Less than 72 hours after Doug Woog ended his 14-year tenure as Gophers men's hockey coach, the University introduced his replacement. After meeting with the search committee on Thursday night, Don Lucia...

With the spotlights glaring and tape recorders rolling, Doug Woog hesitated for a moment before joining men's athletics director Mark Dienhart at the table where he would announce his retirement as Gophers...

Doug Woog made a habit of beating up on the WCHA, posting a career winning percentage of more than .600 against every other team currently in the league. But rather than root for Woog's resignation, which...

High-strung University student Ronny Sassbottom had been saying something like this might happen for a long time, but it wasn't until the Thursday preceding a previous Friday that his warnings were finally...

When a long-hitting 19-year-old stepped out of the Australian outback to win the NCAA championship in May, less than five months after arriving in the United States, the short list college golf's best...

Gophers defenseman Ben Clymer, who would have entered this season as one of college hockey's top players at his position, informed the Minnesota coaching staff last week that he would forego his remaining...

Minnesota running back Byron Evans is accused of assaulting a former girlfriend, his second arrest in four months. Evans, 22, a redshirt junior from Texas City, Texas, pleaded innocent last month in Hennepin...

CHICAGO -- Thanks to the Big Ten's convoluted scheduling process, Wisconsin running back Ron Dayne and Ohio State linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer -- two of the nation's premier players at their respective...

Gophers forward Quincy Lewis and Connecticut guard Khalid El-Amin of Minneapolis were among the 12 players named Thursday to the USA Basketball Goodwill Games team. Lewis is one of four Big Ten players...

After the Gophers men's hockey team suffered a sub-par season, coach Doug Woog headed into the off-season hoping his golf game might not do the same. He was wrong. Woog the golfer continues to wallow...

Aggressive hockey is back in Minneapolis. Fueled by the sensual tones of Barry White and pre-game meals of lettuce and unsweetened tea, the Ice Pimps have lit a fire under the rear end of the University...

This won't do much to quiet those Tiger Woods comparisons. Long-hitting Gophers golfer James McLean, a 19-year-old freshman from Wahgunjah, Australia, who's been in the United States for just five months,...

It was 69 years in coming, but former Minneapolis Lakers great Vern Mikkelsen finally got his chance. He made the most of it. Mikkelsen and former Gophers and Lakers coach John Kundla visited with a group...

What began as a fledgling club program 30 years ago is now a full-fledged member of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. Despite rumors in recent weeks that Mankato State's bid for WCHA membership...

After a storied college and professional hockey playing career, John Mariucci took over as coach of the Gophers hockey team in 1952. He helped turn an average program into a perennial national contender,...

As their new coach walked through the door and into the locker room in the basement of the Sports Pavilion, a month of anticipation boiled over into a frenzy of excitement. Finally, members of the Gophers...

Former Gophers women's basketball player Lynda Hass said "personality conflicts" with the coaching staff led to her decision to ask women's athletics director Chris Voelz for a release from her scholarship. "Things...

DULUTH, Minn. -- Sounding hoarse and looking spent, Gophers men's hockey coach Doug Woog hesitated for a long moment before saying that no, he'd never been through a loss like this. "I'm thinking," Woog...

When the Gophers men's hockey team last went on the road for the first round of the playoffs, senior co-captain Casey Hankinson couldn't walk across the living room, much less streak down a sheet of ice. That...

It's not quite a tournament on the scale of the NCAA men's basketball free-for-all, but the WCHA postseason begins on Friday with five best-of-three series. The top five teams in regular season play --...

and Tim Klobuchar CHICAGO -- The Gophers-Northwestern game that opened the inaugural Big Ten tournament didn't exactly get the conference's new baby off to a rousing start. There were more empty seats...

CHICAGO -- The first game of the inaugural Big Ten Tournament served not only to kick off what could become an early March tradition, but also to debut the Sam and Quincy Show, with your hosts, Sam Jacobson...

For the first time in 12 years, Mariucci Arena will not be the site of a postseason series. And while that will surely leave some egos bruised, the pocketbooks of both the Minnesota athletics department...

Those who didn't get the chance to see it on any of the multiple airings of ESPN's SportsCenter on Sunday night and Monday morning missed a doozy. Dave Spehar's first-period goal on Friday against Colorado...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- In 1806, when Zebulon Pike attempted to reach the mountain peak that would later bear his name, he said, "It can't be done." The Gophers men's hockey team must know how ol' Zeb...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- His four goals and an assist against Colorado College on Saturday may not have earned Gophers junior Wyatt Smith the win he wanted, but they did get him a longer shower. Smith...

A season ago, the Gophers men's hockey team returned home from its series with Colorado College with a win and a tie. Those three points propelled Minnesota to a final-weekend showdown with Wisconsin,...

North Dakota effectively locked up its second straight WCHA title over the weekend, sweeping at Denver while second-place Wisconsin and St. Cloud State were both swept. UND now has an eight-point lead...

His senior season has been well below expectations, but in recent weeks Gophers goaltender Steve DeBus has begun to make the best of a bad situation. Against Wisconsin early this month, he limited the...

Start with figure skating, then throw out the sequined outfits, the triple lutzes and the teary adolescents, and there you have it: This weekend in Gophers men's hockey. Minnesota's opponent, Alaska-Anchorage,...

If you're looking for a fun way to get a Gophers men's hockey player to demonstrate his checking technique, mention that he's the one of the few players to avoid the injury bug. Then turn, face the wall...

Alaska-Anchorage coach Dean Talafous has heard it all before. During his first head coaching stint, at Division III Wisconsin-River Falls in the mid-80s, fans criticized Talafous for coaching a slow-down,...

With little more than a month remaining in the 1996-97 season, the Wisconsin men's hockey team was tied for second place. But an onslaught of injuries caught up with the Badgers, and they didn't win a...

It may go down as one of the more embarrassing losses in recent Gophers history, during a season in which there have been several. But after surrendering a three-goal first-period lead by allowing North...

GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- If it had any hope of earning a split in a weekend series with North Dakota, the Gophers men's hockey team knew it had to avoid the same sorry start that decided the opener, a 4-2...

GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- Steve DeBus didn't deserve his fate this weekend. The Gophers men's hockey team lost a pair of games at North Dakota, an outcome that's become something of a tradition over the past...

The Gophers' Dave Spehar, then with Duluth East, was the sniper -- shrewd and swift. Apple Valley goaltender Karl Goehring, now a freshman at North Dakota, was small of stature, but positively Herculean...

The Gophers men's hockey team did North Dakota a big favor last weekend by sweeping Wisconsin and knocking it out of first place. But the Sioux aren't likely to return that favor and allow themselves...

Gophers goaltender Steve DeBus received his second Defensive Player of the Week award of the season on Monday in return for his stellar weekend against Wisconsin. He stopped 54 of 55 shots in the Gophers'...

This was no Thrilla in Manila, no Rumble in the Jungle. No butterflies were afloat and no bees were a-stinging. But the Gophers men's hockey team did play a decent Muhammad Ali to Wisconsin's Joe Frazier...

History can be the most formidable of foes. Wisconsin learned that lesson -- again -- this weekend, as the Gophers men's hockey team swept the series soundly and surely, winning 4-1 and 7-0 and pushing...

The Gophers men's hockey team is reeling. Minnesota is 17 points behind first-place Wisconsin in the WCHA, coming off a sweep by Michigan Tech and playing without its captain. And here's coach Doug Woog,...

While North Dakota was busy beating up on Mankato State, Wisconsin kept up with its winning ways over the weekend. The Badgers swept Alaska-Anchorage, winning 2-1 and 3-1, to take over sole possession...

The rivalry between the Gophers men's hockey team and Michigan Tech is nearly 70 years old, but it's hard to believe a couple of old acquaintances could stay angry for so long. The Huskies whipped Minnesota...

HOUGHTON, Mich. -- For a few short days in late January, the Gophers men's hockey team was back. The we're-better-than-our-record refrain was beginning to sound reasonable. Goals were coming in bunches....

HOUGHTON, Mich. -- It's Winter Carnival time at Michigan Tech, which means behemoth ice sculptures fill the front yards of the school's fraternities and sororities in celebration of the majesty of the...

Getting hit upside the head by a flying puck might sting a little, and a skate blade cut across the jugular will probably bleed. But these examples pale in comparison to the understatement that the race...

Casey Hankinson is in bad shape, but my, what a humanitarian. The Gophers men's hockey captain was slowed by a hip pointer and a nasty case of the flu last week. And the sprained left thumb he suffered...

If only we could get inside the mind of Minnesota-Duluth men's hockey coach Mike Sertich and wander around for awhile. Perhaps then we could see what he meant when he derided the Gophers' "arrogance"...

Las Vegas bookmakers have been known to offer their clients some rather inane wagers during Super Bowl week -- the over-under on the number of trips Packers nose tackle Gilbert Brown would make to the...