TWTW: A brief recap of Augie’s weekend
My truck is wheezing from overwork and I’m in need of sleep so this will be quick.
Obviously, a very impressive run by the Augie men’s team, reaching the NCAA tournament and picking up a win over Upper Iowa before falling (rather hard) to Winona State.
I honestly think it was kind of hard for Tom Billeter and the team’s only seniors — Cam McCaffrey and Leif Nomeland — to really be too upset after the loss. Sure, they wanted to keep going as far as they could, but I think deep down they knew they’d already accomplished so much that they were basically playing with house money.
I’ll have a season recap sometime this week, if not in the paper than on the blog, depending on space.
As for the women, they’ll be playing for a berth in the Elite 8 today in Topeka, and all they have to do to get there is beat the 8-seed in the region. Not that that means it’ll be easy, Emporia State knocked off host and top-seed Washburn and Minnesota State to get here.
Still, it’s kind of ironic that for as much as the second half of the Viking season felt like it was characterized by missed opportunities and underachieving, they’re now on the verge of accomplishing everything (conference championship, Elite Eight berth) they set out to at the beginning of the season.
It’s not even unreasonable at this point to look at the Vikings as serious contenders for the national championship. They’re a longshot, sure, but there are only 16 teams still playing, and they’re one very attainable win away from being one of the last eight.
I’m taking tomorrow off, but I’ll try to post some twitter updates of the women’s game (we have a stringer in Kansas covering it for us). Win or lose, I’ll be back with the live chat on Tuesday to discuss that and all the other usual good stuff.
2 p.m. Tuesday.
