Seems like this is shaping up to be a special spring around the U. Lots of great things going on with a lot of sports and figured I'd get this started here. Obviously men's basketball is on an awesome run (have tix for Thursday!), men's hockey is playing very well and in the top 5, women's hockey is strong and will hopefully make their usual appearance in Frozen Four, softball is starting the season with a 13-0 start and ranked #12, baseball is season is very young but they are 3-1 and just drew 1,900 to the Vikes new stadium, and I'm sure other spring sports will perform well. Seems like their are a lot of quality coaches in a lot of sports doing great things and the Athletes Village can only help all the sports recruit and give a much needed WOW factor for potential recruits. Let's keep this train rollin'!!!
Special spring at the U?
- Thread starter gregbrady
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JZsportswhiz
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Gopher sports are on the rise for sure!
Men's Tennis team cracked the Top 25, too. Been awhile since I've seen that and didn't the Golf Program get a 7 figure donation to build an indoor golf practice facility? That has to help them out, too. Men's Gymnastics is also ranked Top 5 and the Women's Gymnastics team is also ranked Top 25 as are both the Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving teams!! And the Wrestling team isn't doing as well as we have gotten used to, but they are still ranked near the Top 10. And the Tracksters are breaking team records and winning Medals.
Minnesota is starting to look like the Stanford of the Midwest!!!
And the best thing about a good spring at the U? A BEAUTIFUL summer follows. Get those southern recruits up here for visits so they can fall in love with our WEATHER!!! lol
Love the OP gregbrady! Go Go Gophers!!!
Thanks for filling in the rest! Maybe a Golden Age of sports?!!
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Nate Tubbs Rules
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With the hoopsters getting their 10th BT win and football finishing 5-4 in the BT, this is the first school year (16\17) that both teams finished above .500 in the conference in 54 years (62\63)
WilliamsArenaGuy
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Just said the same thing!
Yes, the last time I felt this excited about the future of Gopher sports, was back in the late 90s when Yudof was the President and I can't remember who the AD was, but whoever it was brought Mason in, brought Lucia in, got women's hockey started up.
I must admit it was largely because of the Gopher BB team's showing so much potential in 1996, and then their run in 1997, then 98 we won the NIT right? 99 we had a strong team going into the NCAA tourney. The Wrestling team was kicking arse and coming SO close to winning a Title. I talked to Lucia for about 2 minutes after his first season and agonized with him about the brutal SOS and how we probably deserved to get in, but didn't, but parted ways agreeing that the future was bright. Low and behold 2 seasons later he was winning his first Natl Title of a back2back, Wrestling was winning back2back titles, The Golf team won a Natl title, the women's hockey team was kicking arse, the women's bb team got to a Final Four and the Women's VB team was looking very good, and not long after, the Dance program began to dominate that sport. And I'm leaving out a ton of other sports programs that consistently did well, the Swimming and Diving teams, the Cross Country teams, even the Rowing and Soccer teams each won a Conf Title.
I felt ALL of that coming, back in 1996 and 1997 and posted about it, made my predictions and my opinions about the future very public at another site, and caught a ton of flack for it from fans of teams from all over the country, but I got the last laugh and tortured those poor souls for over a decade about how I was right and they were wrong. The torture wouldn't have lasted for over a decade though, if...
the whole Haskins thing along with Mason not being able to elevate the program to the next level followed by what's his name turning the fb program into a dumpster fire, took ALL THE SHINE off of all of the other programs incredible accomplishments. So those fans of all those other programs got to focus their attentions on how poorly the Gophers performed in cfb and mens bb.
Now, I'm starting to feel the same way I did back in 1996 & 1997. But there are a few differences this time around
#1 - Now we have the new Athletes Village coming up.
#2 - Now Fleck has a decent foundation that Kill built to build upon. And unlike Mason, Fleck has more money and better facilities to work with
#3 - Now post-Haskins, there is no way Pitino will get away or even think about cheating to win
#4 - Now a days, the recruits the state of Minnesota is producing in bb are far superior to what Haskins had to work with
#5 - almost all of our non-Revenue sports have established histories of success to build on, unlike in back in the late 1990s.
#6 - many of our non-Revenue sports now have upgraded facilities specifically for their use, or will soon(the golf program just got a 7 figure gift)
#7 - Now we have an administration that is also on board and willing to spend money to make our Athletics Program great unlike in the late 90s
#8 - Now we have the WNBA and NWHL and the CWHL to give more of our women's athletes more options after graduation
#9 - Now we have the BTN to help fund our Athletics and make it easier for the Admin to make an investment in our Athletics.
#10 - Now we can claim Bob Dylan as a Nobel Prize winner in literature, the first musician EVER to be awarded as such!!!
That last one was a fun way to make sure it was a list of 10, and to show that its cool to be a Minnesota Gopher, its an image thing. Every little bit helps.
I felt what I felt in 1996 and 1997 and then later, in ONE SEASON, was it 2001-02, the University of Minnesota won the same # of Natl Titles as the entire university had won the last 35 seasons of the 20th century COMBINED!!!
Now the situation is much different, the University of Minnesota has won 11 NCAA Titles, 1 women's Hk Natl Title the year before the NCAA tourney began, and something like 18 Dance Team Natl Titles, so far in the 21st Century, and only our 2 Biggest Revenue sports were not contributing to the U's Athletic success.
But now with all of those above factors in place, I envision...
A TRULY GOLDEN AGE OF SPORTS ahead for the University of Minnesota.
And throngs of fair weather fans and hopefully U alumni from all over Minnesota and the country jumping on the bandwagon, and hopefully lots of alumni donations as well.
Bad Gopher
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Softball could be another volleyball situation. Great looking team.
Yeah, they have a shot of going to Women's CWS.
One of the best coaching hires in recent Gopher Athletics history. If she wins the U a Natl Title in Softball, it will rank up there among the very top hires EVER. And with how the freshmen are performing and contributing this season, the future is very bright for the softball program.
She's truly built them up from the ground up.
Kind of like when Kill took over from Brewster. First few people turned down the job and both inherited a mess.