Surviving the Sports Abyss (Mar. 4, 2011)

The winter sports season at CSS came to a screeching halt within the past few weeks, leaving us with a tremendously long wait between home contests, 37 days (or more, depending on the weather) between the hosting of the UMAC Championship and the home opener for baseball on April 4. Which leaves us in the sports abyss. How do we, the sports fans of CSS, survive the sports abyss? Well, I have a few ideas:

Forgo actual sports by playing Strat-o-Matic. I first heard of this a couple years ago when reading Tim Kirkjian’s book, Is This a Great Game, or What?. It seems slightly complicated to my pea brain, but if that is the case, you could easily spend the first half of March figuring out how to play the game, then you would only have to entertain yourself for about 20 or so days. Win, win? I think so.

Assemble an ideal line-up for CSS baseball and softball using sabermetrics. Or read this profile on the father of sabermetrics, Bill James. Once the ball season begins, look here for an in-depth look at the teams using some of James’ statistical formulas (if I can ever figure them all out).

Nervously refresh your browser waiting for updates on the NFL standoff. This could take one day or a long time, and I wouldn’t suggest it. But it’s an idea!

Watch the Food network. If you’ve never watched the Food network, you likely know that they have several shows that feature cooking-based competitions. That’s just like sports! Delicious sports!

Invent new sports. I tried to find some cool new sports on YouTube, but I got distracted by highlights [lowlights] of Charlie Sheen interviews.

Read about how great the Saints are. There are a lot of articles available on our site about that very subject.

Find the Macho Man Randy Savage. And I thought my blogging was pointless sometimes.

Shovel snow. It sounds like most of Minnesota will be doing this anyways, so why not have a little fun with it?

Follow the Saints around the country! Sunny Florida sure seems nice after that forecast. The Saints baseball, softball, and tennis teams will all be in the Sunshine state for the week of Apr. 13-19. If that seems too far, you could also catch the baseball team in Chicago on Apr. 14. The track team will be in Myrtle Beach, S.C. on St. Patrick’s Day (Mar. 17) through the 19^th for the Shamrock Invite.

Follow the Saints online! This really only applies to the baseball team, but select games will be available online, courtesy of Ustream. For instance, this weekend’s games will be available. Other teams will have live stats available, but you’ll have to keep an eye on CSSSaints.com for that.

That’s all for now. Hope you found some entertainment here. Enjoy the weekend, stay safe in the snow!

Points and Prattle XVII

Sportsfans!

What an exciting week it has been for CSS athletics. Starting last weekend with the epic NCHA Quarterfinal series to last night’s UMAC Semifinal upset. And the excitement doesn’t end here. There’s plenty more to go around this weekend. It’s a jam-packed Points and Prattle, so let’s get straight into it!

• Let’s start at the end of the week as CSS men’s basketball shocked the world (or at the very least, the Upper Midwest) in their upset last night of UMAC Regular Season Champ Northwestern in the semifinal round. This came off the heels of another upset of sorts on Tuesday, when they defeated fourth-ranked Presentation in the opening round.
• Junior Danny Schmitz led the Saints with 26 points last night, while senior Max Dibrell added 19 of his own as the Saints defeated the top-seeded Eagles 75-71. (Full Story)
• In a year that started with a lot of question marks, it’s even more exciting to see the Saints travel to Morris this Saturday to take on the Cougars for the conference Tournament Championship. I’ll be rooting them on from afar, having to work in town.
• Speaking of conference championships, the UMAC Indoor Track & Field championship will take place this weekend, right here in Duluth at the BWC! It’s your last chance to cheer on the Saints at home, and more importantly, it’s your last chance to do it without the elements coming in to play, so be sure to stop in tomorrow, starting at Noon. (Full Story)
• Only one other team is in action in Duluth this week, and that’s men’s hockey, taking on River Falls in the NCHA semis.. I’ve already spilled some ink (is that term even used anymore?) on the subject, so I’ll spare us all the trouble and direct you to the web site for all the info. (Full Story)
• I honestly feel like any of the four teams could be competing in the finals next week, but I know what I’m rooting for. (Hint: it involves hockey in Duluth next Friday).
• One of our winter teams has finished their season, and that is the women’s basketball team. They had a very exciting season, and their Tuesday night loss to Presentation is nothing to hang their heads about. Not surprisingly, senior Kirsten Haukom led the Saints with 19 points. She’ll finish her career with 1,086 points, 518 rebounds, 242 assists, and 187 steals. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. (Full Story)
• It’s always best to focus on the good of a season, and there was plenty of that for the Saints women, who finished third in the conference. Still, there’s no shame in losing your final game of the season against a team that also upset the top-ranked team in the conference last night. Congrats to the lady Saints on an exciting season, and I look forward to seeing what the young team can accomplish next season as well.
• The UMAC Coaches' Polls for baseball and softball came out this week, and the Saints were picked to repeat in softball. It’s hard to argue with the success the Saints had last season, and they’ll be returning much of the squad from 2009 for this season. It wasn’t a clean sweep, but seven out of eight votes ain’t bad. (Full Story)
• Meanwhile, Saints baseball was chosen to finish second for the first time in over a decade. My Twerps already may have a feeling how I feel about the voting, but I’ll wait to see how the season plays out before passing judgment. As of now, I have a hard time betting against the defending champs. (Full Story)
• It’s been a rough first couple of weeks for the Saints tennis teams, but they’re back on the court this weekend with a chance to rebound. The men are at St. Cloud State for a tournament on Saturday while the women will take on St. Kate’s in St. Paul.
• Last, but not least, I need to send a little love the way of the women’s cross country team. CSS senior Katelyn Meger has been named to the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) All-Academic Team for the second consecutive year. (Full Story)
• This is completely unrelated to anything, but I’m always intrigued by news directly connected to social media. Choose your words wisely, AKA emotions and emails don’t mix.

What have we learned today? It’s a great time to be a Saint, an even better time to be a fan of the Saints, and a pretty terrible time to be a movie theater VP. So, that’s all for this week, but there’s more to come next week. So, stay tuned!

Take it easy,

-jh

Welcome Back, Blogger.

Good afternoon sportsfans!

It’s a fresh semester at CSS. The students have returned, class is in session, and the Voice has returned to the Web.

As you can see, I’ve refreshed the look and feel of the page. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it just yet, so things may change again, but for now… this is what we’ve got.

I’ve got another exciting semester planned for you all, including the return of 5 Questions. We have a few more Winter sports to hit before we hit the final stretch – the Spring sports – and then we will have to find something else to entertain the masses. I have a few things planned that I think will be interesting, so stay tuned for that.

Points & Prattle will return this Friday afternoon, so mark your calendars.

Another thing to mark on your calendars (shameless plug incoming), is that I will be the “Voice” of this weekend’s basketball games, taking over public address duty in the stead of our regular PA man, Dave Cook. I have big shoes to fill, but I’ll try my best. Stop by and say hello if you’re there.

That’s all for today. Tune in on Friday for the return of Points and Prattle.

Take it easy,
-jh

This Weekend, D-III Hockey Rules the Northland

Voice of: Joe Hansen

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Friday night is fight night at Mars Lakeview Arena.

No, Duluth’s resident boxer Zach “Jungle Boy” Walters won’t be in the house (at least not as anything more than a spectator), and this fight will take place in a rink rather than a ring.

It’s all because of the “Bridge Battle” which will go down this weekend, as the St. Scholastica Saints host the Wis.-Superior Yellowjackets in a weekend conference series for the first time in over a decade.

The Saints enter the weekend coming off a weekend split with the top team in the conference, St. Norbert College, taking their first conference loss of the season while earning an impressive overtime victory over the then-No. 3 team in the country.

“We were happy to have left with two points that other teams haven’t gotten,” said Saints Head Coach Mark Wick. “St. Norbert had three sweeps so far this season, and we took one. But at the same time, we always tell our guys not to be satisfied. We can always be better.”

The Yellowjackets also split their weekend series against Wis.-Stevens Point last week in exciting fashion, but not without cost: a post-game tussle with the Pointers has ’Jacket senior Chris Wilson and sophomore Tom Budziakowski disqualified from Friday night’s game. Wilson is currently tied for the team lead in scoring with 14 points on the season.

“Even with Chris [Wilson] out, they still have talent,” said Wick. “You can’t look at it like that, that they are at disadvantage missing him. Both teams will have guys out of the line-up, but all the teams in the conference, including us, have to have depth.”

The Saints, now second in the conference and just six points behind idle St. Norbert, could make up serious ground in this make-or-break weekend series, but it won’t come easy.

It’s no secret that the Saints have had their fair share of difficulties against the Yellowjackets, sporting a 29-71-5 program record against UWS which includes a 12-year-long winless streak, but the Saints are 2-2-1 against their cross-town rivals in their past five meetings including a dominant 7-2 victory in front of the Saints Army at Mars last Jan. 17.

“One of the things we, as a coaching staff, stressed was putting the past behind us,” said Wick. “These guys weren’t part of the losses, and they bought into the fact that we should be able to compete with anybody.”

Despite losing ten players from last year’s NCAA Tournament team, the Saints have picked up right where they left off with a group of 13 newcomers including 12 freshman stepping up and filling holes.

One question mark that was quickly answered for the Saints in 2009 was who would play goaltender. Losing all-NCHA standout Steve Bounds, the Saints had four goalies with little to no experience entering this season, but they have performed admirably.

Senior Zach Kleiman and sophomore Brennan Poderzay have combined for a goals against average of 2.64 while stopping 89 percent of opposing shots for 236 saves.

“It’s a nice situation. Both of them have played really well,” Wick said. “At some point, we might have to make a decision, but right now, we have some blemishes on our record, but none of them were because of goaltender playing. Rotating goalies isn’t always a bad thing, and they’ve done good with it.”

The Yellowjackets found themselves in basically the same position as they graduated all-conference goaltender Chad Beiswinger after last season, but they have had trouble finding consistency as all four goalies on their roster have seen ice time.

Most recently, freshman Garrett Tinkham has fallen into the starting role in four of the ’Jackets’ last five games, earning wins against Wis.-Eau Claire and Marian as well as the split last weekend with Stevens Point. Tinkham has a 3.01 GAA and has stopped 89 percent of the shots he has faced.

CSS is known to pepper the net like no other team though, averaging over 35 shots per game compared to 23-per for past Superior opponents and 28-per for UWS itself, which will no doubt prove to be a challenge for the young goaltender.

Despite that, UWS is second in the league in scores with 44 while CSS has 33 goals as a team this season.

“That’s an interesting statistic, I didn’t know that,” said Wick. “We’re not going to be concerned as long as we’re getting shots. Sometimes, it goes in streaks. Eventually, they’ll find the net.”

The Saints are in the bottom half of the conference in power play efficiency, while Superior sits atop the league, making good on one quarter of all man-advantages. Both teams are below the curve in penalty killing with success rates of 75.5 percent for CSS and 83.3 for UWS.

Special teams play will likely be huge in this showdown, and what the Saints lack in efficiency they make up for in discipline. They have the fewest penalty minutes in the league, while UWS has the second-most, including the post-game antics after last Saturday night’s game.

“We actually had this conversation as a coaching staff earlier,” said Wick.”We have the fewest penalties, but also the fewest opportunities. We talk a lot about discipline and how we’re at our best when it’s five-on-five. We have the fewest penalties, but again, we’re still not satisfied. We still need to get better on penalty kill and powerplay.”

Whatever it comes down to, fans can expect one thing this weekend in Duluth: great college hockey. The Saints and Yellowjackets always put on a show, and this weekend should be no different.

Both Friday and Saturday night games begin at 7:05 p.m., and Coach Wick has just three words of advice to those looking to see the game in what should be a full house at Mars Lakeview:

“Get there early.”