Reusse: Volleyball is most successful of Gophers sports

[BleedGopher]

per Reusse:

The most successful sport at the university — from Hebert’s arrival in 1996 to Hugh McCutcheon’s Gophers of today — has been volleyball.

Men’s hockey? There are 59 Division I programs. Women’s hockey? There are 35. Wrestling? There are 79.

There are 294 in women’s volleyball. Most important, there are a dozen teams in the Big Ten cutting each other’s throats for 10 consecutive weeks from late September until the end of November.

The Gophers will be in their 17th NCAA tournament in 18 years when they host first- and second-round matches at the Sports Pavilion on Friday and Saturday.

They have been in three Final Fours and lost in the title match in 2004.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/234691381.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue

Go Gophers!!

 

[IDESPISEEVERYTHINGWI]

IMO, there has to be National Championships for this title. The wrestling team has 3 titles in about the same time frame and has been consistently in the hunt. This doesn't include the non-NCAA recognized dual meet championships.

 

[Gophers7NatTitlesBadgers0]

Reusse has fallen way off the wagon. It's the only explanation for such a blatantly stupid comment

 

[Maximus]

If men's basketball in the last 12 years had a NCAA runner up finish, 3 Final Fours, 5 Elite Eights, 8 Sweet Sixteens, 14 All-Americans and this year has the fourth best recruiting class in the nation out of roughly 300 DIVISION I teams....you'd consider that less impressive than the wrestlers beating out 50-60 programs with an elite recruiting base in their backyard or women's hockey beating out 30-40 programs in a sport where only 3 teams have won a national title?

Competing toe-to-toe in VOLLEYBALL against UCLA, Stanford, Florida, Texas?

A sport like softball gets castoffs from Arizona, Texas and California on occasion. The volleyball team brings in absolute elite talent from those states along with South America.

Also, wrestling has not been consistently in the hunt with an 8th place, 5th, 10th, 7th, 7th at nationals on the resume in the last 10 years. That's pretty shameful for this program in this state with so few teams.

 

[Iceland12]

If men's basketball in the last 12 years had a NCAA runner up finish, 3 Final Fours, 5 Elite Eights, 8 Sweet Sixteens, 14 All-Americans and this year has the fourth best recruiting class in the nation out of roughly 300 DIVISION I teams....you'd consider that less impressive than the wrestlers beating out 50-60 programs with an elite recruiting base in their backyard or women's hockey beating out 30-40 programs in a sport where only 3 teams have won a national title?

Competing toe-to-toe in VOLLEYBALL against UCLA, Stanford, Florida, Texas?

A sport like softball gets castoffs from Arizona, Texas and California on occasion. The volleyball team brings in absolute elite talent from those states along with South America.

Also, wrestling has not been consistently in the hunt with an 8th place, 5th, 10th, 7th, 7th at nationals on the resume in the last 10 years. That's pretty shameful for this program in this state with so few teams.

Didn't know this either.

Palmer transferred from Santa Clara University, where, she said, crowds were much smaller and filled mostly with family and friends. Minnesota's fan base, she said, pulls in a wide variety of people from all over the state.

The Gophers have averaged crowds of 4,200 for home matches this fall. That ranks third in the nation behind Hawaii (6,685) and Nebraska (4,287).

Minnesota also ranked third last season with an average of 3,316.

All-Big Ten middle blocker Tori Dixon, a 6-foot-3 senior from Burnsville, has been watching Gophers volleyball since she was a fourth-grader. She said nothing compares to the support her team gets from its fans.

When the Gophers are on the road, Dixon said, they have to create their own energy on the court. That's not the case when they're in the Pavilion.

"When we play at home, there's already some sort of hype around it, so we don't have to get pumped up because everyone's doing that for us," Dixon said. "We can just worry about playing volleyball."

http://www.twincities.com/gophers/c...=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com

 

[PartoPitinosPosse]

Of course Reusse would look at it in such a simplistic way, he has to or he can't manipulate the argument in a way that allows him to bash all the successful Men's sports at the U, like Hockey and Wrestling. But no one will ever use the same logic when comparing WVB with college football. There are only 126 Div 1A teams in college football, almost a third as many teams as there are in women's college vb. Looking at it with his logic, you'd have to equate any women's vb team that made the Field of 64 as being as accomplished as any cfb team that made the Top 25.
But no one looks at things that way. Making the Top 25 of the cfb rankings is a big deal, while almost no one cares if a team makes a 64 team NCAA tournament in any sport, other than Men's college basketball of course.
So its not accurate to just compare the number of teams competing in any given sport, especially when you consider that a vast majority of the teams that compete in the sports with 250+ teams don't have any chance of ever winning a National Championship, or even making a Final Four, whereas a much smaller percentage of teams in the sports with only 79 or 59 or 35 teams are ones with absolutely no chance of winning a Title or making a Final Four.

But, giving Reusse the benefit of the doubt and taking into account the number of teams in each of the sports, the wrestling team still has to be considered the most successful of all the athletic programs at UMn. If this year is being counted as it seems to be, UMn's wrestling team will have finished in the Top Ten 17 straight years and in the Top Eight 16 of the last 17 years. Seeing as there are 4 times as many VB teams as Wrestling teams, a Top 8 finish in Wrestling is at least equivalent to making the final 32 in Women's VB, which the Gopher VB team only accomplished 15 times. Accordingly making the Top 4 in Wrestling would be equivalent to making the Sweet 16 in Women's VB. The Wrestling team had 11 Top 4 finishes(they were all at least top 3 actually) while the Women's VB team had 10 Sweet 16 seasons. Accordingly making the Top 2 in Wrestling would be equivalent to making the Elite 8 in VB. The Wrestling team had 8 Top 2 finishes to the VB teams 5 Elite 8 or better finishes. And this season the VB team could get to the Elite 8 again, where realistically they will probably lose to PSU, and the Wrestling team is ranked #2 behind, go figure, PSU again, so this year could be a wash if it finishes out the way it stands right now.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big time supporter of the Women's VB team and can't wait until they finally get their first Natl Title. I'm proud that we come close to leading the nation in attendance and that our VB alum do so well after leaving Minnesota. But credit should be given where credit is due and J Robinson started about where Hebert started with the VB program and both built their programs into Nationally Elite programs, with the difference being that Robinson did just a little bit better when you look at the numbers the way Reusse would have us look at them, with the Women's Hockey program probably coming in 3rd while being severely limited in what they can actually achieve looking at it the way Reusse would have us look at them, for with so few teams competing, the women's team has to win 2 National Titles for every one the men's team wins, and a Title for every Elite 8 the VB team makes.

 

[husker70]

Hey fuldahut, Gopher Women's Hockey maybe you missed them.