MEGAN DAVIS: Hello Gopher fans. It’s Megan Davis.
ATTICUS MARSE: And Atticus Marse.
DAVIS: With the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to The Gold Standard, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota sports.
I know that college football’s always played on Saturday, but I love doing the victory Monday thing. Victory Sunday does not sound as fun.
The Gophers won their homecoming game against Purdue 27-20, a very close game until literally the fourth quarter. Koi Perich got a pick six and kind of sealed the deal for the Gophers. Good to see him back getting interceptions. That’s always fun.
I will say the Purdue quarterback, Ryan Browne, loves to throw an interception. He’s thrown one every single game, and he had three interceptions that night, and that definitely helped the Gophers get a win. It was four to one on turnovers, and that’s kind of what P.J. Fleck has really just been stressing over the past couple games.
Where it’s just, how can we turn the ball over? That seems to be their number one kind of focus, and they didn’t do it against Ohio State. I don’t know if I’d call this a bounce back from the Ohio State game. It was a little shaky. Opinions?
MARSE: This is a decent Big Ten school that we should beat and we made it like a fun game. Which is fun for like.
DAVIS: For like alumni and stuff, but like.
MARSE: Yeah. A college student spectator loves a close football game, but like a diehard Minnesota football fan sees them barely beat Purdue.
DAVIS: It wasn’t a convincing win, especially with the run game 30 yards to 253.
MARSE: Oof, I can feel that through my screen.
DAVIS: Darius Taylor is back. Fantastic. Obviously, still getting acclimated a little bit.
MARSE: Yeah.
DAVIS: I mean, you know, he had that hamstring injury he returned pretty quickly, could be lingering. A lot of players on the O-line, P.J. Fleck is moving them around. He wants to find where they fit best and it’s kind of becoming apparent that who knows, like they’re really struggling and you can’t get a good run game if your O-line is crumbling every single time.
MARSE: Drake Lindsey had a decent game again too. 232 yards, two touchdowns a pick. It was fine.
DAVIS: The amount of time it’s taking the Gophers to kind of adjust to the other team is always surprising, especially on defense. Purdue started out great. They were on a roll. Against Rutgers it took until halftime for our defensive coordinator, Danny Collins, to kind of figure out how he was going to attack the team.
I think you saw it again in this Purdue game where it just took the Gophers longer than expected to figure out what the other team was going to do. Yes, they score a lot of points. They just have a really bad defense, and so for the Gophers to come out and not have really much production at all was just kind of a little bit shocking.
MARSE: Danny Collins, it’s like this is his first college DC job.
DAVIS: This is his first year as defensive coordinator.
MARSE: This is his first year as defensive coordinator. OK.
DAVIS: He used to be a safeties coach before this.
MARSE: Yeah. I mean, making that adjustment to be a defensive coordinator from being like a positional coach is massive, especially at the FBS level. I can kinda cut him like some slack there.
DAVIS: I mean, Nebraska’s gonna be a tough team. It’s the Big Ten. You got a lot of rough games to go through, and P.J. Fleck wants to hold onto this idea that this is a team that can compete. We’re weeks into this now, and there’s been no standout kind of performances.
MARSE: Nebraska is ranked 25 so the Gophers actually get to face off against Patrick Mahomes next Friday. Dylan Raiola, if you listeners don’t know, is a known Patrick Mahomes impersonator. So I encourage anyone listening to please look that up for yourself. Because it’s hilarious. But if the Gophers win this game against Nebraska, I think that sets the tone for the rest of the year where it’s gonna go.
You either win this game you come out five and two going into the rest of Big Ten play, or four and three, and then you have Oregon in two weeks. At that point, you’re trying to weigh whether or not you’re gonna be over 500. This is a massive turning point game.
Getting a ranked win also is just something I think the Gophers should strive to do every single year if they want to be a program that’s really wanting to compete at a higher level, you have to be able to beat ranked opponents. Obviously, you’re not gonna beat number one Ohio State, but beating Nebraska, a lower end, AP Top 25 team would be a massive momentum push going into Iowa.
The Gopher hockey team split a series with Boston College, which is good to see after they split with Michigan Tech. The first game was a really tight game. I was at that game and it was really tense atmosphere the whole time. It was really more of a 1-2 loss because they had an empty netter right at the end.
But it was a promising start to the series. The next game in the series on Friday, the Gophers broke their curse of losing penalty shootouts and actually won a shootout. Boston College is ranked 11. The Gophers were ranked 12. I think that was a really good bounce back. That’s a feel good game for the Gophers going into play North Dakota.
DAVIS: Number three, ranked women’s hockey swept St. Cloud State. Another great win for the Gophers women’s hockey. They have been on a roll.
MARSE: Yeah, they play Ohio State this weekend at home, and then they play Duluth. They play Wisconsin the week after that.
DAVIS: The women’s Ohio State team is ranked number two. Hopefully they could win that series. Speaking of Ohio State, volleyball just swept them and they’ve been having a really strong performance from freshmen.
There’s been a lot of injuries on the volleyball team recently, and so a lot of the recruitment class is actually getting a lot more play than maybe they thought at the beginning of the season, and they’re all stepping up to the plate. Unfortunately, injuries have really plagued the juniors and seniors of the team, and I’m glad that the freshmen have really, you know, proved that this team is still in the race and they’re still competing.
MARSE: Mini wrestling season preview from Atticus, avid Minnesota wrestling fan. Intermat preseason rankings came out a little bit ago and I realize we haven’t talked about that yet. Gophers are coming in at number 11 for tournament rankings and dual rankings this year.
Obviously no big name Gable Steveson this year, but our under 20 World Champion, Max McEnelly, sophomore, is ranked number one at 184 pounds. He got a real shot at that national title last year, lost in the championship match. Heartbreaking.
But it’s nice for Gopher wrestling to immediately have another superstar right after Gable retired, but I actually saw him in Bierman the other day lifting weights. But he actually had his first lower level UFC fight and he’s being coached by Jon Jones. But no wrestling they’re a very solid all around team, they’ve got lots of experience. Be on the watch out, I’ll be there.
DAVIS: You’ll be there.
MARSE: Me and Goldy chilling. We would go to the pro sports corner at some point, but the Vikings have a bye week. Minnesota United had an off week with the international break, the Lynx got done, the Timberwolves haven’t got started and the Twins are not playing playoff baseball. We’re gonna, we’re not gonna go to the pro sports corner.
DAVIS: This episode is by Megan Davis.
MARSE: And Atticus Marse.
DAVIS: And produced by Ceci Heinen and Atticus Marse. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at [email protected] with any questions, comments or concerns.
DAVIS: I’m Megan Davis.
MARSE: And I’m Atticus Marse.
DAVIS: And this has been the Gold Standard.
