Been here, done that. I voted for #21-25. Combine the Blue Bloods that get the automatic votes somewhere in the Top 10-20 depending on what they are bringing back and how good their most recent recruiting class got rated. Gophers? Since we are rarely bringing in any 4 Star recruits, they are all hit and miss prospects that will year in and year out need to prove themselves. Until we start bringing in Top 10-20 ranked recruiting classes, we'll never be given the benefit of the doubt to start the year, which is just fine with me. Had we beat either Iowa or Wisc and not embarrassed ourselves against OSU, we'd have finished very high in the rankings and that may have carried over some into next year? But we lost a ton of the positive vibe we had going when we lost both of those two games. We got a lot of that vibe back with the win over a very good Auburn team. But as much as Fleck is starting to make people into believers, and not just outside of Minnesota, but he had a lot of unbelievers right here in the state, the double wammy of losing to BOTH Iowa and Wisconsin, just hurt too much. PSU and Auburn were big huge steps in the right direction, and because of those wins, we could have gotten away with losing ONE of those two games vs Iowa/Wisc, but not them both.
So now, looking to next year, we lose a lot on defense, and the few we lose on offense are very good, so I'm afraid I can't see us getting a lot of love going into the season. I think people will come around a little faster than they did this year if we do start out by stringing a couple wins together, and then we might even shoot up the rankings kind of quickly, but same as this year, any losses to the likes of an Iowa or Wisconsin, etc., will drop us right back down towards the bottom of the Top 25 rankings.
