January Awards--Team of the Month/Team of the Year

Our contenders for January include:

• Timberwolves are playing hard and improving since the departure of Mr. Yuck and the arrival of Ryan Saunders.

• Gopher men have not always played well, but they've played with heart and they've bounced back from adversity.

• Gopher women may have saved, well, something, with that win at Northwestern the other night.

• St. Thomas men and women continue to rip it up, but the Augsburg women in particular, and also the Johnnies, and the Moorhead and UMD women are playing well.

• The Hopkins girls look seriously unbeatable, though previously unbeaten Wayzata gave them a great game on February 1 before losing 69-66. The Farmington and Cromwell girls posted big, big wins last month.

Our Team of the Month for January is a tie between the St. Thomas men and women. The men went 10-0 to get to 14-0 in the MIAC. The key game was a 74-72 OT win over 2nd place St. John's on Jan. 21. The women went 9-0 and are now 13-0 in the conference, and they also defeated the 2nd place team, Augsburg, 49-34, on Jan. 12. Our top teams were the Gopher women in November and the Hopkins girls in December.

Our Coach of the Month candidates coach all of these team candidates and our Coach of the Month is also a tie between Tommie coaches Johnny Tauer and Ruth Sinn. Lindsay Whalen was our top coach in November and again in December.

Our team standings now as we look ahead to our Team of the Year awards in March look like this.

1. Hopkins girls
2 (tie). St. Thomas men and women
3. Gopher men
4 (tie). D1 2019 boys and North Tartan 2020 girls AAU clubs from last summer
5. Gopher women
6. Augsburg women
7. Minnehaha boys
8. Timberwolves
9. Hopkins boys
10. MS Moorhead women

Coach of the Year right now looks like this.

1 (tie). Ruth Sinn and Johnny Tauer, St. Thomas
2. Lindsay Whalen, Gopher women
3. Ted Riverso, Augsburg women
4. Brian Cosgriff, Hopkins girls
5. Ryan Saunders, Timberwolves
6. Karla Nelson, MS Moorhead women
7 (tie). Liz Carpenter, Farmington girls, and Alexis Gray-Lawson, St. Paul Como girls
8. Richard Pitino, Gopher men
9. Seth Anderson, Waseca boys, and James Ware, Park Center boys
10. Pat McKenzie, St. John's men

For the record, our Game of the Month for January was the Gopher men winning at Wisconsin 59-52. Our top games earlier were the Gopher women over Syracuse 72-68 and the Gopher men over Nebraska 85-78.