Tag Archives: minnesota

Gophers guard Nolen could miss rest of season

Posted on by
Reply

This from the “What more can go wrong?” department at the University of Minnesota, via the Star Tribune’s Myron Medcalf:

The Gophers’ worst fears were confirmed Sunday, when the team learned that starting point guard Al Nolen broke his right foot in Saturday’s win at Michigan.

During Monday’s Big Ten media teleconference, Tubby Smith said Nolen will have surgery Wednesday. The timetable for his return has not been determined. Smith said there’s no guarantee he will return this season.

“That’s a real blow to us,” Smith said.

Tubby has got that right. With Devoe Joseph transferring to Oregon, that leaves Chip Armelin and Maverick Ahanmisi running the point for the Gophers men’s basketball team.

Nolen – a senior – is as solid as they come. He’s considered a good manager and point man for the offense. He’s not flashy, but he’s just a solid, reliable player. Other than Trevor Mbakwe, he’s the toughest guy to replace on the team.

And for some Monday late morning links:

Devoe Joseph to leave Minnesota men’s basketball team

Posted on by
4

Just a year ago, Devoe Joseph looked like the best player on the University of Minnesota men’s basketball team. And here we are on Tuesday, and Joseph has decided to leave the program.

That’s according to a report by the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Myron Medcalf.

It’s been an interesting year for Joseph, who was suspended earlier this season for an unspecified violation of team rules. He had since been reinstated, but he missed the team’s last game as well.

As a few of us like to say in the office, “What’s going on over there?” It does make you wonder. First, it was highly touted prospect Royce White‘s drawn-out decision to leave. Now, Joseph bolts.

They could be isolated incidents. Or maybe it’s just a case of head coach Tubby Smith running a tight ship, and some guys simply can’t handle it.

Either way, the Gophers have now lost two players who were supposed to be their stars for the next couple of years. With Al Nolen in the fold this year, they can handle losing Joseph for now. But eventually, when Nolen graduates, they will REALLY start to miss him.

Football outside? You know you love it!

Posted on by
Reply

I have to admit that it just seems right that the Minnesota Vikings will honor their 50th anniversary team with a setting more like the one most of the players in franchise history played in. Of course, that’s ignoring the fact that, to steal a line from the movie “Grumpy Old Men,” it will be “butt cold” outside.

TCF

Crews are already working to clear the snow off of TCF Bank Stadium's field. Associated Press photo via the Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Vikings will host the first-place – I sure love saying that – Chicago Bears on Monday night at TCF Bank Stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. It was determined on Tuesday that the Metrodome will not be ready to host the team’s home final.

There are so many storylines to follow this week. Will the NFL get a waiver to allow alcohol to be sold at the on-campus stadium that doesn’t allow the sale of it? How can the Vikings handle the fact that the Metrodome seats about 13,000 more people than TCF? Who gets left out in the cold, so to speak?

It’s been a drama-filled season for the Vikings, and once again Brett Favre is in the mix too. Interim coach Leslie Frazier actually said Tuesday that he might play on Monday.

Gophers depth to be tested, plus NFL picks

Posted on by
1

The University of Minnesota men’s basketball team will have its depth tested at one key position for the forseeable future.

Al Nolen

The Minnesota men's basketball team will miss defensive stopper Al Nolen (0) for the next couple of weeks. Associated Press photo

Point guard Al Nolen will miss the next couple of weeks and maybe more with a foot injury. The 15th-ranked Gophers are already without one of their more talented players in combo guard Devoe Joseph, who is suspended indefinitely for violating unspecified team rules.

Minnesota’s next game is one of its last solid tests before the Big Ten season begins. The Gophers face Virginia in a Big Ten/ACC Challenge game at 6 p.m. Monday on ESPN2.

Week 12 NFL picks

I’m back to my old ways again, going 3-2 last week after a 1-4 week the week before. That puts my season record picking the spread at 24-21.

Here we go for Week 12:

  • Pittsburgh by 6 at Buffalo: Steelers
  • Kansas City by 1 at Seattle: Chiefs
  • Baltimore by 7 1/2 vs. Tampa Bay: Bucs
  • San Francisco by 2 1/2 at Arizona: 49ers
  • Philadelphia by 3 1/2 at Chicago: Eagles (As a Bears fan, this pick kills me, but I just think Michael Vick is more machine than man right now. The guy is unstoppable.)

Gophers are good. Vikings are not.

Posted on by
2

Yesterday, I encouraged Minnesota Vikings fans on Facebook to turn their attention to the University of Minnesota men’s basketball team. Now, I ask GSB (Goethe Sports Blog) Nation to do the same.

What do you want first? Good news or bad news? Let’s go with the bad.

The Vikings are not a good football team. I would say up until two weeks ago, fans were holding out hope they would get things turned around. But after back-to-back clunkers against division rivals Chicago and Green Bay, it’s pretty safe to say at 3-7 that the season is over.

To make matters worse, those Vikings fans ready to run head coach Brad Childress out of the snow-filled Upper Midwest will have to tolerate his presiding over the team for at least one more week, according to this story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

NOTE: Scratch that above statement. The Vikings fired Childress and promoted Leslie Frazier to interim coach a couple hours after I wrote this. I’ll leave the rest of the post as is for now.

After watching the Vikings the last couple of weeks, I’ve noted how surprisingly deep the Vikings problems run:

  • Any discussion about the Vikings starts and ends with Childress. I’ll never understand how their best player – Adrian Peterson – is limited to just 15 touches in a game like he was Sunday. And in his last three games, he hasn’t reached 20 carries in any of them. Their second-best player on offense – Percy Harvin – had just two catches for 12 yards. Chilly has to find a way to get Peterson and Harvin more involved.
  • Brett Favre is brutal right now. And unlike any other team that has a struggling QB, I don’t think Vikings brass is capable of sitting Favre. I know it’s hard to believe for some people, but I think we’re at the point where Tarvaris Jackson gives you the best possible chance to win. In an NFL that’s built to encourage offense, Favre has 10 TD passes and 17 interceptions. Wanna take a guess how many QBs with enough pass attempts to qualify for QB rating have thrown more picks than TDs this season? Just five. And three of the other four have the difference between the two categories at two or less. Favre, by the way, has the worst QB rating of any player who has played in more than six games this season.
  • The Vikings corners and safeties are having a really difficult time right now. Chris Cook, of course, got plenty of attention Sunday, and not just for his struggles on the field. He got into an argument with defensive end Ray Edwards on the sidelines that that TV cameras caught, too.

I could go on and on, but let’s get to those beloved Gophers.

The Minnesota men’s basketball team won the Puerto Rico Tip-Off championship Sunday. In back-to-back games, they beat the No. 8-ranked team in the country – North Carolina – and a Final Four participant from a season ago.

Sunday’s game was pretty well-played, much moreso than Friday’s win over the Tar Heels. West Virginia had a guard that in the first half couldn’t miss in Casey Mitchell, who finished with 27 points. Yet the Gophers built a one-point lead at halftime, then kept a slim lead throughout much of the second half.

I’ve heard the naysayers point out that the Mountaineers aren’t even ranked and that the Tar Heels hardly looked like the eighth-best team in the country. I have two points for you:

  • Aren’t teams looking bad against the Gophers a byproduct of Tubby Smith’s defensive system?
  • The Gophers are doing all of this without their best player in guard Devoe Joseph, who is serving an indefinite suspension for violating team rules.

The Gophers look really deep right now. They have had depth the last few years. But that depth is now starting to really develop.

Al Nolen was superb on Sunday. Still like to see him cut down on taking long-range shots, but he’s pretty adept at doing anything else.

Trevor Mbakwe is a man among boys down in the post. And Blake Hoffarber was doing his thing as well, knocking down open 3s, including a big 3-pointer in the final minute to give the Gophers a lead on Sunday. And South Dakota’s own Colten Iverson had a great game Sunday too.

Although I don’t really need to tell North Dakota State fans any of this. Bison fans can see for themselves what the Gophers look like on Wednesday when NDSU travels to Williams Arena. Should be fun.

Gophers win over No. 8 Tar Heels impressive on the surface

Posted on by
1

I had to work last night - ’tis the season – but went home afterwards and watched the Minnesota-North Carolina men’s basketball game that I recorded.

Working in sports can be great. The one thing that’s tough from a sports fan perspective is that when you have to work during a game you want to watch, there’s no way of avoiding finding out what happened. I mean, it’s part of my job to know during work last night that the Gophers upset the eighth-ranked Tar Heels.

But since it was an upset, I had no problem at all sitting down to watch it despite knowing the result. I had to know how they did it.

It went pretty much as I expected. With Tubby Smith, wins like Friday’s victory are all about defense, defense, defense.

Both teams were really sloppy in the first half, and UNC never fully stopped playing that way. That was a pretty disappointing effort from a Tar Heels squad that looked lost on offense as freshman stud Harrison Barnes was held without a field goal.

The Tar Heels just didn’t  have that go-to scorer down the stretch. The Gophers really don’t either since Devoe Joseph is suspended indefinite for violation of team rules. But the Gophers are a veteran team. The core of this team has played together the last couple of seasons outside of Trevor Mbakwe, who was a beast on Friday night.

And how about that offensive rebound-turned-dunk by Rodney Williams? Pretty sick play. I suppose he should get a lot of the credit for Barnes’ struggles since I think he defended him most of the game. Williams is still pretty unpolished, but that kid oozes athletic ability.

This is a very good win for Minnesota come selection time, no matter how bad UNC looked. Everyone talks about what a bad team the Tar Heels were last year, but they still won 20 games, didn’t they?

North Carolina is a perennial power. The Gophers caught them on a good night and made the most of it.

How low can the University of Minnesota go?

Posted on by
Reply

Former Fargo Force goalie Mike Lee enjoyed a banner night Friday, stopping 40 shots as St. Cloud State defeated the University of Minnesota 5-2 in men’s hockey.

The men’s hockey team lost back-to-back games to WCHA newcomer Nebraska-Omaha just a weekend ago. But that program is hardly alone in its struggles.

There just aren’t too many teams playing in the Dinkytown region of the Twin Cities that are in better shape than they were, say, five years ago. Really, other than men’s basketball, is there one?

The football team seemingly hits a new low every time it takes the field. The men’s hockey team is certainly not off to a good start. And the women’s basketball team, which enjoyed a resurgence thanks to Lindsay Whalen and Janel McCarville, has falled on hard times again too. They finished in last place in the Big Ten last season.

That’s three pretty big programs that are having some really big-time struggles right now. I’m just left wondering how much longer Minnesota AD Joel Maturi will last. Maturi supposedly gets to make the call on hiring a new football coach, which is a pretty big responsiblity. I have to assume that’s a vote of confidence for him. Hard to believe they’d let him hire a football coach, then can him shortly thereafter.

As a native Minnesotan, it’s tough to see some of the big programs on that campus struggling so much.

Vikings win, and Brewster canned

Posted on by
1

Sunday’s slate of NFL games couldn’t have worked out better for the Minnesota Vikings. Then, after watching all three of the other NFC North teams lose during the noon games, the Vikings defeated the Dallas Cowboys in a battle of 1-3 teams that have fallen well short of expectations.

Brett Favre

Minnesota Vikings QB Brett Favre posted his best QB rating of the season Sunday. Associated Press photo

But Sunday’s win puts the Vikings just a game back in the loss column from the first-place Chicago Bears, who lost at home to Seattle. The Green Bay Packers sit in second place after dropping an overtime decision to Miami at Lambeau Field.

All week long we heard about Brett Favre and the off-the-field “sexting” allegations. But hardcore Vikings fans were probably more consumed with the elbow tendinitis that Favre was battling. He was listed as questionable on the team’s injury report, though most everybody believed he was going to start for the 290th consecutive time.

Favre was more game manager and less gunslinger on Sunday, going an efficient 14-for-19 passing for 118 yards and a touchdown for a tidy 106.9 quarterback rating.

Percy Harvin, in particular, looked pretty explosive.

But a lot of the credit should go to the defense and special teams. UND hockey beat writer Brad Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald pointed out on a social networking site that all four of the Vikings touchdowns came when they started the possession in Dallas territory. And the now healthy E.J. Henderson had two interceptions to help the cause.

All told, a solid win for the Vikes, with a big prime-time game against Green Bay looming next week.

Brewster bites the dust

I’m sure there will be no shortage of opinion pieces written about Tim Brewster, who was fired as the University of Minnesota football coach Sunday. Brewster’s Gophers were on a six-game losing streak, and his career mark at Minnesota is just 15-30. AP sports writer Jon Krawczynski notes that he was 0-10 in trophy games. Yeesh!

Columnists turned into sharks upon hearing the news. Blood was in the water. I wrote something for Monday’s papers, taking a North Dakota/South Dakota angle to the dismissal. The Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse gives his take, too.

Not very often do college football coaches get fired in midseason. But ultimately, it had to be done. And as Minnesota AD Joel Maturi pointed out, with two home games ahead, it probably had to be done now for the sake of the fan base. Attendance in the second season of TCF Bank Stadium has been disappointing, especially in the student section. This is a business, after all.

The Gophers – notably Maturi – took a chance on Brewster after parting ways with Glen Mason prior to the 2007 season. Brewster had never been a head coach in college or the professional ranks. But he had a track record as a recruiter. That track record just didn’t convert to victories.

So, what next? Check out this column from Charley Walters of the Pioneer Press, who mentions Houston’s Kevin Sumlin as a possible replacement.

Brewster survives another day

Posted on by
Reply

Despite reports Friday that University of Minnesota football head coach Tim Brewster would be fired if the Gophers lost Saturday to Purdue – and they did lose Saturday – it appears Brewster remains employed by the university.

Tim Brewster

Minnesota football head coach Tim Brewster sports a 15-30 career record. Associated Press photo

Having said that, I’m not surprised at all that the Gophers would wait a day before making an announcement like that if they do plan to do something immediately. I would expect them to make a move Sunday, after AD Joel Maturi – who is also on the hot seat – has had a chance to sit down with Brewster.

I know this may surprise some people for me to say what I’m about to say, but I hope even if the Gophers do fire Brewster that they let him finish out the season if he chooses to do so. I think if you’re a player on this team, you still deserve to be put in the best position to win.

Granted, with Brewster as head coach, it’s not a great position. But I’m not really sure what good it does the players to promote one of the coordinators to interim coach, only to probably watch that coordinator get let go after the season when a new coach is hired.

But for the sake of the fan base, it might not hurt – if you plan to let Brewster go after the season anyway – to make an announcement soon. I think the fans are ready. I’m sure the boosters are ready.

Weekly NFL picks: Week 6

I’m 11-9 makes picks vs. the spread this season. So let’s keep it going. Here’s five for this week:

Houston by 3 ½ over Kansas City. Chiefs

New England by 3 over Baltimore. Patriots

Philadelphia by 3 over Atlanta. Falcons

New Orleans by 6 ½ over Tampa Bay. Saints

Tennessee by 3 over Jacksonville. Titans

Moss in Minnesota? You know you want it

Posted on by
2

Randy Moss could be back in Minnesota, wearing that familiar Purple again.

The often mercurial New England Patriots receiver is unhappy again – sound familiar, Raiders fans? – and reports are that the Vikings are trying to acquire him.

In the first seven seasons of his NFL career, Moss was with the Vikings. And he developed into not only the premier wide receiver in the game, but also became one of the most exciting players to ever play in Minnesota.

Moss has continued to be a perennial 1,000-yard receiver, even though he is now 33 years old. He’s not nearly at a 1,000-yard pace this season and was held without a catch in the Patriots’ last game.

But he’s still one of the more dangerous receivers in the game. And for a Vikings team that really needs someone to stretch the field, there’s nobody better at doing that among players even available in a trade at this time.

Details from negotiations like this are hard to come by. Sounds like the Patriots haven’t allowed Moss’ agent to talk to the Vikings. It’s been reported that one of the hang-ups would be the Vikings giving the free agent-to-be a contract extension.

Giving 33-year-olds extensions can be a dangerous thing for an organization, especially if the NFL returns to a salary cap should there be a new collective bargaining agreement.

But in the parity-driven NFL, nobody can blame the Vikings for wanting to go for broke in what I HAVE TO THINK will be Brett Favre’s final season in Minnesota. It HAS TO BE, hasn’t it?