MinnesotaSportsScene.com

Just one night after losing to the Bulls on the road, the Wolves won on Wednesday night at home … against the same Bulls team. In a rare case of back-to-back games against an Eastern Conference opponent, the Wolves started sluggishly but finished strong to overwhelm Chicago, 83-67.

The game, which would have looked sharp on an LCD HDTV hanging on a tv wall mount, looked ugly but gave Minnesota their ninth win of the season, and their fourth win in the last six games. The Wolves have not had a cupcake schedule in that stretch, which includes wins over the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors and New Jersey Nets, as well as the Bulls. The two losses in that stretch include only Boston and the Chicago road game.

Al Jefferson had 26 points and 20 rebounds while Ryan Gomes had 25 points and 10 boards; both players were keys to the deal that sent Kevin Garnett to Boston last summer. Jefferson signed a contract extension before the season, but Gomes is looking like one of the expiring contract players the Wolves might want to keep around beyond this season.

With the win, the Wolves move to 9-36, which still gives Minnesota the worst record in the NBA by a half-game. Miami is just ahead of them at 9-35, while Seattle is a full game ahead at 10-35. Minnesota is almost certain to win at least one more game the rest of the way, which means they’ll avoid tying the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers’ record for worst NBA season ever, 9-73.

Of course, the problem is that the more the Wolves win, the worse their lottery chances in the off-season and with 36 losses already this year, a post-season berth is a very dim hope at best. There are only 37 games left in the Wolves season. Even if they kept up their current pace the rest of the way, winning two of every three games, the best record they could hope for is 33-49, which is about what the Wolves achieved the last two seasons.

Translation: it’s a bit late for the Wolves to get really hot the rest of the way, since they’d miss the post-season anyway, and push themselves to the middle of the lottery rather than near the top anyway. For the sake of the franchise, I’m hoping that we don’t see the Wolves go on a 24-13 tear the rest of the way. As nice as that might seem, it would be better if they Wolves played below-.500 ball, kept their lottery chances high, and waited until next season to really set the NBA on fire.

Three of the 17 players who are finalists to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, are former Minnesota Vikings. The most notable is wide receiver Cris Carter, who famously came to the Vikings after being cut by Eagles coach Buddy Ryan for “only knowing how to catch touchdowns.”

History has revealed that Ryan’s reason for uttering such a foolishness was to protect Carter’s career; Cris had allowed a drinking problem to get the better of him at that point, and when he was claimed off waivers for $1 by the Minnesota Vikings, a side-benefit was having access to Minnesota’s Hazelden treatment facility, one of the most nationally recognized addiction treatment facilities in the nation.

The rest is football history; Carter went on to set records for catches in a season and become one of the most recognizable receivers ever to don a Vikings uniform. While he never made it to a Super Bowl, he came close a couple times and was rarely a part of the reason the Vikings didn’t go deeper in the playoffs.

Offensive linemen Randall McDaniel and Gary Zimmerman are also finalists. There’s no multi-night stays in Las Vegas hotels that come with being selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but Carter does represent the best chance for a retired Viking player to be selected to Canton induction on a first-year ballot basis.

None of them will have to wait much longer to know if their time for acknowledgment has come round at last; final selections - usually consisting of five players or so - will be made on February 2.

The Minnesota Gophers suffered another Big 10 road loss to a classy, talented, experienced Ohio State team under coach Tubby Smith this weekend, 76-60, but there are five reasons why such humbling defeats will become rarer for the Gophers and coach Smith next season.

They are: Colton Iverson, Ralph Sampson III, Paul Carter, Devron Bostick, and Devoe Joseph. Those five recruits would likely beat the Gophers current starting five more often than not, and when playing in unison with those older, more experience Gophers players, will make the team far more formidable next season.

Sure, this season’s Gophers squad is a big improvement over the team that seemed more interested in plus size lingerie than in winning last season under Dan Monson and an interim head coach, but they have some growing to do.

How about twin towers Iverson and Sampson as the starting point for that growth spurt?

If I had to describe Al Jefferson and limit myself to three basic assessments of his talents, it would go something like this:

Al Jefferson is younger than Kevin Garnett.

Al Jefferson is cheaper than Kevin Garnett.

And Al Jefferson is playing better this year than Kevin Garnett.

It’s clear now why the Wolves valued Jefferson so highly and insisted he must be included in any trade involving Kevin Garnett leaving the Wolves to play in Boston; right now, it’s looking like the Celtics are the ones who missed out on stocking their franchise with the better player, not only in the future, but this season as well.

This season, Garnett is averaging 19.2 ppg and 9.9 rpg, not quite a double-double, on a talent-laden team with the best record in the NBA. This season, Jefferson is averaging 20.9 ppg and 11.9 rpg, a solid double-double, on a team that hasn’t won much, but is potentially just as talent-laden, but far younger and less experienced. The Wolves still have the worst record in the NBA.

But the tide may be turning a bit in Minnesota. While Garnett is living a veteran’s dream of being on a top team, contending for a championship, the Wolves seem to have reached bottom, figured out the problems and may be even showing signs of reversing course. The key to that reversal is Jefferson, who has played a key role in the team’s last four games, in which the Wolves have gone 3-1.

The only team they’ve lost to in that stretch? Garnett’s Celtics.

I’m not saying the Wolves are ready for prime time and should start installing bathroom vanities in every players’ locker, but it is a sign of evidence for hope. On Sunday, Jefferson reached a new career high for the second time this month, scoring 40 points while grabbed down 19 rebounds in a three-point, final-period win over the New Jersey Nets.

Add to that some key young players helping out at critical times, such as Ryan Gomes and Corey Brewer, and you have somethi And with last year’s top Wolves rookie, Randy Foye, set to return to action soon - possibly before but more likely after the All-Star Break, it’s possible things could improve yet this season for the worst team in the NBA.

After a half season of near futility, the Minnesota Timberwolves have put together back-to-back wins for the first time in the franchise’s post-Garnett era. Wednesday night’s 117-110 win over Phoenix marks the second time this season the Wolves have beaten down the Suns, who are the Western Conference’s elite team this season.

Al Jefferson hit a career-high 39 points on the night, coupled with 15 boards for a standout performance, a feat that surpasses his 32-point, 20-rebound performance against the Suns back on December 8, when the Wolves earned their third victory of the season and their first win over the Suns.

The victory nearly set off Target Center’s alarm system monitoring, due to wins being so rare this season for the Wolves; the machinery considered the victory an anomaly. Joking aside, the win moves the Wolves to 7-34 at the official halfway point of the season (41 games).

The previous victory was a Monday afternoon, 109-108 road win against Golden State on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That followed another close road game against Denver, although that one was a loss.

The Wolves have the makings of a rare quality in Minnesota this season: momentum. If they can build on this spark of success going into the All-Star Break, the second half of the season might hold more interest for Wolves fans, beyond how each win affects the Wolves’ lottery chances.

Hold your horses! Last year’s Timberwolves rookie draftee, Randy Foye, could help turn the team’s all-time worst season ever around enough to help his team finish somewhat respectably, but his journey back to the starting lineup was been delayed unexpectedly by some unforeseen, but significant, soreness in his legs that could add at least a week to his timetable for a return.

So far, Foye has missed the entire regular season and has yet to appear in a game; while some Wolves fans are wondering if Foye will be of an age to be carrying around new pocket watches by the time he does return, his progress is actually roughly on schedule for the type of injury he suffered.

While it would certainly be encouraging to see Foye on the floor, the joy would be short-lived if he had to return to the IR because he was rushed back. Personally, I don’t look for Foye to hit the court until after the All-Star break. By then, perhaps the team will have pulled the trigger on another trade to help the team improve along with the return of Foye.

I had a chance recently to try out the Pure Water 2Go water bottles, and I was surprised by what I found. It’s been a long time since I’ve regularly consumed unfiltered tap water; usually I buy carbonated bottled water by H2Oh!, largely because it contains no sweetners or sugar, yet has that carbonated fizz that makes it fun to drink. It also tastes a lot cleaner than regular tap water in the Twin Cities, MN, where I live.

A few year ago, I did drink more water, back when I had a sink installed with a PUR water filter right over the faucet. But now, as I am starting to work out more, I’ve been needing something I can take with me over to the workout room in my apartment facility. That’s where I expect to use this product the most; to keep myself hydrated as I work out.

The bottle came in a well-cushioned cardboard box and is of nice, durable plastic construction; there’s nothing flimsy about it, which is nice and helps me think it’ll last a while. The water bottle filter included with this system is a Level 2 water filter that relies on charcoal-based construction.

Just like my old PUR water faucet filter, the Pure Water 2Go water bottle promises to reduce and filter out tons of contaminant types, including offensive taste and odor, chlorine, salt, cryptosporidium, giarda, volatile organic compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls, trihalomethanes, agricultural synthetic organic compounds, detergents, pesticides, DDT, aluminum, asbestos, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, and mercury, just to name a few.

That impressed me long ago about my PUR system and it impresses me now with this water bottle, because even the trace amounts of such things that can show up in or seep into tap water can, even if it’s not enough to harm you, certainly ruin the taste. Heck, most water travels through old copper pipes; just filtering that out can improve the taste of water incredibly.

And while environmentalists tend to hate plastic, if it’s a choice between one water bottle that filters the water you drink regularly, or using 2-3 “disposable/recyclable” bottles of store-bought water, I think a Pure Water 2GO water bottle is the less offensive option.

What I like is the longevity of the filters. Each Level 2 filter is supposed to be able to last around three months or 80 gallons of water, 16 ounces of water at a time. And I looked it up, and a packet of two filters is only another $13 or so on the company’s Web site, so for what I could probably stretch out to a full year’s worth of filtered water, this is financially a lot cheaper that getting a bunch of store-bought bottled water.

About the only complaint I have in my early use of the water bottle is that, thanks to the filter, the water comes out a bit slower than it does from an unfiltered water bottle. It’s a minor inconvenience, but an inconvenience nevertheless. Other than that, it does produce clean-tasting water, which is what I was looking for from it. I expect to keep a full bottle in the fridge, chilling, whenever I’m not actually drinking from it. Hopefully, it can spur me to drink enough water to help my diet. Sure, it’s not carbonated so I doubt I’ll give up my H2Oh!, but it’s better than unfiltered tap water by a measure!

Although it looked for a while like a possible third loss in four games, it turns out Tubby Smith’s Gophers had a nice cat bed all made up for the Penn State Nittany Lions to fall asleep in during the second half. The Gophers, now 12-3 overall and 2-1 in Big 10 action, won a comeback victory, 76-73, after trailing by 16 points with only 13 minutes left in the game.

Blake Hoffarber led the Gophers with 19 points on six of 11 shooting, including five of eight from three-point land, and the Gophers as a team held Penn State to 15 points the rest of the way while scoring 34 themselves to produce the comeback win.

After the game, senior center Spencer Tollackson spoke to the press and said, “It wasn’t good enough to come out of here with a two-point loss or a one-point loss or an overtime loss. We wanted to win the game. Like Coach says all the time, ‘There’s no such thing as moral victories.’”

The victory handed coach Tubby Smith his 399th career win; he’ll attempt to reach his 400th win against Indiana on Thursday, at Williams Arena.

Although often playing it close, the young and inexperienced Minnesota Timberwolves, who are well on their way to the worst season ever in franchise history, may not yet be playing at a level that makes one want to drive over to Best Buy to get an HDTV complete with high-end HDMI cables just to watch their games, but the team, which only has four wins in its first 33 games, received its first bit of good news of the season this week.

Last year’s talented rookie PG, Randy Foye, was cleared to return to practice this week and could be back on the floor soon. Foye was injured in the preseason and has thus far missed the entire regular season. His return could be a difference maker, though not one that’s going to create a 30-win turnaround or anything that extravagant.

Whether it’s the Wilfs’ private jet or something as simple as a foam mattress, the Vikings ownership claims they want to build the club into a first-class organization, and they at least have several Vikings players believing it’s possible.

This off-season, the club will be looking to fill gaping holes as defensive end, wide receiver, and safety, as well as shoring up one side of its offensive line and upgrading depth at quarterback. While Minnesota’s cold-weather city locale may be a negative, most Vikings players apparently believe the team’s 8-8 finish places the team as a club on the cusp of playoff contention, which should make the Vikings organization a hot spot in the free agent market.

“I think we’re going to be one of the most dangerous teams out there, and that’s no exaggeration,” Vikings linebacker Ben Leber told the St. Paul Pioneer Press recently. “You look at the way we climbed the charts at the end of the season, and what we have playmaker wise, on offense and defense, and I really think this team is a shoo-in for the playoffs.”

Provided the team can shore up its weaknesses in the off-season through free agency and the NFL draft. With offensive rookie of the year Adrian Peterson bolstering the team’s running game, the Vikings are not far from the promised land.

First-year starter and redshirt freshman Adam Weber, who started every game for the Minnesota Gophers last year, will be in for a lot of competition next fall to retain his starting job. There will be so many top athletes vying for the position it could cause Weber to need some progesterone or something, for all the bloating.

In addition to Weber, the team already has the coach’s son, Clint Brewster, who will by vying for the position, but top-notch recruiting Tim Brewster isn’t settled yet. Also on the roster next fall is junior college transfer-recruit David Pittman. This recruiting season, he has already signed two blue-chip prospects, both of whom may be better than either Weber or Clint B.

QB John Nance of Cretin-Derham Hall is on board the the Gophers, and made a high school career tossing the ball to Notre Dame-bound Michael Floyd.

Joining Nance as an incoming freshman, and likely to be redshirted just because of the logjam at the QB position, is Indianapolis prep QB MarQuis Gray, who announced his Gophers-bound intent during the U.S. Army All-American game in San Antonio, TX. According to Rivals.com, Gray is a confirmed four-star recruit.

With all the talent at QB, the only real question for the Gophers is who these hurlers will be tossing the pigskin to, and whether coach Brewster has recruited enough defense to stop their Big 10 opponents once and a while and thus make all that offensive firepower mean something.

Coach Brad Childress saw his Minnesota Vikings drop the final two games of the season, robbing his team of a playoff turnaround to their season. After starting the season 2-5, the Vikings turned their season around more efficiently than a New York moving company, beginning with a big win against the New York Giants. After a loss to the Green Bay Packers, the Vikings when on a six-game winning streak to reach 8-6 and be within two wins of the playoffs.

But the Vikings choked against Joe Gibbs’ Washington Redskins, putting them behind the eight-ball, as they not only need to win their final game against Denver, but hope that a Dallas team resting their starters for the playoffs could still beat the Redskins. Neither happened.

Despite an emotional, two-touchdown, two two-point conversion comeback against Denver to tie it up and force overtime, T-Jack fumbled the game away almost immediately, robbing the Vikes of even an emotional, moral victory of going out on a win.

And even with all this, Coach Brad Childress will be invited back for the third year of his five-year contract; his only hope is to immediately improve the quality of the team’s receiving corps; even Tom Brady would look average throwing to these stooges and greenhorns. Of the lot of them, only Bobby Wade and Sidney Rice have proved they deserve to be back next season.