Minnesota Basketball ranked highly in “way too early” polls

It is April 5th, which can only mean one thing. The 2017-2018 Minnesota Golden Gophers season is two days old. The media is already getting into the swing of things will “Way too Early” polls.**

Notable for Gophers fandom, these early polls are quite fond of Minnesota. Here’s a sampling:

• Sports Illustrated has the Gophers as the 10th best team in the nation. I will avoid linking because there are so many auto play videos on SI’s website that my mobile data is now gone for the next three months. Avoid my fate, and trust me when I say that Seth Davis likes the returning talent.
• CBS Sports puts Minnesota at 16th for the same reason.
• ESPN puts Minnesota at 17th and a 6 seed in the tournament. We expect that Wisconsin fans are already upset and have drafted lots of angry tweets about the injustices about bracketology.

There are likely to be others as well, but it speaks well of Minnesota in the national media. Additional praise should be expected at this point, and we can expect to see some raised expectations next year.

** Let’s leave aside the fact that referring to something as “Way too early” does not absolve a transparent ploy for page views. After all, we’re commenting on them also in a semi transparent ploy for page views about a transparent ploy for page views. The internet is weird.