Not to interrupt your enjoyment of some fine basketball today, but did you happen to catch the shot of Adam Morrison in the crowd during Gonzaga’s loss to Davidson? Is that what he looks like all the time now (same ’stache, longer hair, kinda zombie-like?) Wow. That’s the game we were getting in St. Louis for a while, though they cut quickly to the end of the Drake/Western Kentucky game. Speaking of sweet mercy, what a finish there. We were in the wrestling media room with about eight Drake fans (Iowa natives; go figure at a wrestling tournament), and they were dying a little death with each tense minute. The absolute highlight, though, was after Western Kentucky’s buzzer-beating dagger ended it 101-99 in OT, a photographer who hadn’t been watching at all looked up and said loudly and chuckling, “Hey, I took Western Kentucky in my pool!” How he avoided a punch is beyond us.

In any event, as mentioned earlier, the Gophers wrestlers had what could be kindly termed a “difficult” morning session. They went 1-for-5 in the quarterfinals (on the low end, we thought they would get at least two, and on the high end it seemed three or four was at least a possibility). Seniors C.P. Schlatter (157) and Gabe Dretsch (174), seeded fifth and eighth respectively, both lost twice and are finished long before the medal rounds. Same goes for heavyweight Ben Berhow and 197-pounder Justin Bronson. So just five of the nine wrestlers they brought here are still alive, and only one of those (Jayson Ness) is in the semifinals. That said, Ness — the No. 2 seed at 125 — has looked dynamite (two pins and a major decision) and could win it all. A Ness win in the semis tonight, plus some good work in the consolation rounds by the quarterfinal losers — Mack Reiter, Manuel Rivera, Dustin Schlatter and Roger Kish — would at least salvage some of the day. Overall, though: a major disappointment for a team that entered the season with realistic hopes of repeating as NCAA champs, then endured a very difficult regular season filled with injuries and underachieving, then entered the tourney season as at least a dark-horse to challenge Iowa for the title. Instead, the Hawkeyes are running away with things and the Gophers — expected to finish No. 2 based on W.I.N. Magazine’s power index and also rated No. 2 in the InterMat poll — are currently tied for eighth with 34.5 points. The Gophers have not finished outside the top 10 since 1996, but that streak is in jeopardy.

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