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Split Opinion: Vikes’ Playoff Chances

Posted on November 4, 2012November 4, 2012 by David Shama

With the NFL now at midseason does it appear the Vikings are a playoff team?

Depends on who you listen to.

Former Vikings assistant coach Dean Dalton, who now has an NFL show on Sirius Satellite Radio, thought before the season the NFC North would have three teams contending for the playoffs—the Bears, Lions and Packers. Now he’s replaced the Lions with the Vikings who play at Seattle this afternoon.

“I believe the NFC North will have two playoff teams—three in the hunt and I think two will actually make it,” Dalton told Sports Headliners. “It’s possible that three could make it.”

Dalton predicted the Bears (6-1) and Vikings (5-3) will be the NFC North playoff teams, besting a Packers team (5-3) facing a run of injuries but with a talented roster. “Green Bay has all kinds of possibilities but I like Minnesota right now because I think week in and week out they’re going to be more consistent and that’s a credit to Leslie. And it’s not a discredit to Mike McCarthy (Packers coach).”

Dalton admits he’s a “fan” of Vikings coach Leslie Frazier and likes the coaching staff. “You can see this team learning as a young group, growing,” Dalton said.

But Frazier’s record was 3-13 last season and the Vikings haven’t made the playoffs since 2009. In the “coaches are hired to be fired world of the NFL,” there’s not much job security. That’s why it wasn’t surprising Sports Illustrated included the Vikings on a short list of “teams to watch” regarding coaching changes in the coming months.

The magazine’s November 5 issue featured an NFL midseason report with a lot more than speculation about job security. S.I. forecast who will make the playoffs and did include two teams from the NFC North—but the Vikings didn’t make the cut with the magazine predicting the Bears and Packers will join the Falcons, 49ers, Giants and Seahawks in the NFC playoffs. (The Giants are predicted to defeat the Texans in the Super Bowl.)

In the same issue two Vikings made Peter King’s All-Pro midseason team, 35-year- old cornerback Antoine Winfield and wide receiver Percy Harvin, described as “football’s most dangerous receiver/returning weapon.” King chose Harvin as his Offensive Player of the Year.

U Bowl Fate & More Notes

With three games remaining on the regular schedule, the 5-4 Gophers need one more win to be bowl eligible and the only likely “w” is the Illinois game next Saturday. The 2-7 Illini will have the Gophers at home but Illinois is 0-5 in the Big Ten and the team’s only wins are over Western Michigan and Charleston Southern.

The Gophers’ other two remaining games are against 7-2 Nebraska in Lincoln and 5-5 Michigan State in Minneapolis. After yesterday’s 35-13 loss to Michigan at TCF Bank Stadium, the Gophers were still targeting a bowl game for the first time since 2009.

“We gotta look forward to the next game,” said cornerback Troy Stoudermire. “We gotta help the young guys keep their heads up. Gotta keep motivating Philip (Nelson) because if he goes in the tank, we don’t have a chance to get to a bowl game.”

The Gophers played a strong first quarter against Michigan but were dominated the rest of the game. Nelson, Minnesota’s freshman quarterback, believes the Gophers weren’t “embarrassed.” “At the same time there’s nothing to be happy about,” he said.

“We gotta erase it right now,” said wide receiver MarQueis Gray after the Michigan game. “Just start getting ready for Illinois tomorrow.”

ESPN plans to have Chris Berman interview Mitt Romney and Barack Obama during halftime of Monday night’s Saints-Eagles game, according to various reports.

The Gophers basketball team plays its second and final exhibition game tomorrow night at home against Southwest Baptist. Right now it looks like Minnesota’s starters are forwards Joe Coleman and Rodney Williams, center Elliott Eliason, and guards Andre Hollins and Austin Hollins.

Wild coach Mike Yeo and Gophers basketball coach Tubby Smith are among those growing moustaches in November to raise awareness about prostate cancer. Smith is a prostate cancer survivor. Learn about the Wild’s efforts, www.wild.com/movember.

The St. Thomas men’s basketball team scored 41 points more against Winona State last Thursday night than when the two teams met in 2011. In last week’s exhibition between the Division III Tommies and Division II Winona State, St. Thomas won 93-83 in Winona while making 15 three pointers and 28 of 32 free throws. A year ago this month Winona State won 84-52.

Responding to a question via email, Tommies coach John Tauer said his nationally ranked team has high expectations. Tauer wrote: “With 10 of our top 11 back from last season, along with a talented group of newcomers, we have a chance to be very good. …”

Congratulations to Eagan-based author Ross Bernstein on his two new books, World Series Winners: What It Takes to Claim Baseball’s Ultimate Prize; and Wearing the C: Leadership Secrets of Hockey’s Greatest Captains. The baseball book has a foreword by Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, with insights from many other former Twins players. The hockey book includes interviews with a long list of well-known Minnesota names from Matt Cullen to Bobby Smith.

Twins pitcher Glen Perkins will speak at the Oakes Family Benefit next Saturday at Ridges at Sand Creek in Jordan. Assistant Gophers baseball coach Todd Oakes is doing well in his recovery from leukemia. An auction will include courtside Timberwolves tickets. The event begins at 6 p.m.

The Twins probably can’t afford him, but Tigers free agent pitcher Anibal Sanchez is the kind of innings-eater Minnesota needs. He has pitched near 200 innings each of the last three seasons.

The eighth annual Twins Diamond Awards event will be January 24 at Target Field and will benefit brain, nerve and muscle disorders research at the University of Minnesota. Among the award winners are Most Valuable Twin Josh Willingham, Pitcher of the Year Scott Diamond and Ben Revere, Most Improved Player.

Last week’s NWCA/USA Today Coaches Poll had the Gophers wrestling team ranked No. 1 in the country. The Gophers’ season opens on Friday at home against Hofstra. Big Ten teams have won the last seven consecutive national championships.

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Losses Pile Up But Jug Special

Posted on October 31, 2012October 31, 2012 by David Shama

Michigan comes to Minneapolis on Saturday for the 93rd game when the Wolverines and Gophers play for one year ownership of the Little Brown Jug. It’s been 35 years since Minnesota defeated the Wolverines in the Gophers’ home stadium, and took possession of the jug that Wikipedia says represents the oldest trophy series in college football.

The Gophers and Wolverines have been playing for the trophy since 1909. The prize came about when the Wolverines inadvertently left their water jug behind after a game in Minneapolis. Michigan wanted the jug returned but a Gophers official said, “If you want it, you’ll have to win it.”

And win it the Wolverines have, with 67 victories. The Gophers have 22 wins and there have been three ties in the Little Brown Jug series. The Gophers won nine straight games in the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1960s Minnesota won six of eight including four games at Memorial Stadium.

But what a drought it’s been since 1967 with the Gophers winning the jug only in 1977 in Minneapolis, and 1986 and 2005 in Ann Arbor. The lopsided results have removed much of the luster from a rivalry that once was among the most glamorous in college football.

Minnesota has more talk about games now with Iowa and Wisconsin, two other famous trophy games. Michigan fires up for games with Notre Dame, Michigan State and Ohio State.

Former Michigan running back Mike Hart, who played for the Wolverines a few seasons ago, told ESPN.com last year that competing against Minnesota is just another game.

“There are so many important games to us that that’s not really a big rivalry game,” Hart said in a September 29, 2011 article on ESPN’s WolverineNation. “It’s more or less just another game to us that has a trophy involved.

“It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’re getting the Jug.’ I personally never saw it as that. I saw it as another Big Ten team we were playing.”

Just another game? That will make Butch Nash roll over in his grave. Nash, from northeast Minneapolis, played for the Gophers in the 1930s, then was an assistant coach over five decades. He reveled in the Michigan-Minnesota Little Brown Jug rivalry.

It was Nash who spoke from the heart before Gopher wins in 1977 and 1986. The 1977 victory was particularly memorable because the Gophers rocked the college football world on October 22 of that year when they thoroughly dominated and punished then No. 1 ranked Michigan 16-0 in Memorial Stadium.

The victories in 1986 and 2005 were much closer. In 1986 quarterback Rickey Foggie’s fourth quarter running set up a game-winning Chip Lohmiller’s field goal for a 20-17 win over No. 2 ranked Michigan. In 2005 running back Gary Russell’s 61-yard sprint down the sidelines positioned Jason Giannini for a game-ending field goal and a 23-20 Minnesota win.

The Gophers aren’t expected to win on Saturday in TCF Bank Stadium. Sports Headliners has the Gophers as a 10 point underdog and losing to Michigan for the 28th time in the last 35 years (the teams haven’t played each year since 1977).

The Gophers would be well advised to talk to Darrell Thompson who played for the 1986 Gophers and heard Nash’s fiery words. “He talked about the tradition and history of the game,” the former Gophers running back told Sports Headliners. “The thing that stuck with me out of his speech was to leave nothing out on the field. Only you know if you have given everything, and then you can feel very good about your effort.”

Thompson, who is close to the program as the radio analyst on the Minnesota games, said the current Gophers are well drilled about the importance of their rivalry games including the Little Brown Jug. He thinks the jug means a lot to the Minnesota players. “When they win (it), they will understand even more (the importance),” he said. “It hurt when we lost it in 1987.”

Mauer Wedding, Wolves Outlook & More

Invitations have been mailed for the Joe Mauer–Maddie Bisanz wedding on Saturday, December 1 at a church in St. Paul. Mauer’s grandfather, Jake Mauer, told Sports Headliners the invitation asks guests not to give wedding gifts but instead make donations to a Twin Cities nonprofit benefiting teens and adults with disabilities. Joe’s brothers Jake and Bill will be co-best men.

The wedding will be followed by a reception and dinner with 720 invitees—many more guests than can be accommodated at the church, according to Jake. There will be various activities for guests on Thursday and Friday leading up to the wedding including a skating party. “It will all cost over $300,000.00,” Jake said.

Bisanz is a Twin Cities nurse who plans to continue her career after marrying the Twins All-Star catcher, according to Jake who said the couple is in southwest Florida for several weeks. Honeymoon plans aren’t decided yet. “Joe wants to go to Paris,” Jake said.

Some Wolves fans may choose to hibernate until box-office stars Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love return from injuries, but the team’s regular season schedule starts on Friday night at home against the Kings. Like it or night, the Wolves have 27 games scheduled between now and year’s end. The Wolves probably will play most or even all of those games without the Big Two.

Only eight of those games are against the better teams in the NBA, with the remaining opponents being mediocre or worse. Down-trodden teams on the Wolves schedule are the Bobcats, Cavs, Hornets, Kings, Magic, Raptors and Warriors. The Wolves will play a balanced home-away schedule during the first two months, with 13 games at Target Center and 14 on the road.

Take an upbeat approach to November and December because of coach Rick Adelman. He’s among the NBA’s better coaches ever and has plenty of experience working with underwhelming talent over the last 20-plus years. He will expect a cast of Wolves role players to play hard and do their jobs. Translation: don’t try to be Love or Rubio.

Take a skeptical approach to November and December because NBA games are frequently decided in the fourth quarter—and the Wolves may not have any players who can consistently close out games. Shooting guard Brandon Roy may want to say, “Boys, jump on my back and I’ll carry us home.” But the burden could be too much for Roy who hasn’t played a regular season game since 2010-2011 because of troublesome knees.

Love and teammate Lou Amundson will be taking 10 children from HopeKids to the World’s Largest Trick-or-Treat event at Mall of America tonight from 5 to 6 p.m. HopeKids benefits families with children who have cancer or other life-threatening medical conditions.

Former Gopher Mychal Thompson’s son Klay Thompson starts his second season with the Warriors and is one of the NBA’s most promising three point shooters, making 0.488 percent of those shots in preseason while averaging 14 points per game.

In the October 29 issue of Sports Illustrated the magazine makes its NBA predictions and picks the Heat to defeat the Lakers in the playoff finals. S.I. predicts the Wolves are a possible playoff team but no cinch.

Gophers football coach Jerry Kill said his offensive line played its best game of the season in last Saturday’s 44-28 win over Purdue. Ed Olson, probably the team’s best offensive lineman before the season started, was injured and didn’t play against Purdue, and Kill doesn’t expect him back for Saturday’s game with Michigan.

Three Minnesota prep football coaches earned milestone career wins earlier this month. Congratulations to Dean Taylor from St. Cloud Cathedral on his 200^th career win, and Jack Drews of Rochester John Marshall and John Clark Jr. from Mahnomen on their 100^th career victories.

The football Prep Bowl will be Friday, November 23 at the Mall of America Field. Last year’s champions were Eden Prairie, Class 5A; ROCORI, Class 4A; Saint Croix Lutheran, Class 3A; Caledonia, Class 2A; Dawson-Boyd, Class 1A; and Edgerton/Ellsworth, Nine-Man.

Former Vikings head coach Jerry Burns worked for legendary coach Vince Lombardi in Green Bay. The stage play “Lombardi” has been at the History Theatre in St. Paul this fall with the final performance on Sunday, November 4. Burns attended the production on opening night and spoke at a special dinner prior to the performance. He recommends the play including the portrayal of the Hall of Fame coach by James Detmar.

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U Scheduling Keeps Evolving

Posted on October 17, 2012October 17, 2012 by David Shama

Norwood Teague knows the decision to pursue opponents from non-major conferences for future Gophers football schedules is drawing negative feedback but Minnesota’s athletic director tried to explain the decision yesterday.

The Gophers announced this week they are cancelling future games against North Carolina. Now the Gophers don’t have any opponents from the ACC, Big East, Big 12, SEC or Pac-12 on their nonconference schedules for 2013-2016. Many fans and media see the schedules as unattractive, and lessening the value of tickets while setting the on-field competitive bar too low for the Gophers.

Media questioned the wisdom of a soft schedule at Teague’s news conference yesterday. In addition to perception, getting out of the North Carolina games will reportedly cost the Gophers $800,000, although that cost will presumably be at least partially offset by an additional home game. “We feel strongly that in order to build a program in the Big Ten at this level that your kids (players) gotta have confidence, and you don’t want to take on a BCS opponent in your first two to three years out of conference,” Teague said. “We decided to move on (from North Carolina).

“I appreciate the facts and I appreciate the feedback (from fans). I’ve gotten some pretty hotly contested emails and some phone calls, and I understand that.

“We haven’t exactly won at the highest levels of football in the last 45 years. We’re gonna have to make tough decisions. That’s the way it works.”

Gophers coach Jerry Kill, now in his second season at Minnesota and trying to revive a program that hasn’t won a Big Ten title since 1967, believes in a nonconference schedule built around winnable games. Teague arrived last summer as the Gophers athletic director and Kill’s been lobbying his philosophy for awhile now. The result is the Gophers will be playing home games in the coming years against teams like Eastern Illinois, Western Illinois, Indiana State, Kent State and South Dakota State.

Kill’s scheduling philosophy is the same as Bill Snyder, the Kansas State coach who years ago inherited perhaps the worst major college football program in the country and made it a national power. For many seasons Snyder scheduled some of the softest “cupcakes” in America, using the approach as part of his formula to build a program.

The “cupcake” philosophy says your program cannot only pile up wins and team confidence, but probably will minimize injuries and provide more playing time to second and third stringers. Valuable starters log fewer minutes and don’t have so many nasty collisions playing against inferior athletes, and replacements build up experience while adding to team depth.

The ultimate goal is to turn the Gophers into one of the more successful programs in the Big Ten. But Gophers followers know Glen Mason had the same scheduling approach as Kill and Snyder. However, things didn’t work out for Mason who was fired in January of 2007. He had a nonconference record of 29-5 and coached Minnesota to eight bowl games, but his Big Ten record was 32-48. During the Mason era from 1997-2006, the Gophers finished fourth three times but otherwise never placed among the top five teams in the conference.

Mason’s successor, Tim Brewster, had a different approach. He talked about playing a couple of major conference teams during the nonconference schedule each year, including one big name school like Texas. Brewster didn’t win enough to stick around but said his approach would help recruiting and sell lots of tickets.

Teague is a smart administrator and he will watch how scheduling develops in all the high profile sports at Minnesota. After the news conference he told Sports Headliners he wants to be supportive of his coaches but there are limits.

“I will manage it (scheduling) when I think we’re out of bounds on going too far one way or the other,” Teague said. “It’s a tough thing for an AD to manage but I will do the best I can.”

Teague is open to considering more challenging nonconference football opponents further into the future. “We’ll keep working at it,” he said. “I‘ve only been here for three months.”

Worth Noting

Kill said yesterday injured quarterback MarQueis Gray’s availability for Saturday’s game against Wisconsin is in doubt. He also said it’s a “question” whether several others will play including receivers Isaac Fruechete, Marcus Jones and Devin Crawford–Tufts, and also offensive tackle Ed Olson and defensive tackle Roland Johnson. Offensive lineman Foster Bush is “out” for the game while Kill hopes safety Derrick Wells can play.

Kill, who had a seizure reoccurrence on Saturday, looked fit yesterday but he won’t be able to drive a car for awhile because of state motor vehicle law. Dan O’Brien, director of football operations, does much of Kill’s driving anyway.

Perhaps the two most famous living Minnesotans who have experienced seizures are Kill and music superstar Prince.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see new Gophers athletic director Norwood Teague soon add a high profile woman to the re-organized athletic department.

The Wild are sending another communication to season ticket holders this week to RSVP for free admission to the November 18 American Hockey League game at Xcel Energy Center between Houston and Rockford. Houston’s roster includes highly anticipated center prospect Mikael Granlund and Minnesotans Jarod Palmer and Chad Rau. Former Gopher Nick Leddy plays for Rockford and has two assists in two regular season games.

Look for the Gophers to provide playing time to junior Michael Shibrowski and freshman Adam Wilcox early in the season, according to comments made by coach Don Lucia on WCCO radio’s “Sports Huddle” on Sunday. The two goalies each started a game last week when Minnesota earned two wins over Michigan State. The Gophers have their first road series this week, playing at Michigan Tech Friday and Saturday.

Mark this date down for perhaps the best prep boys’ basketball game in December: Tuesday, December 18, Hopkins at Apple Valley.

Pitcher Aroldis Chapman and outfielder Yoenis Cespedes have made headlines for the Reds and Athletics after defecting from Cuba but no one should expect the flood gates to open for baseball Cubans to emigrate to the United States. Cuban born former Twins outfielder Tony Oliva said it’s not easy to leave Cuba but he recalled that “back in the 1950s and 60s Cuba was the No. 1 (foreign) place” where major league baseball players came from.

Oliva, who tries to visit Cuba annually and see relatives, predicted one day the extensive baseball talent in the country could make Cuba a top three provider of talent amomg Latin American nations along with the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Oliva played in the minors with Jim Rantz, a former Twins pitcher and longtime farm system executive who announced his retirement on Monday. “He’s so nice it’s unbelievable,” Oliva said. “He’s the same way today he was 50 years ago. Sometimes things change, but he’s the same.”

Former Timberwolves center Darko Milicic is on the Celtics pre-season roster. His uniform number is No. 99. Not a common number but the same as worn by NBA Hall of Famer and former Minneapolis Lakers center George Mikan.

Wolves coach Rick Adelman purchased 500 upper level tickets to give away to fans for tonight’s WNBA Finals game at Target Center between the Lynx and Fever.

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