Iceland12
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This Gophers football season has a backloaded slate, with five tough opponents — Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Northwestern and Wisconsin — to finish the season. What will P.J. Fleck’s first Gophers team look like after three-plus hours wrestling the Badgers on Nov. 25, with 12 games behind them?
That requires guesswork, and the guesses this month have been all over the map, with USA Today forecasting a 4-8 mark with two Big Ten wins, to Athlon Sports’ J.P. Scott having the Gophers starting 8-0 and winning the Big Ten West.
We don’t know the answer, but we do know how we can all start that guesswork, by taking a game-by-game look at what’s ahead.
Fleck brought the “Row the Boat” mantra to Minnesota, and in less than a week we’ll begin to see if this boat can float for the 12 weeks between Buffalo on Thursday and Wisconsin at TCF Bank Stadium in late November.
Aug. 31 vs. Buffalo, 6 p.m.
The skinny: Lance Leipold, who won six Division III titles in eight years as coach of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has found the going tough at Buffalo. The Bulls might have bottomed out last year, going 2-10 and 1-7 in the Mid-American Conference.
The boat floats if: Conor Rhoda and Demry Croft are efficient. That’s the biggest thing fans should want to see from the co-starters at QB in a game in which the Gophers are favored by 26½ points. Fleck’s Western Michigan team throttled the Bulls 38-0 last year. And, oh yeah, he still could have some motivation from his first season at WMU, when Buffalo spanked his Broncos 33-rip.
The boat sinks if: Buffalo hangs with the Gophers for more than the first half...
That requires guesswork, and the guesses this month have been all over the map, with USA Today forecasting a 4-8 mark with two Big Ten wins, to Athlon Sports’ J.P. Scott having the Gophers starting 8-0 and winning the Big Ten West.
We don’t know the answer, but we do know how we can all start that guesswork, by taking a game-by-game look at what’s ahead.
Fleck brought the “Row the Boat” mantra to Minnesota, and in less than a week we’ll begin to see if this boat can float for the 12 weeks between Buffalo on Thursday and Wisconsin at TCF Bank Stadium in late November.
Aug. 31 vs. Buffalo, 6 p.m.
The skinny: Lance Leipold, who won six Division III titles in eight years as coach of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has found the going tough at Buffalo. The Bulls might have bottomed out last year, going 2-10 and 1-7 in the Mid-American Conference.
The boat floats if: Conor Rhoda and Demry Croft are efficient. That’s the biggest thing fans should want to see from the co-starters at QB in a game in which the Gophers are favored by 26½ points. Fleck’s Western Michigan team throttled the Bulls 38-0 last year. And, oh yeah, he still could have some motivation from his first season at WMU, when Buffalo spanked his Broncos 33-rip.
The boat sinks if: Buffalo hangs with the Gophers for more than the first half...