Minnesota's long-running big-time basketball malaise hasn't fazed youth players

The Wild do not appear to be the club they were a season ago, yet Kirill Kaprizov is even better and a serious candidate to win the Hart Memorial as MVP if his team doesn't disintegrate.

The Gophers have extraordinary talent and it will require an upset for any team to beat them on the way to their first national men's hockey title in 20 years.

The Gophers women are always among the dominant forces in the small, lopsided world of Division I hockey.

If the big leagues and the big campus are the heartbeat for a Minnesota sport, hockey is the winter king in a landslide over basketball at the moment.

Rudy Gobert put together a couple of strong efforts to move the Timberwolves above .500 entering Saturday night's game at Portland, but the evidence remains this will be a play-in team at best.

Getting knocked out there would be the first step in new basketball president Tim Connelly having delivered with the Gobert trade the No. 1 disaster for a franchise built on those.

And there's Gophers basketball, where Ben Johnson's Year Zero collection of misfits in 2021-22 offered a better early-season product than witnessed so far this season, and Lindsay Whalen was also made to start all over in Year 5 when top player Sara Scalia joined the parade to the transfer portal last spring.

Johnson has four freshmen — Braeden Carrington, Pharrel Payne, Josh Ola-Joseph and Jaden Henley — mixing with returnee Jamison Battle and transfers Dawson Garcia and Ta'Lon Cooper,

So far … uff da.

And for a century, you simply could have said, "wait 'til next year,'' except in the new age of the transfer portal, all plans are constructed on quicksand.

Ask Whalen. She had freshmen Mara Braun, Amaya Battle, Mallory Heyer, Niamya Holloway and Katie Borowicz on the way to add firepower to Sara Scalia.

Then, Scalia headed off to Indiana, where she is playing 33 minutes a game for an unbeaten team. And that was followed by Holloway blowing out a knee.

Braun is outstanding, Battle and Heyer are good, and the Gophers already have an improbable double-OT win over Penn State, but again — "wait 'til next year,'' portal willing.

Throw in the Lynx winning one playoff game in the past five seasons and the question becomes:

"Does the dreary state of our big-time basketball have a negative impact on youth basketball, with numbers or enthusiasm?''

John Oxton, the veteran boys coach at Lakeville North, was asked about the Timberwolves/Gophers malaise and said:

"I can only speak for Lakeville North, but I would say 'not.' I look at those as three different entities — Timberwolves, Gophers and high school — and with our parents, more attention is paid to what the high school is doing.

"We're very active. Our program starts in kindergarten and I'm there, trying to get the kids hooked on the game.

"Right now, I'd say most of the players in the program — including high school — are more interested in looking at the latest Anthony Edwards highlights on their phones than getting upset because the Wolves or Gophers lost a game.''

Oxton paused and then said: "I want to add that I'm a huge fan of Ben Johnson. I think he's the right coach to bring the Gophers out of this.

"We would have seen more progress in Year 2, if the first thing that happened this summer wasn't losing two starters — Parker Fox and Isaiah Ihnen — to knee injuries.

"Put those two with Battle and Garcia, and the freshmen, and this would be a deeper and more competitive team.''

For now, the interest is such there was a half-full Williams Arena for an early Big Ten game vs. Michigan.

"I think it's true every place in college sports,'' Oxton said. "You have a 70-inch TV at home and can watch every meaningful game in comfort, or you can spend quite a bit of money to buy a ticket.

"In the Gophers case, you also have to find a place to park, walk across campus in the cold, and squeeze into a seat. I'd guess a lot of people who did that for 25 years are choosing the 70-inch TV.''

Oxton is 61; thus, old enough to remember when Clem Haskins had the Barn jumping during the run to the Final Four.

Twenty-five years ago. A quarter-century with way more yawns than roars.

Long enough for adults to choose flat screens and youth only highlights. But those youth are still trying to hoop, so that's the good news.