With two weeks and counting until the draft the simulator got another run, with intriguing results.
The mound-minder for the win over Texas Tech got another flower to start the week as Cade Feeney was named Pitcher of the Week for the second time in the last month! A day later Michael Caliendo was named Conference Freshman of the Year!
Tuesday also included women's ⛳️ taking second in Omaha. ⚾️ also got a game in against Minnesota but faltered to the tune of 10 runs over the final four innings to lose 12 - 9.
As the weekend came 🏃 split between Azusa and Long Beach with Kendra Kelley and Jacob Levin earning top spots on the stories!
⚾️ continued against St. Thomas with a pair of offensive explosions to take the series in one night. In the finale it was the pitchers that wrote the tale and the Tommies were able to do just enough to avoid getting swept.
As the new week dawned softball started a set against South Dakota State with a three-hit, shutout loss.
Men's 🏀 also took a hit this week as junior guard Luke Yoder opted to enter the transfer portal. The more significant news regarding the team's star has not yet come down.
Moorhead State got their bats going to start the week with a pair of wins over Mary. They finished the week in less-inspired fashion as Augustana held them to four runs while scoring 26 total.
The week continued in Azusa, CA with Robynn Rolle-Curry & Jared Gregoire setting records, the former of which had a time not done in more than 40 years!
⛳️ also teed-off, in Sioux Falls, to seventh place after the two days were through.
🎾 also had a double-showing, beating Upper Iowa Saturday but losing to Winona State Sunday.
Six games, six wins for ⚾️, five of which came with the offense knocking-in at least 10 runs. It's fitting that such a display of scoring-the-ball would come as West Fargo's Andy Gravdahl moved into first place on the program's hit-list, past his coach! Two days later Moorhead's Thomas Horan cracked triple-digits, the 29th such player to accomplish that feat. The sudden surge has them in third place in the conference standings and already in a solid position for at-worst a top-half finish, pretty good week of work I'd say!
Unfortunately it didn't extend to the other diamond or the court.
The former started with a win against St. Scholstica but then came up a run shy of the sweep. That result gave way to a pair of blankings by Bethel Tuesday & similar outcomes versus Augsburg Saturday.
At the Cardinal Invitationals in Winona the women came on like gangbusters while the guys held their own with more than a half-dozen top-three finishers!
On the court, St. Olaf was the final straw for the women and got the guys by the same 7 - 2 score in their second-to-last outing of the season.
On top of that came some better news as Jason Gregoire agreed to return to the post of head women's 🏒 coach.
In the wake of last Sunday Rudy Gobert was suspended for the play-in against the Lakeless & Jaden McDaniels' prognosis was even worse. The time off for the much-maligned big man may have come either way with the way he was laboring from back spasms but we'll never know for certain on that. Predictably they dropped the ball against the team with the State's name to make it a win-or-done Friday night against Oklahoma City. The half-grown dogs weren't able to go all Globetrotters on the game but still plenty dominated the under-sized. From the time the trade was made the potential difficulty the roster could have with just that sort of lineup was discussed but not until the 84th game of the season did we know an answer. It's just one game so it doesn't cancel out everything that came before but even a beleaguered fan such as this one won't disregard it just because of the minisculity. If they can tighten up their play on both ends even further then the prediction of a six-game series win will be all the closer to happening.
So it comes down to the preferred opening-round opponent, Denver, late Sunday evening for the season to continue.
These days, hyperbole & overreaction online and by the media are as common as snowflakes during Winter but Edouard Julien did something that's actually never been done before. In something like 100,000 games no one had ever had their first two career hits in the first inning of a game. That deserves some moments of astoundment, and then can come the overreaction because it happened against the Evil Empire who will probably at some point try to pay him an obscene amount of money. The Cooperstown-worthy achievement came in a game which had only slightly-less scoring than the ensuing three games combined. It didn't end great with that other team taking the final two of the four but Pablo Lopez gave up all seven hits and both runs while Griffen Jax & Emilio Pagan (yeah, that one) shutdown the potent lineup in the series finale. From the Duplicates dugout it was a display of impotence with only two batters reaching first base. At 10-6 they're already shaping-up to be "buyers" for bats at the trade deadline but hopefully a few of the internal options will come around well before that to take some of the pressure off the pitching staff.
Two wins in the last 10 chances. That's tied with 16-win Omaha for the fewest over the stretch of all 16 teams in the League.
Bleak.
Thanks to 🏒 unique points system that free-fall wasn't enough to prevent them from locking-up the top seed in the playoffs as they went into extra time for the 12th time this season, losing for the eighth instance in that scenario. In the process they kept Lincoln's chance of jumping to second alive into the final weekend. Unlikely though it may be given the trend, if Fargo rediscovers their previous effectiveness the first 40-win campaign in the franchise's history could still be achieved.
That wouldn't be a great salve on a first-round exit but would separate this team from even the championship one of 17/18 in the long-run!
Reminder that scores and recruiting news are updated regularly and there were a couple big updates on the college front!
Now for this week's other highlights
From the diamond, Moorhead's girls took down St. Cloud Thursday 7 - 1 and then routed Thief River Falls by 15. West Fargo also had the bats working to start the weekend as they hung 14 on Century twice to win by 10 & eight. The Green Machine revved even hotter Saturday as they took down Bismarck by 11 & 16. Their Rivals to South also hit the ball running with a pair of 10-run wins over Legacy
Things weren't quite as great for the guys as South Dakota schools won the majority of the Border Battle games in Sioux Falls. Davies was able to put together one exception, beating SF Jefferson by seven. The Bulls had the other against Sioux Falls - Lincoln 17 - 11!
Details for this Summer's 🏐 showcase were also released.
There were also two more coaching announcements made as the two-time reigning state ⚾️ champion coach from Sheyenne announced that he will be stepping-down after this season. The change in the air also emanated from further South as the architect of Davies boys soccer's five state championship appearances in the last six season, Ian Costello, tendered his resignation. Needless-to-say, that leaves some big shoes to fill but the track-record of each school to have talent on the playing surfaces will make it that much easier for the replacements.
It doesn't feel much like Summer but the traveling team has put some miles on already. This week Post 400 was in Sioux City and won going-away Friday. The bats were again on their side when it counted the most as they broke-open a 5-all game in the eighth Saturday!
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