Surprise, surprise - Fat Pat Strikes Again.

Saturday was another great day to be a Gopher basketball fan.  It was Tubby Time at its finest.  After pounding the Nittany Lions into giving up basketball until Fall on Thursday, and then wrestling a win away from the always tough Izzo-led Spartans on Friday evening, the Gophs came out hot and absolutely BURIED Purdue.  Now tomorrow we're in the Tournament Championship vs. Evan Turner and his Buckeye friends.  Pretty exciting stuff, and the team is peaking at the right time.

Who cares if the motivation behind the team's success is from the disrespect they were shown by the media and coaches in the conference awards, or if they're just gelling when they need to?  Winning is winning - and it counts whether Robbie Hummel or Chris Allen plays or not.  Well, not to our good friend Patrick Reusse.  Not content to write the standard congratulatory editorial (the kind you'd see in the 10 other Big Ten towns), complementing Tubby for getting the team to play their best ball now, and look past the troubles they've dealt with (and to a large degree overcome), Reusse delivers another series of paragraphs that backhandedly compliment the Gophs, and downplay the recent hot streak.  Its clear to me that this is just another article designed to get the casual fan who might be suddenly interested in watching the Gophers take on OSU or a 1st round opponent in the Big Dance, to be dissuaded from caring about this team because he needs to remind everyone that they underachieved.  Ironically, Just Jake and I were conversing via phone after the win, and I (somewhat rhetorically) asked him how long he thought it would be until Reusse spun this negative.  He laughed and said 'not long'.  I agreed, but even I was stunned to see that it took less than 6 hours after the win for him to take another sucker punch at Tubby and Company.

Why the hell is this guy so motivated in making people jaded on the Gophers?  I have no idea, but Reusse seems to be committed to tearing down any good feelings that might generate around the football or basketball programs.  We (the fans who follow the program) all know the team has underachieved this season.  We all acknowledge that they've had some character issues (Mbakwe and White).  We realize the Nolen suspension was unfortunate.  We get that Sampson and Iverson are still developing, and we knew there would be growing pains along the way.  Yup. We get all that.  But I guess if we're to listen to this hack, we shouldn't enjoy the success now, knowing that.  Thanks for setting us straight Mr. Reusse.