Badger Hockey is playing itself out of contention

With two full weekends to play before the conference tournament, the Badgers had one task in front of them: get a couple points from the faltering Gophers in order to improve upon or maintain their twelfth-place ranking in the PairWise Rankings.

Sadly, the Gophers found their offense again this weekend and blasted home four goals on Friday and on Saturday. The Badgers only managed a pair of goals on Friday (WWWWWW and $nake of Down With Goldy were at the game), but didn't walk away completely empty-handed, coming back from a one-goal deficit four times on Saturday night to force a 4-4 tie. In the end, the Gophers gained three prized points and the Badgers only picked up one.

This is bad not just because it's the Gophers but because, as of this very moment, the Badgers are in a tie for 14th place in the PairWise Rankings with Notre Dame and the Gophers. By scoring that final, game-tying goal, Patrick Johnson kept Wisconsin's PWR advantage over Minnesota alive; had the Gophers won the game, the 2-2 tie in the PairWise would've been broken by RPI, which might've swung things in Minnesota's favor. Incidentally, the RPI tiebreaker is keeping Notre Dame ahead of the Badgers as we speak.

The upshot is that when you're in a tie for 14th place, if you're not the primus inter pares you're out of the NCAA field. The fifteenth and sixteenth slots are currently occupied by the conference leaders from Atlantic Hockey and the CHA (currently Army and Bemidji State, respectively), which means that if the season was over with right now, Wisconsin would be the best team in the nation to watch the NCAA tournament from their couch. (You know, on their laptop via GameTracker. Not on TV, don't be silly; this is college hockey after all.)

The good and bad news is that next weekend's series is at St. Cloud State. The good news is that the Badgers are 2-0-0 against St. Cloud State this year, and since Wisconsin is well behind St. Cloud in the PairWise, a victory or two would go a long way to shuffling the Badgers back into the tournament field, especially with some help. The bad news is that although Wisconsin owns the head-to-head portion of the PWR, St. Cloud tops them in RPI, TUC, and record against common opponents, and all three of those numbers are out of reach for UW, so in order to wrest the PairWise comparison with St. Cloud State, a sweep will be necessary.

The end of the season is a crazy time with the odd mechanism the NCAA uses to include and exclude teams. The Badgers aren't in control of their own destiny, but every win will get them closer to a tournament berth and every loss will hurt more than the one that preceded it. And you can take consolation in the fact that even though this weekend was pretty miserable, the Badgers did just enough to keep Minnesota out of the postseason -- for the time being.

Things to read on while you're waiting for the weekend

New Northwestern blog Lake the Posts is counting down the Top 24(?) games in Northwestern football history. Expect the Badgers to figure prominently in this series ... they're already in there twice at #21 (the 1992 game) and #20 (the horrendous 2005 game in which the #14 Badgers gave up 51 points).

Bucky's Faithful does something I planned to do ... he has a four-part series about the Badgers' representatives in the NFL. You can see parts one, two, and three here. Part four begins with a prefatory note about Kammron Taylor, who worked out with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He has joined their summer league team, and I'm sure he's glad to have an opportunity to play with his hometown professional franchise.

Heh.

Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated believes the Wisconsin-Michigan game is the fourth-biggest game of the year, UW Athletics produced the 7th highest revenue total of all athletic departments last year, and Trev Alberts has discovered Barenjager.

Blogs to watch

Before I begin to get into football gear in earnest, I'd like to call your attention to a few other places around the internets that might be of some use to you. (For those who are already looking for Badger football stuff, here's a little something: John Clay! Allan Evridge! Tyler Donovan! Bret Bielema! Waaaugh!!)

We'll begin with the creme de la creme, which obviously means the Badger blogs:

* Wisconsin Badger Sports Fan has a fantastic name and has been live since February. Look for all things UW from this site.

* Online since May, Midseason Forum covers much more than just Badger sports. Check out his recent work regarding the impending NBA draft.

* Literally born yesterday(!), Bucky's Faithful is off to a strong start. Get over there and encourage Fest to stick with the blog project!

On to the others ...

* Death Cab for Woody is an Ohio State blog that's full of snark and is touchably soft.

* There are many reasons that you're going to want to look to Hawkeye State for your Big Ten previews this season, not the least of which will be because I once again have no idea what to make of the 2007 Hawkeyes.

* Anything Hoosier, which is possibly actually entitled "IU Sports," makes mention not only of basketball but also Indiana football. Come for the Hoosierdom, stay for the early preseason basketball picks that keep Wisconsin out of the top 5 in the Big Ten!

* Defend the Rock is also a Hoosier blog and has far less to do with Sean Connery than one would suppose.

And finally, there are the Gopher blogs. At this time last year, you couldn't find a single blog devoted to Gopher football, but lately they've been popping up all over. If any more show up, I'll be tempted to go out back with a rake and crack their tiny skulls open. One imagines that this has to do with the Dynamic Duo of Tim Brewster and Tubby Smith. These blogs are all high-quality, which makes me believe that more Wisconsin residents are taking advantage of that whole reciprocity deal than I previously thought.

* Paging Jim Shikenjanski sets the standard for the new Gopher uprising. With 57 posts under his belt since May 16, PJS is sallying forth at a torrid pace. Check this site every day.

* Down with Goldy is down with the Gophers, but not down with Goldy the Gopher. Got it?

* Gopher Gal writes Minnesota Golden Gophers with brevity and aplomb. Good tidbits to be found here.

* The posts at Gopher Nation are thorough and are generally long enough to be enjoyable reads. Plus, if you need a laugh, you can always scroll up to the blog's subtitle, which reads, "We're going to take the Gopher Nation to Pasadena!"