. Part of me loved seeing him refuse to participate in the dog-and-pony show of doling out vapid quotes, and wanting to recognize publicly the value of a guy who defended the post, who set screens, who rebounded. He wasn't wrong in that. There's even the wicked side of me that liked seeing lazy writers who truly didn't seem to care about the game itself be put in their places.*
But then again, come on. It doesn't hurt to say something nice about Jackson, just getting it over with, and then saying something like "but you know, there's more to this game than that. For example, that John Thomas of yours, he's a really good player, too..." and talking about him. And of course, not punishing the rest of us by ending the press conference just because of one dumb question.
*On that note, another pet peeve: my seat at Williams Arena was always next to a prominent TV journalist. This jackass never--NEVER arrived until late in the first half. He'd watch for a minute or two, and then disappear. He'd return well into the second half with food, which he'd proceed to eat, ignoring the game. Then he'd head down to the locker room early to get ready for the press conference, where, as a prominent TV sports journalist, he was always given ample time. It was eye-opening to see how many sports journalists in those days knew and cared nothing about basketball. I think actually the rise of bloggers (and their absorption into mainstream outlets) has improved the quality of sports print journalism to some degree.
|
|
|
Post by Sheriff John Stone on Feb 8, 2020 21:41:51 GMT
It sounds like you had some really fun times in your journalism days, plenty of great stories to tell (and don't be afraid to share them!). You also had an inside look at things which most people did not; that can give you a different perspective sometimes, too.
Like I said, there was a lot of good to Bobby Knight. I could appreciate his Army background and discipline, his sentimentality and respect for elder statesman in many fields, and most importantly, the positive influence he had on young men's lives, not just their basketball lives. But, I think the power and praise went to his head and he didn't handle it well. If he handled certain situations the way he did in today's culture, he would've been out of the game a lot sooner, or have been forced to...change...dramatically.
|
|