Gopher Sports and Expectations

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EG#9

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I was thinking this week that if the Gophers were even say 80% of what the media/fans projected them to be this year (and Michigan was still terrible) the Gophers would be undefeated right now and we'd be wondering if the team could get healthy enough to play Northwestern at home for our second chance in two years to lock up the West in our last home game of the year. What a missed opportunity.

It also occurred to me that this has happened with EVERY Gopher football/basketball team I can remember that had expectations going in to a season going back 20 years.

Dan Monson had a winning B1G team and an NCAA tournament berth and returned star Vincent Grier while adding UNC transfer point guard Adam Boone. The result was a losing B1G season and no NCAA berth.

Tubby Smith was coming off a .500 B1G season and an NCAA berth in year 2. The program was on the rise and added the best recruiting class of in a number of years: Royce, Rodney, Trevor, (and Justin Cobbs who'd go on to a great career at Cal). The result was a losing B1G season and no NCAA berth.

Richard Pitino just missed the NCAA's in his first year as Gophers coach, but led the team to an NIT title. They returned most everyone and were projected to make the NCAA's and take a nice step forward in year 2. I believe they started the conference season 0-5 and (obviously) had a brutal season.

Richard Pitino was coming off an 11-7 B1G season and NCAA 5 seed and his team was returning all but one player. They were ranked in the preseason ~ top 15 and even top 10 by some. The result would be one of the worst seasons in program history.

Jerry Kill goes to the Citrus Bowl and is 5-3 in the B1G. The next year he would have to retire during a disappointing season that would see the Gophers finish 2-6 in the B1G.

Tracy Claeys was supposed to have "the year". Even before anything went wrong with Kill there was a lot of talk that year 6 was going to be a B1G title with the absolute easisest schedule the program would have, a Senior QB, and plenty of returning talent. The result would be losing the first two B1G games of the season and being out of the race for the West before mid October.

PJ Fleck was coming off the best Gopher football season many of us had ever seen. The Gophers were a consensus top 25 pick, an occasional pick to win the West, and I am not sure I read a single preview/prediction that had them lower than 2nd. The result has been losing two rivalry games at home in embarassing fashion and losing a lot of the goodwill that was built up in 2019.

There might be more examples (probably missing a Mason one for sure) but that's 7 times off the top of my head the Gophers have had expectations and all 7 times they failed to meet them. It would be incredibly disappointing not to exceed expectations in one of these years and do something really special...and the Gophers haven't even met the expectation once! The best the program has done in either sport, when there were expectations of success, is Tracy Claeys going 5-4 in the B1G and losing both rivalry games along the way...and that season includes the off the field incident that generated horrible press for the U.

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Wow what a sobering, depressing post...yet so true! Man alive, it’s tough to be a Gopher fan!
 

Very true post...the thing that keeps me going is a lot of those very good years i felt like i had lower expectations when the season started for some reason...could be the year before or whatever can't quite remember.

Anyway i feel like they tend to suck when expectations are high and surprise when you don't expect it.
 

Good post as usual from EG9 - one of the best on here.

It’s an interesting recap throughout recent history. I would argue that we had significant expectations, at least from our fan base, for last year’s football team and we met them.We were coming off a 7-6 season where we finished strong by blowing out Wisky and Georgia Tech. Getting TJ and Winfield back in 2019, when both could have gone pro, was huge for us and led to the best season in a long time.

As for this year, it’s true that every team has faced the same adversity with Covid. But it seems like the teams that have done best have the most continuity from last year - a high number of returning starters, coordinators and position coaches. It sounds like our staff had been expecting a drop off this season already with the losses on defense. We had 4 players drafted on defense - Winfield, Martin, Coughlin and Williamson, plus several other impact players who had been with us for a while. We easily had the biggest loss of talent on defense in one season in a long, long time. Couple this with a new d-line coach, a new db coach and no spring practices, and a drop-off was inevitable. Not to mention a new offensive coordinator.

Bottom line, as fans we overestimated how good this team was going to be this year. It was always going to be a rebuilding year on defense. Adding 2 new position coaches, losing key starters like Jamal Teague and Braelen Oliver, and the effects of attrition from the 2018 class turned this season from a step back to downright ugly.
 

Unfortunately, that is Gopher sports in a nutshell. Ups and downs. Peaks and valleys.

The one Gopher program in the modern era that has been able to produce sustained success was Gopher Men's Hockey. Five national champions and 7 runner-up finishes. and even then, there were dips along the road, including the last few years.

Other than that, every major Gopher program has had periods of success followed by periods of decline. And as EG noted, it's not a gradual decline - when it happens, it's a "falling off the cliff" decline. FB has a big year under Mason - next year goes downhill. Men's BB has a big year, then either the team goes downhill, or there is some NCAA problem, or off-court issues.

and I think in a way, that is harder for fans to deal with. If the FB team or Men's BB would have ever, say, won 2 Conf titles in a 3 or 4 year period, and then went downhill, it would be easier to live with.

But the Gophers haven't even done that. It's been more like, flirt with a breakthrough season, come up a little short, and then go downhill. Like getting a box of Cracker Jacks with no toy surprise. and then, all you are left with in the end is an empty box. that is my Gopher sports metaphor.
 


I choose to remember 11 and 2. We start next year 0 and 0.
Richard thought we were going to win at least another game in the Big TenTournament and sneak in the NCAA last year. I choose to remember beating Louisville in the NCAA.
The programs have been run clean for quite some time...I choose optimism going forward versus whining what might have been. We can't change the past but the future can still be fun!
 

EG#9 said:
It also occurred to me that this has happened with EVERY Gopher football/basketball team I can remember that had expectations going in to a season going back 20 years.
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Good post but you could go back to close to 60 years of this being the case. For me you could start with Lou Hudson breaking his wrist when we had a team that was loaded in basketball and might have played for the national championship. Of course, we would have had to get by Cazzie Russell and Michigan, but with Hudson and Archie Clark we would have had a great shot. And in football, through the 70's with Cal Stoll we were on the doorstep several times but couldn't finish it out. We beat Michigan in that game when they were number 1 in the nation and the next year Paul Giel fires Stoll and replaces him with Joe Salem.

It's been a combination of self-inflicted wounds, bad luck, and circumstance that have piled up the disappointments. Once the disappointments start piling up, it's hard to maintain that atmosphere where people get fired up about a Gopher team. But they will if we could ever string about 3 really good years together. That Final Four team of Clem's (I know, I know); women's basketball with Whalen and McCarville; last year's football team are all proof of the potential. The year's been another kick in the butt, although it's such a weird year I'm not sure it really matters. Yes, winning the Jug and the Pig would have been great, but I'm not sure how much any school can really embrace a championship.

Really a good article on Coney Durr in the Strib today. Brings home how much these players have dealt with as far as the racial strife and then the pandemic on top of that. I think with circumstances and pressure like these players have faced, sheer talent will win out and we're not there yet.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Unfortunately, that is Gopher sports in a nutshell. Ups and downs. Peaks and valleys.

The one Gopher program in the modern era that has been able to produce sustained success was Gopher Men's Hockey. Five national champions and 7 runner-up finishes. and even then, there were dips along the road, including the last few years.

Other than that, every major Gopher program has had periods of success followed by periods of decline. And as EG noted, it's not a gradual decline - when it happens, it's a "falling off the cliff" decline. FB has a big year under Mason - next year goes downhill. Men's BB has a big year, then either the team goes downhill, or there is some NCAA problem, or off-court issues.

and I think in a way, that is harder for fans to deal with. If the FB team or Men's BB would have ever, say, won 2 Conf titles in a 3 or 4 year period, and then went downhill, it would be easier to live with.

But the Gophers haven't even done that. It's been more like, flirt with a breakthrough season, come up a little short, and then go downhill. Like getting a box of Cracker Jacks with no toy surprise. and then, all you are left with in the end is an empty box. that is my Gopher sports metaphor.
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Volleyball has been very good and nationally competitive.

Naturally, last year was one of the best teams Wisconsin has ever had and they were better than us. Both went to the Final Four though, with Wisc going to the championship and getting beat solidly by Stanford. They look to have their best team this coming (spring, now) seasons. Will be interesting to see how the Gophers do this year.
 

I guess the question is...did the teams the preceding year overachieve, or did the following year underachieve?

There were reasons to believe some of those teams you cited overachieved the prior year, such as Minnesota being an underdog in the NCAAs to 12 seed Murray State, or almost losing to 3 non-P5 opponents in 2019 football.
 



I would say that the Men's hockey team has been the most dissapointing out of all of them in recent years. 2017, Dropping 2OT game to Penn State i the Big Ten tournament, then losing in the first round of the NCAA tourney to NotreDame after having a 2-1 3rd period lead. Then following up that, the next season ended with 4 straight losses to Penn State and they ended up missing the NCAA tourney by the smallest margin imaginable to UM-Duluth I believe.
They have the biggest expectations this year, starting the season 4-0 and a #8 ranking (which is loo quite frankly). Time will tell how it ends...
 

I hope we can see sustained success with the Gophers eventually...Would hate to have to wait 3 - 4 years for another incredible season because we can't have a consistent stock of great players. Definitely seeing it this year on the defense.
 

I’m making no judgments on this year. Consider it an exhibition season. Not sure that they should be playing at all but it has been a nice escape when they do play.
 

MplsGopher said:
Volleyball has been very good and nationally competitive.

Naturally, last year was one of the best teams Wisconsin has ever had and they were better than us. Both went to the Final Four though, with Wisc going to the championship and getting beat solidly by Stanford. They look to have their best team this coming (spring, now) seasons. Will be interesting to see how the Gophers do this year.
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Jon Anderson and the baseball team has also been consistently outstanding for a team that plays in the north. The man does hold the record for overall wins and conference wins while coaching at a Big Ten university after all.

It seems like they are always competing in the regular season or B10 tourney w an ace and solid number two. Disappointing season for them is when they are not in the thick of it come the last series or two of the season which really says something.
 



Well, one thing is for certain, when you elevate your play one year, it doesn't mean anything for the following year (or very little).

Especially when you get close to being elite.
Getting peak years out of 3 star players two consecutive years can be tough. They can only peak for so long.

That's why you seem similar with the Missouri's, Texas A&M's, etc., when they peak. They have a peak year and recruiting improves, but it's no guarantee your going to be top 10 the next year.

I think a lot of cities feel this way. No one's expectations are ever met, except for New England Patriot fans and the Yankees of the late 90's.
 

The problem is that we have had so few opportunities. The misses are easy to remember. When you become a contender every year, the wins take care of themselves. We need to be more consistent. I hope that what we are building now will put us in the “championship goes through Minnesota,” position, most years.
 

Joe Hardy said:
The problem is that we have had so few opportunities. The misses are easy to remember. When you become a contender every year, the wins take care of themselves. We need to be more consistent. I hope that what we are building now will put us in the “championship goes through Minnesota,” position, most years.
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Only hiring great coaches brings sustainable success.The expectations are much higher for hockey. For a long time hockey has had far greater success, even in down periods. You do not even have to win anything in football or basketball to keep your job here.
 

John Galt said:
Good post as usual from EG9 - one of the best on here.

It’s an interesting recap throughout recent history. I would argue that we had significant expectations, at least from our fan base, for last year’s football team and we met them.We were coming off a 7-6 season where we finished strong by blowing out Wisky and Georgia Tech. Getting TJ and Winfield back in 2019, when both could have gone pro, was huge for us and led to the best season in a long time.

As for this year, it’s true that every team has faced the same adversity with Covid. But it seems like the teams that have done best have the most continuity from last year - a high number of returning starters, coordinators and position coaches. It sounds like our staff had been expecting a drop off this season already with the losses on defense. We had 4 players drafted on defense - Winfield, Martin, Coughlin and Williamson, plus several other impact players who had been with us for a while. We easily had the biggest loss of talent on defense in one season in a long, long time. Couple this with a new d-line coach, a new db coach and no spring practices, and a drop-off was inevitable. Not to mention a new offensive coordinator.

Bottom line, as fans we overestimated how good this team was going to be this year. It was always going to be a rebuilding year on defense. Adding 2 new position coaches, losing key starters like Jamal Teague and Braelen Oliver, and the effects of attrition from the 2018 class turned this season from a step back to downright ugly.
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I was personally apprehensive about this football season both because of the past history I outlined and the loss of all/most of the playmakers on defense. That said, the media and the bookmakers knew what we were losing and they all came to the same conclusion that we were the 2nd most likely team to win the West. While it's true a drop off on defense was inveitable, I'd argue there was a real chance to be better on offense. We returned a ton on offense and you'd think that Morgan being a veteran QB with a lot of confidence after going 11-2 as a starter the previous year would be poised to take a step forward. I believe Maryland is comically young this year. Northwestern is starting a transfer QB and lost bascially all the production (what little they had) at WR from the previous year. Iowa has a first year starting QB who is quite terrible and lost a few draft picks including a first round OT in Wirfs. Wisconsin's QB got hurt before the season and they had no dynamic back in the system to replace Taylor while also losing their top WR to the draft. Even a team like MSU, I expected them to be the 14th best team in the B1G with how late they made a coaching change and they got wins over Michigan and Northwestern. I guess I don't see the Gophers challenges as more significant than many others around the B1G in dealing with personnel losses and change in general. I feel like sometimes we give a pass to Minnesota programs (as a fan base) for anything that can be perceived as bad luck or unfortunate and we're not aware that many other programs simply overcome these challenges. I totally agree with you about continuity helping (Wisconsin and Iowa have had the same systems forever) but I believe Northwestern installed a brand new offense with a new OC and will win the West this year.

Regardless, it would be nice to see the Gophers ranked to begin a season and feel like they could be better than that ranking instead of worrying that another disappointment is coming.
 

EG#9 said:
I was personally apprehensive about this football season both because of the past history I outlined and the loss of all/most of the playmakers on defense. That said, the media and the bookmakers knew what we were losing and they all came to the same conclusion that we were the 2nd most likely team to win the West. While it's true a drop off on defense was inveitable, I'd argue there was a real chance to be better on offense. We returned a ton on offense and you'd think that Morgan being a veteran QB with a lot of confidence after going 11-2 as a starter the previous year would be poised to take a step forward. I believe Maryland is comically young this year. Northwestern is starting a transfer QB and lost bascially all the production (what little they had) at WR from the previous year. Iowa has a first year starting QB who is quite terrible and lost a few draft picks including a first round OT in Wirfs. Wisconsin's QB got hurt before the season and they had no dynamic back in the system to replace Taylor while also losing their top WR to the draft. Even a team like MSU, I expected them to be the 14th best team in the B1G with how late they made a coaching change and they got wins over Michigan and Northwestern. I guess I don't see the Gophers challenges as more significant than many others around the B1G in dealing with personnel losses and change in general. I feel like sometimes we give a pass to Minnesota programs (as a fan base) for anything that can be perceived as bad luck or unfortunate and we're not aware that many other programs simply overcome these challenges. I totally agree with you about continuity helping (Wisconsin and Iowa have had the same systems forever) but I believe Northwestern installed a brand new offense with a new OC and will win the West this year.

Regardless, it would be nice to see the Gophers ranked to begin a season and feel like they could be better than that ranking instead of worrying that another disappointment is coming.
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Bolded: Fleck doomed any chance of that the moment he hired Sanford.
 

When I get pissy and start pouting about what I thought would happen this year and what is actually happening, I like to come back to PJ's quote "in bad teams-nobody leads, average teams-coaches lead, elite teams-players lead" or something like that. I think they lost so much of that player leadership from last year, and they are developing the next generation of player leadership. The problem is they have not had sustained and consistent (10+ years) successful recruiting and on field results.
PJ is building that. This was a program that sucked for the better part of 6 decades (yes, some success sprinkled in), but It takes time. I don't like what the defense is doing, and the offense is frustrating at times because of the talent they have, but I have to have faith in the long term coaching and development. I also need to remember that I know absolutely nothing about how to not only run a major college football program, but also to basically build it. Yes Jerry started things and the cupboard was not bare when PJ took over, but as the overall program has been, I need to remind myself that this needs patience.

My expectations have not been met this year, but I still have confidence in the overall program breaking this streak of almost never backing up good years with another good year. To make a short story long, I just have a gut feeling things are definitely on the upswing and things will change for the better. And not only above .500 conference record; I mean conference title implications. They have been close a few times in the not so distant past.
 

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