The Nugz have been rather infrequent but I wanted to start your week off with the best of Golden Gopher related links from around the interweb.
I'll start with the Gopher basketball team fighting to be the 33rd best team in college basketball. Stupid Sideline Reporters put together a ficticious bracket of the teams who lost their first round NCAA games. The Gophers managed to be a #3 seed in the East, got a little bit lucky with their opponents beating American, Binghampton and Florida State to make the Final Four! Then once in the Final Four they overcame a 10-point halftime defecit to Clemson and won on a last second shot by Colten Iverson to send the Gophers to the title game.
You will have to check back later today to see the results of the Championship game. We drew West Virginia for the title game and I'm feeling pretty good about our chances.
- Gopher Baseball went on the road and lost two of three from the Illini. Derek McCallum stayed white-hot and is almost a sure bet to be Big Ten Player of the Week.
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Royce White received some praise on DraftExpress.com (my favorite site for NBA draft information). While covering the Jordan Brand Classic, which had many of the best incoming freshmen prospects in the country, they had this to say about White...
Minnesota commit Royce White really came out strong today, looking like he had a real chip on his shoulder, making shots from the perimeter, coming up with a couple of steals, crashing the offensive glass hard, and overall looking very impressive with his size and athleticism as a legit 6-7 small forward. He needs to improve his ball-handling skills, but he looks like quite a find for Tubby Smith from the little we saw today.
Good bit of ink when the Draft Express guys were really there to watch guys like Darrick Favors, Renardo Sydney Jr, John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Avery Bradley and others. - The Pioneer Press takes a look back at old traditions of football game day on campus.
- First I thought this was crazy, deranged homerism at it's finest, but actually Iowa may be a top 3 team in the Big Ten this year.
- The NCPA College Paintball Championships saw the Golden Gophers participating.
- How about a little "minor sports" update. The Men's Tennis team finished third in the Big Ten as they head into the B10 Tournament. Kit Beikmann (SR) finished 5th on the pommel horse to claim All-American honors. DJ Repp (FR) finished sixth on the vault to also earn All-American honors.