Duluth a Beacon for Minnesota Sports
We have spent a good part of 2016 watching the Twins falter and then flop; the Vikings storm to a 5-0 start and then stumble to four straight losses; the Gopher football team need to find a Big Ten football schedule without Michigan, Ohio State or any other contenders so they can declare themselves contenders; the Timberwolves pump up Twin Cities media with high hopes and then get off to a dreadful start. Only the Minnesota Wild have started with reasonable success.
Ah, but up here in the soon-to-be-Great White North, the University of Minnesota-Duluth is setting standards for athletic achievement that few could hope for. After last weekend, the Bulldogs are unanimous No. 1 in the nation in men’s hockey; No. 2 in the nation in women’s Division II volleyball; No. 3 in the early season ratings for Division I women’s hockey; and No. 5 in Region 3 of the Division II football playoff picture where eight teams advance – and that is after winning nine straight games after a season-opening loss.
Not only that, but we have been enjoying comparatively balmy Native American Summer in early November, a time when we could be shoveling snow!
Football
In the Northern Sun, UMD automatically wins the Northern half, and the split is between the haves and have-nots. The University of Mary is in the latter category, so when UMD played its final regular season game last Saturday, the game got out of hand quickly.
Beau Bofferding celebrated the seniors’ last home game, scoring the first two touchdowns on a 3-yard run and a scintillating 78-yard dash up the left sideline that made it 13-0 less than 6 minutes into the game. It was 26-0 after a quarter, with Drew Bauer, another senior, throwing three touchdown passes, and when the seniors and other regulars came out early in the third quarter, the Bulldogs steamrolled their way to a 75-14 victory.
The strangest touchdown, possibly of the season, came in the second quarter, when Bishop McDonald intercepted a pass and raced 58 yards for an apparent touchdown. But the freshman from Oakdale was taken down abruptly by Mary’s Connor Graves at the 2, and he fumbled the ball. No worries, UMD junior Zach Bassuener scooped up the fumble for the touchdown that made it 33-0.
Hockey
UMD’s top-ranked hockey team went down to St. Cloud and handed St. Cloud State two NCHC setbacks that were as close to identical as possible. The Huskies struck first and led 3-2 after one period, with UMD’s top line getting the goals, the first of the season for captain Dom Toninato and the sixth of the young campaign for Alex Iafallo. After a scoreless second period, UMD took over in the third, for Kyle Osterberg’s fifth goal, and then Joey Anderson’s first college goal, followed by his second, into an empty net. Anderson is a freshman playing on the top line, which got four of the five goals in a 5-3 victory.
The next night, St. Cloud State again struck first, but Joey Anderson tied it with his third goal in two nights, but the Bulldogs trailed 3-1 before Toninato scored his second in two nights to cut it to 3-2. In the third, defenseman Carson Soucy scored twice, sandwiching a goal by Parker Mackay and with his second in an empty net as UMD again won 5-3.
The sweep, coming on the heels of a sweep over then-No. 1 North Dakota, brings the Bulldogs back home to AMSOIL Arena where they face Western Michigan Friday and Saturday.
The UMD women, in the meantime, were idle last weekend but play at North Dakota this weekend in a stern test of the Bulldogs early success and No. 3 rating.
St. Scholastica
Nothing like a couple of losses to obscure the fine season the Saints have had in football. A 7-2 record in the UMAC won’t get a playoff slot for the Saints, who are 7-3 overall, but they finished their home slate by whipping Greenville 49-21, as senior quarterback Kyle Stepka returned from an injury – which may have directly led to their two losses – by passing for three touchdowns and 122 yards.
Aaron Olson, a sophomore from Esko with superb hands, caught only three passes, but all three were for touchdowns, of 47, 7, and 33 yards, to run his school record to 18 touchdown passes for the season.
Elsewhere...
The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in classic fashion, with a seventh game that threatened to go all night before beating the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in 10 innings. It was not a classic technical ballgame. Far from it. It was bizarre, and it featured good pitching, great defensive plays, weird defensive plays, and complete oddities. My favorites? First, David Ross, Chicago’s 39-year-old catcher, who has long proclaimed that this would be his last season, and thus his last game, came in to catch Jon Lester, the great but weird pitcher who won’t throw a pickoff throw to first base. A slider outside and in the dirt bounced crazily and conked Ross on the side of the helmet, stunning him and sending him toppling to his left while the ball went to his right and to the backstop as two runs scored, cutting the deficit from 5-1 to 5-3. Then Ross gets to bat, and in his final at-bat of his final career game, he homers in the top of the sixth to make it 6-3. Also, ace Cubs reliever Aroldis Chapman, who had been flat out used up by manager Joe Maddon in the previous games, pitched in the eighth but had neither his 104-mph velocity nor his control, and gave up a couple of runs and three hits. Amazingly, he came back out for the ninth and plain willed himself through a 1-2-3 inning. The Cubs won it when Ben Zobrist doubled home a run in the top of the 10th, and when Indians manager Terry Francona walked two guys to get to Miguel Montero, the third catcher of the night and the relief for Ross. Montero delivered a clutch single to make it 8-6. As Chapman rested, the Cubs survived the last of the 10th to win 8-7, and here, ironically, was Chapman – after the worst relief performance of his career, if not his season, recovered from the blown save to get the victory in the Cubs first World Series victory since 1908
