Gopher Football
It’s hard to sugarcoat this loss. Glen Mason is now 0-3 in road games against Indiana and this may be the worst of the three. You could make excuses for the other losses. The 1998 20-19 loss could be blamed on bad field conditions that resulted in Minnesota missing two extra points and a short field goal miss. The loss in 2000 was a result in large part to Antwaan Randle-El’s athleticism and maybe a letdown by the Gophers after just beating Ohio State. There were no such excuses today.
And it gets worse. This loss was not the result of a few fluky plays. Indiana dominated in most aspects of the game and deserved the win. The statistics bear that out. Indiana had 23 first downs to the Gophers’ 16 and it was a rare game that the opponent out gained the Gophers on the ground (238 yards to 169). The one turnover in the game, a Bryan Cupito interception, was returned for a touchdown. And maybe the bigest stat was the nine Minnesota penalties, many of which were in critical situations in the second half which ended any hope of a late comeback.
One of the few bright spots for the Gophers was that Laurence Maroney went over 1,000 yards rushing, but Maroney’s 86 rushing yards in the game was still sub par for him. Also, give some credit to the Gopher defense that did about all we can expect of them, especially with the way the offense and special teams were sputtering today. They were put in some difficult spots like when Rhys Lloyd did not get a first down on a fake punt and yet the defense held.
Clearly this season is looking like 2000 all over again. Just like in 2000, the Gophers were coming off a 5-3 Big Ten season and hopes were high going into the season. What happened in both 2000 and 2004 is inconsistency that is hard to fathom. Four years ago the Gophers beat No. 6 Ohio State for their first win in Ohio Stadium since 1949 and they suffered their first-ever loss to an MAC team in losing to Ohio at home. This year there have been similar wild swings from one week to the next, check the last three weeks. The only constant has been the poor play by the Gophers on the road, with the exception of the Colorado State game.
So where do we go from here? Well, next week doesn’t look pretty since it’s another road game against unbeaten Wisconsin. Mason usually gets his players to regroup after a dud like this one today. That should allow the Gophers to make a game of it early, but most likely the wheels will come off at some point and that will be it. Who knows what Gopher squad will show up against Iowa which has had it’s own problems with consistency this season, though on a smaller scale than the Gophers.
This season still isn’t totally lost for the Gophers. A total collapse by the team that results in the same 6-6 record as 2000 would be very troubling. Winning two of the next three (assuming the Gophers do get to a bowl) would salvage something. It would also stop a bad trend that has followed Glen Mason from Kansas. Mason had two very good seasons at Kansas. In 1995 his team finished second in the conference with a 10-2 record and in 1992 they finished third with a 8-4 record. The year following both of those seasons Mason’s club ended up with losing seasons. Here at Minnesota the same trend could continue. After the 8-4 season in 1999 and the 10-3 campaign last year, the Gophers could end up with six wins to follow up both of those seasons, not significantly better than Mason’s 4-7 record in ’96 and 5-7 record in ’93.
I don’t know enough about Mason’s Kansas teams comment on their ups and downs. However, in regards to this year’s — and the “˜00 team for that matter — this inconsistency could have been avoided. There was little doubt that Minnesota put the more talented team on the field today, but the Hoosiers clearly played like the better team. It’s on the coaches’ shoulders to figure out how to get this team to play more consistent from week to week and from one season to the next.