Bubble Burst

With the Gophers 55-69 loss to Indiana tonight, the bubble is really burst now for the men's basketball team. In my opinion, I thought it was over with the loss to Purdue last week. Others were still convinced that we still had an outside chance if we won against OSU, Indiana, and Illinois, and then beat Michigan State in the Big Ten Tournament. I'm sure there will still be others out there saying we can still get in if we pull off two wins in the conference tourney. I'm preparing for the NIT.

I'm very impressed with their season overall. This is the most interesting season since the 1997 Final Four season that I'm pretty sure happened, but I can't find any official record of it. Sure, there was the 2005 season when Vince Grier led us to an NCAA bid, but they caught everybody by surprise after the horrid season with K-Hump the year before. I didn't really take notice until the end of February. This was just in time to get all hyped up just to see them fall to Iowa State in the first round.

The buzz has been growing ever since last March when Tubby Smith was announced as the new head coach. Bringing in a coach of this caliber will do that. Nobody knew what to expect. This was a team that only managed nine wins the season before, so the bar was set pretty low. I'm guessing we would have all been happy with a .500 season, but that was being cautiously optimistic. We were led by 3 seniors who were all solid but unspectacular. We lost two players who decided to transfer out. We had one incoming freshman who was thought to be nothing but a three point shooter and another incoming freshman who almost didn't make it into school. To be sitting here with a chance to finish with a .500 season in the Big Ten is a very promising improvement.

I look forward to seeing these last few games against in the Big Ten and then presumably the NIT. I look even more forward to the next season where we'll get to see Tubby's first recruiting class in action. So far, we have a well rounded class with 3 high schoolers and 2 JUCO's. It doesn't end there, either. Tubby is recruiting two more high school players to round out the class. There will be anywhere between 5-7 fresh faces wearing the Maroon and Gold next season. I hope to party like it's 1997 all over again, which means I'll be strapping on my Doc Martins and cargo pants while grooving to the catchy sounds of Savage Garden on my Sony Discman.