With HLWW’s Keith Diers knocking down two game-winning 3-pointers for the Lakers boys’ basketball team in back-to-back games, it got me thinking. What are some of the best, local clutch performances from the past? One of recent memory was when Joe Kley hit an 8th inning home run to tie the game up against Young America for the Winsted Wildcats in the Region 7C tournament last year. Any you can think of, please post.
Monthly Archive for January, 2008
Every summer we are forced to watch the Yankees and Red Sox, and hear about how it is the best rivalry in sports. It may be, but here we go again with the New York vs. Boston talk. This time its for football’s ultimate price, the Super Bowl trophy. The New York Giants against the New England (Boston) Patriots. It’s not quite the Yankees/Red Sox, but its the same two cities we can’t get away from during the summer. At least the Giants and Patriots don’t play each other 19 times. Two is more than enough.
It pains me to say this, but the Gophers men’s basketball team is better than the Gophers men’s hockey team. I know, I didn’t belive I’d ever utter those words, but it is so true right now. The Gopher hockey team is struggling, and couldn’t even beat an average St. Cloud State team this past weekend. Meanwhile, the men’s hoop team pulled out a nice road win at Penn State, and look like the real deal. My question is this – are they for real, or is Tubby Smith getting it down with smoke and mirrors? I can’t answer it, but I do hope that they are for real, and that they don’t go in the tank as the Big 10 season wears on. What I do know, is that they are going to be good for years to come as long as Tuby is running the program. Go Gophers!
When I think about the year in DC sports, here are some things that come to mind (listed in no particular order)
1. The first weekend of March. That weekend was insane. During the worst snowstorm of the season, three major sporting events happened. First, Kurt Salmen was at the state wrestling tournament where he took third and broke the school record in wins in the process. Second, several boys were in the state swim and dive meet, where they just missed the podium a couple of times. Lastly, Dan Raisanen became the fourth DC basketball player to reach 1,000 career points. All of that action happened within hours…what a weekend.
2. The state baseball tournament. That was an exciting time for everybody, and it was awesome to see the community support in full force. It fun to see the Chargers hang with those big schools…and it was a great opportunity to start my farmer’s tan. That run in the playoffs couldn’t have happened to a greater group of guys, either.
3. The DC gymnastics team. It was a lot of fun to watch those girls continue to surpass expectiations. They broke a ton of school records, including the overall score which was about 20 years old. All of that hard work they put in during practices really paid off. It was a lot of fun chatting with those girls and watching them on a weekly basis.
4. Watching the Saints. It was a blast covering the Saints this season. The all-star game in Loretto was great, watching the section playoffs at Saints Field was fun…and the team had a good season in terms of wins and losses. I can’t wait for the snow to melt so I can do it all over again.
5. The turn-around of the football team. The Chargers started the season 0-3 and the season could have easily gone south from there, but the team came together and rattled off some exciting wins. They earned their first playoff game in number of years, had a .500 record in the conference for the first time in a while, and it was fun watching those guys win some games.
Those are just some of the events that come to mind. I’ll add more in the coming days.
As I watched portions of the Sugar Bowl Tuesday night (Georgia destroyed Hawaii), I couldn’t help but wonder what Georgia would do against LSU, or even Ohio State. I also caught a portion of the Rose Bowl, another blowout with USC dominating Illinois. Those two teams look awefully good (Georgia and USC). Still, neither will have a chance for the national championship as Ohio State and LSU will face each other for that title because they were ranked 1 and 2 in the very complicated BCS standings. To me, this just sucks. The bowls don’t mean much anymore since the introduction of the BCS, so why not just go to a playoff system? Take the top eight teams in the country, set up a tournament, and let the national championship be determined that way – the way it should be and is in every other level of football. Who am I kidding, it will never happen, but it should!
Forget about the loss to Holy Cross. Saturday’s (Dec. 29) loss to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a bad loss for the Gopher men’s hockey team. The game was at Maricci Arena and was supposed to be a cupcake game that would get the Gophers into the championship game of their own Dodge Holiday Classic. The Gophers had won the tournament the past eight seasons. Boston College went on to claim the title with a 6-0 win over RIT Sunday. The fact about RIT is that they don’t have one scholarshipped athlete on their team. Holy Cross had some, and Minnesota’s loss to Holy Cross came in the 2006 NCAA tournamnet. That means Holy Cross was good enough to get to the final tournament of the season. It used to be that the Goper hockey team was the one team we could rely on during the winter when the Timberwolves and Wild tail off. I’m not sure that’s the case. The Gophers don’t seem to have the swager they used to. They need to get it back. Somewhere on Long Island, New York, Kyle Okposo and Garh Snow are laughing.
Even before head coach Bryan Clemen had his roster set for this season, he knew what kind of team he had. Without the likes of a Kurt Salmen or Shane Swenson, the Chargers did not have any superstars, but a lot of above-average wrestlers. He said they were going to be much like the baseball team that took third at state.
The individuals statistics heading into the break only validates that statement. Seven wrestlers have double-digit win totals, but all of them have between two and five losses. Max Anderson leads the way with a 12-2 record; Brandon Fiedler, Jared Peterson, Zach Peterson, and Chuck Pokornowski all have 11 wins. The Larson twins both have 10 wins.
That large number of good wrestlers has resulted in a good team record. The team is 5-3 despite facing some very good competition over the last few weeks. In the coming weeks, the competition will head up as they compete in the bulk of their conference schedule. We’ll see if they can improve on that 4-4 WCC record from one year ago.
Click below for the complete list of individual records.
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