"The sunshine state! Denver. Gorgeous!"

"I thought the Rocky Mountains would be a little rockier than this. That John Denver's full of ****, man."

Whenever I think of Denver, these three quotes are the first thing that comes to mind. When Gopher hockey fans think of Denver, the probably think of struggling and frustration, as the Gophs' have struggled to beat the Pioneers in the past few years. Per Dane Mizutani of the MN Daily:

The Gophers have struggled immensely against Denver in the past and are 2-8-0 in their last 10 meetings, a fact Lucia attributed to inability to score.

Minnesota has scored a total of five goals in those eight losses.

That stretch of losses happened during Minnesota's roughest years under Don Lucia (or just about anyone else, for that matter), while DU has maintained themselves as a top-shelf program during that time. The Gophers are a much better team this season, but they haven't been lighting the lamp with much frequency lately either, as they've only scored more than 3 goals in a game once in their past seven outings (the 6-2 thumping of UND). Minnesota's defense continues to be rock-soiid though, and that will help against a formidable offensive group led by Jason Zucker and Drew Shore. I'd love it if Denver wants to open it up the way UMD did, but I'm expecting another low scoring weekend.

Speaking of UMD, the Gophers lead the Bulldogs by 3 points for 1st in the WCHA, and looking at the standings, those two are the favorites in the race for the regular season crown, but a lot can happen in these last eight games. The top 7 teams have all played 20 conference games, so there's nothing to factor in as far as "games in hand" go. The top 4 are clear cut at the moment with Minnesota atop with 30 points, UMD (27), CC (25), and Denver (24). There's a 3-way battle for 5th, meaning one of Tech, UNO or UND are going to be going on the road in the first round of the WCHA playoffs. My money is on Tech falling to seventh, but then again, I thought they'd get swept by Duluth last week and didn't. I also thought they'd get swept by the Gophers and, of course, didn't. So perhaps I shouldn't underestimate the Huskies.

Denver could climb back into the race in a huge way with a sweep this weekend, or the Gophers could put them out of the title chase with a sweep of their own. I'd count on a split with the usual Friday lethargy followed by the Saturday rebound (also factor in that good ol' Mile High air could be an adjustment), but hey, the Gophs have won three in a row right now including-yes- a Friday night victory over St Cloud. So we'll see. With 8 left to play, all the games are big, and with Minnesota's remaining schedule, they need as much as they can get to keep their cushion on Duluth. After this weekend Minnesota hosts Bemidji, travels to Omaha, then finishes up with Sconnie at home to close the regular season. UMD gets North Dakota at home this weekend, then @ Mankato, home to arch-rival CC, then finish up at St Could State. Although the remaining schedules look pretty even on paper, I'd say the Gophers have a tougher remaining slate than the Bulldogs, as the two series against teams in the bottom half of the standings are Bemidji and Wisconsin, two teams that will have zero trouble being motivated to beat Minnesota.

So it's a big weekend for the Gophers in the sunshine state of Denver, as they need at least a split. A sweep? Now that would be gorgeous!

Another missed opportunity for the Gophers to get a big resume boosting win. Not that we have missed on every opportunity, we did beat Illinois and won at Indiana, but the list of missed opportunities is growing.

They could have and should have won at Illinois with a couple late free throws. They never should have lost to Iowa (twice). Had a chance to win at Michigan down one with 1:04 left. And had the opportunity to win last night's game over Wisconsin on your home floor but came up short. In every one of those games the Gophers had the ball with under a minute remaining and an opportunity to tie or win the game. We haven't missed on every opportunity but it certainly feels like it.

Last night the Badgers rode a first half of hot shooting that they eventually expanded to 13 in the second. But then a combination of increased Gopher defensive pressure, the Badgers finally missing their end of shot-clock prayers and Andre Hollins coming to life offensively carried the Gophers on a 15-2 run over the final 9 minutes of the half. That is the entire game in a nutshell.

Wisconsin's shooting from behind the arc through the first 30 minutes was an incredible 53% before finishing regulation 0-5 during the Gopher's run. 53% is really good but draining deep threes, with pressure as the shot-clock is expiring was just cruel. Eventually the law of averages played itself out but it is hard to battle back from down 13 against a very good defensive team.

Overall I thought the Gopher defensive pressure was pretty good. They occasionally employed a half-court trap to get the ball out of the hands of Jordan Taylor and to try to speed up the pace of the game and make Wisconsin a little uncomfortable. They kept their focus during long Badger possessions and were it not for a couple loose ball's that would trickle to a Badger shooter who would make a deep three as the shot-clock expired, they made some nice stops. Considering how much I have harped on the Gopher defense for most of the year, I thought last night they did a decent job of trying to keep Wisconsin off balance.

And finally we get to Andre Hollins who is finally starting to show signs of a bright basketball future. The freshman scored 11 points in the 15-2 run on his way to 20 for the night. He hit a couple big threes and he was the one responsible for guarding Jordan Taylor in the second half. Dre was willing to get physical with Taylor and never backed down from the senior point guard on either end of the floor. The true freshman has averaged over 11 points per game in his last four games and is starting to make me excited about his future as a Golden Gopher.

Tough game to lose and there are no consolation points for taking a ranked team to overtime only to lose. This team is missing that go-to scorer who can nail the dagger when you need a game finishing basket. It only gets harder from here as we host Ohio State on Tuesday and face a total of four ranked teams in the next five games. More opportunities are there to earn another big win, but the question is will the Gophers capitalize on these opportunities or will there be more close losses in our future?

The Gophers get to finish out the season with five home games in the final seven. Tonight is game one of this stretch and it is the first of the season against Wisconsin. The rivalry game is always a big one and it is one that would be a very nice resume boost for the Gophers who are clearly on the NCAA bubble and would like to stay there.

Game Time: 6:00
TV: ESPN

Believe it or not the Badgers have more kids from Minnesota than they do who played their high school ball in Wisconsin. Five of the 10 starters tonight will be local kids so the familiarity on the court should be significant. But this little nugget is really more interesting to fans than it is relevant to the outcome of the game. Is Jordan Taylor going to be "extra motivated" to beat his hometown Gophers tonight? Maybe, but it isn't like his lights us up every time he faces the Gophers. Overall he is 1-3 vs. Minnesota and has scored over 5 points only once in those four games. Bruesewitz and Berggren are both 1-1 against the Gophers being fortunate to miss the two losses in the 2008-09 season.

I don't know that dominating the Gophers is really what is going to motivate those guys. Getting a Big Ten road victory to keep their hopes of a Big Ten title alive should probably be more of a motivator.

The Gopher roster is frustratingly inconsistent. It was the starters who carried the team to a win at Indiana and it was the bench who sparked the win over Illinois. And both groups stunk at Iowa. It is hard to know what you are going to get out of this roster when each night it is someone new who may (or may not) step up.

Wisconsin's numbers defensively are really (REALLY) impressive. #2 in the country in points allowed per possession and #1 in defensive eFG%. It might be awfully hard for the Gopher offense to score tonight and it might be an ugly game where the bulk of our points come from the free throw line.

Defensively the Gopher's #1 priority is going to be getting out to the three-point line. Wisconsin gets 35% of their points from behind the arc which is 32nd in the country. As a point of reference the Gophers score only 22.4% of our points from three, ranking near the bottom of D1 basketball. But if we can get out and guard the three that might take the Badgers out of their offensive rhythm, allowing us to stay in the game.

The other key to the game, I think, will be rebounding. Wisconsin hasn't been hitting the offensive glass at a super high rate this year. Ralph and Rodney and the guards need to make sure that trend continues by ending possessions with a rebound. Keep offensive rebounds down, we will lose if we give them a number of second chances.

Scoring will be low and points will be hard to come by. Over the last few years this has been a good match-up for the Gophers and let's hope the trend continues at The Barn tonight.

UNLV, the Gophers first football opponent of the 2012 season wants to move up the date of the season opener. The game was originally scheduled for Saturday, September 1st and they are requested permission from the U to move the game up to Thursday, August 30th. This is an interesting decision to be made. Many Gopher fans were planning to take advantage of the Labor Day weekend and make a trip to Las Vegas for the game. Moving the game to Thursday night may prevent many from making the trip. On the other hand flying to Vegas on a Wednesday rather than Friday of Labor Day weekend may save fans some money. But taking an extra two days of vacation and adding an extra two or three days to the weekend does add significant cost to the trip.

For the team this may not be a terrible idea. The game would stand a better chance of being televised nationally and the team would actually get two extra days to prepare for their next opponent. But for Gopher fans who were looking forward to a 3-day weekend in Vegas this may not be the best solution. If you want the game to remain schedule for Saturday, I suggest you e-mail the athletic department, Joel Maturi and President Kaler.

• I answered some questions for Phil at Bucky's 5th Quarter. I'm really looking forward to tonight's game.
• Tubby will be ready to go with his bench and stick with his bench if they are the ones with the hot hands tonight.
• Tubby tweeted for the first time in nearly 2 years! Must be something significant!
• Patrick Reusse and Michael Rand debate if The Barn needs to be replaced or not.
• ESPN's B1G blog is looking back at the 2011 season and ranking the position groups. The Gopher offensive line was not treated too kindly.
• FootballStudyHall is taking a look at the 2012 Gophers.
• Gopher Hockey is getting ready for a trip to Denver and the stretch run to a WCHA title.

So Joel Maturi is "retiring" as the athletic director at the University of Minnesota. Interesting, as we guessed that Maturi's ideals of a balanced athletic department where every sport is treated equally would differ from new president Eric Kaler's ideals of an athletic department where the revenue-generating sports produce, you know, revenue.

Also interesting because while Maturi won't be the school's athletic director after June, he'll sure still be getting paid like it. Some folks at in the Minnesota legislature are a wee bit puzzled why Maturi will still get his full athletic director's salary AND full benefits to be a special assistant to Kaler. It means that the University of Minnesota will be paying TWO people to do the job of athletic director, and you can bet whomever they hire isn't going to take less to do the job than what they'll be paying Maturi to NOT do the job.

Should that matter to Gopher fans? We're not the one's paying his salary, except that we kind of are with ticket sales and all the rest. And isn't the full AD's salary he'll be getting next year money that could be going to help fund Maturi's beloved NR's? Maybe there's a precedent here that I'm not aware of. Maybe there's plenty of other BCS schools who give their ousted AD's golden parachutes despite the athletic department needing revenue in a down economy. Maybe, but I'd feel better if Maturi were a special assistant on an assistant's salary, or, maybe he could just actually retire and live off what I'm sure is a hefty pension.

Gopher Hockey moves up in the rankings

As weekend's off go, the one the Minnesota Gopher hockey team just enjoyed was about as good as it gets. The boys got some time to rest up and prepare for the rest of the season while everybody else played some games, and the results for Minnesota were mostly good. Or about as good as expected. The Gophs started the weekend tied for 8th in the Pairwise Standings with a 5 point lead over UMD for first in the WCHA, with the Bulldogs holding two games in hand. UMD played those two games against UAA, and after the Seawolves and Bulldogs split, Duluth was able to only pick up two points on the Gophs. So not only is Minnesota still three points up in the WCHA, but they moved up one spot in the Pairwise too, now sitting tied for 7th with Merrimack.

Now down to fifth? That'd be UMD, and while the national polls don't mean much, it still looks good for the Gophers to be ranked second and UMD third. Or maybe it just feels good. Of course, we don't want our dear rival Bulldogs to fall TOO far, since they're still by far Minnesota's best pair of wins this year, and will be for the rest of the regular season. To keep moving up the Pairwise, Minnesota needs to keep winning, but really, so does Duluth- just not too much. Minnesota gets a chance to help themselves on the ice this weekend when they travel to Denver to play the #17 Pioneers, who are 4th in the WCHA and 14th right now in the Pairwise.

Big Ten's College Football Playoff Plan

How quickly things change; it wasn't long ago- like less than 2 months ago- when B1G commish Jim Delaney was squarely against the idea of a college football playoff. Yet according to the Chicago Tribune's Teddy Greenstein, Delaney is not only now willing to listen to proposals for a playoff, he now has one of his own. Delaney wants a 4 team playoff where the top two seeds host, and the championship game site goes to the highest bidder, much like how the Super Bowl site is selected now. On the surface this seems like a relatively modest proposal, which is fine by me. I think anything more than 4 waters down the best regular season in sports, and this idea would also keep more of the big bowl games on or around January 1 where they belong.

But of course, this is a plan that benefits the B1G too. If the Big Ten gets a team in the top 2, it means someone from the SEC, Big 12 or Pac 12 is coming north in December to play in cold weather in a hostile environment. And if they get the third or fourth best team, well, then they'll just head down to a sunny, warm destination to play the semi-final game- you know, like they already do for bowl games. Sure, Death Valley or Bryant-Denny Stadium or Autzen or Oklahoma Memorial would be a lot tougher to play in than a neutral site like the Rose, Gator or Outback, but it's less of a disadvantage for the cold weather Big Ten teams to have to go south than the possibility of a southern school coming north- in December.

Not only that, but you can be guaranteed that if/when the B1G would place a team in the top 4 of the rankings and out of the regular bowl lineup, the Big Ten is NOT about to lose their Rose Bowl berth. The second best B1G squad would go to the Rose Bowl as I'm sure the second best Pac 12 school would take the place of Oregon or SC or Stanford if they made the top 4. So in Delaney's plan, the B1G gains a possible advantage by hosting a cold weather semi-final game AND still keeps its coveted tie-in with the Rose Bowl.

Now that's what I call a win-win.

I'm going to lead with Jim Delaney announcing that he is not only open to, but might be proposing a four-team playoff that is separate from the BCS bowl system.

Sources told the Tribune that a Big Ten plan would remove the top four teams from the BCS bowl pool and have semifinal games played on the college campus of the higher seed. That would do away with the facade of "neutral" sites such as New Orleans, Miami and Pasadena, Calif., and ease travel concern for fans.

The championship game then could be bid out, like the Super Bowl.

This wouldn't be my favorite plan, but a four-team playoff is light years better than the current system.

Let's get some quick links in this morning...

• Congrats to the Gopher wrestling team for winning the Big Ten duals title.
• Wrestling coach, J Robinson had some nice things to say about Joel Maturi and how he saved a few Gopher sports.
• The Minnesota Daily interviewed Joel Maturi.
• Gopher baseball is getting ready for their season which begins soon. This past weekend they faced and defeated a Gopher alumni team 6-1.

Most bracket projections still have the Gophers in the tournament. But we are right on the line and we are facing Wisconsin and Ohio State over the next week.

• The Bracket Matrix - 11 seed
  
• ESPN's Joe Lunardi - 12 seed
  
• SBN's Bloggin the Bracket - 12 seed
• Stat Junkie