Gopher Basketball Opens Season With a 58-70 Win Over Bucknell

But this was a tale of two teams. We lst with our second five out here bu won easily with our first five.

I have removed all optimism for this team at this point. I would rather watch the football team lose well fought battles than watch this team of underachievers slip past these crappy teams. Purdue beat NIU by 60+. Across the board for the most part, huge lopsided victories. Here we sit still tripping over our own dicks like jackasses. Take mbakwe away and can we win 7 games this season?

I am salty. I will check back in a few weeks I guess. For now, I need to enjoy what little is left of college football!

Strange comment. Bucknell had about 25+ wins last year, was a Top20 Mid Major, and has almost entire team back. Over past 8-10 years, many Top 20 teams have losses (Pitt, Kansas, Syracuse, etc.) thinking the same thing. At end of year this likely will look like good win over good team.

Yet at least one Gopher follower has given up.

Plenty of questions yet to be answered. Like most teams, strengths and weaknesses.

We got behind by playing backups who will not be on the floor much in the big ten season.

At the moment, we’ve got a basically six guys who can play (Trevor, Ralph, Rodney, Austin, Andre Hollins and Julian). Armelin is offensive spark, buy not much else. Oto hustles and made a few plays that way but isn’t ready for too many minutes.

Until Mo gets back, that’s the team.

For 3-4 years we’ve been looking forward to the year these guys become seniors. So I’ve sort of justified our futility in my head. I listened to years of excuses, injuries, transfers, inexperience, etc….

Am I giving up on the team? No. That is not a fair statement. I am disappointed that somehow I built up a scenario I thought was realistic in my head, but one that I can’t see panning out based on the play thus far.

My point about Gopher football was that it was more fun to watch this team get better each week. To say we didn’t get better this week is missing the ball. Have you seen the dismantling that Wisconsin has done over the course of this season? Only losing twice to two of the best teams in the Big 10, on very late/last second heroics? So you can list out the lopsided victories, but I see a team improving and showing promise. The “chaos” of the first half of the season is definitely not apparant any longer.

I look at this basketball team and I see struggles against the Little Sisters of the Poor. I see continued failure in defending the 3 pointer. Same tripping over our own dicks in the set offense. Said another way, the same little bullshit that’s been plaguing us for several years. Is it only a few games? Yes! But does our competition get more difficult, or does it get easier here on out? The last time I checked, we’ll need to much better than down 5 or 6 points with a few minutes left against any of the big 10 teams we play this season.

So my poor communication of my dedication to the team comes from a place of great disappointment. It comes from a place of suspicion about Tubby’s abilities as a coach, mentor, player developer. So when we come out flat, unable to put these teams away early, those things feed my negative outlook for the season. We won’t have another Mbakwe for years to come…we have a lot of good pieces in place, and we need to make something special of this season. After 3 games I’ve seen nothing remotely close to this.

Meanwhile, just across the street, I see hope for success under coach Kill, who everybody wants to run out of the fucking state during his first season of struggles. It pisses me off.