Last week, I went inside the numbers to show that the first round of the Minnesota prep football playoffs is mostly an exercise in easy victories for top seeds. The second round took place last Saturday. There were a few more upsets. Like over in Class 2A, only one #2 seed made it through to the section finals – six #3 seeds pulled upsets, and a #7 seed beat a #6 seed.

That said, it’s still not exactly Upset Central. To wit:

• 44 of the 48 #1 seeds in the state made it to the section finals.
• 28 of the 48 sections will match up #1 vs. #2, and a further 13 will match up #1 vs. #3.
• Only five teams in the bottom half of their brackets – two #5 seeds and three #7 seeds – made it to the section finals.
• In all 48 sections, one of the favorites – #1 or #2 – will play for a chance to go to state.

Hey, I’m happy for the two #5 seeds (Stewartville and Rockford) that beat the #1 seed in their sections. And I’m happy for Cloquet, #7 in section 7AAA, which upset the #3 seed, and the two #7 seeds – Sauk Centre and Annandale – that beat #6 seeds to make the section finals. But ultimately, 76 of the 96 teams that were ranked #1 or #2 in their section will play in the section final. 13 of the other 20 section final participants are #3 seeds, and two more are #4 seeds.

I get it; the MSHSL wants a big tournament. They want as many kids as possible to play in the playoffs. They love the state playoffs so much that they’re expanding to seven classes next year, even though there’s hardly enough teams to fill out the playoffs as-is, just so eight more teams will get the chance to “go to state.”

But 172 teams went on the road for the first round of the playoffs. 151 lost. 16 of the remaining 21 lost the following Saturday. Is five out of 172 – three percent – really justification enough to make more or less the entire state play two games in a week?

At Twinkie Town today, I wrote about a few more fictional scenes from what the Twins are up to this off-season. Kevin Slowey flips out over a board game, Danny Valencia tries to run from a car, and the Pavstache acts like the Pavstache.

The first comment: “This is really long. Can you point me to the part that you think is funny?’ Once again, free writing wastes the Internet’s time.

*This has ended up being, somehow, one of the best sports days I can remember. Woke up this morning to see Arsenal beat Chelsea 5-3 on the road. Went to campus to watch the Gophers beat Iowa and retain Floyd. Got home in time to catch the end of the Stars clinching the NASL Championship. Went downstairs and watched the Wild finish off a 1-0 win over Detroit. Can’t hardly do better than that, can you? As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for inappropriate attire for half-marathons. *

The World Series is over and baseball’s done for another year, but before we let it drop, I’d like to speak with a few of you about Thursday night’s Game 6. Judging by the reactions I saw on Twitter immediately following the walk-off Cardinals win, there were many Twins fans who were angry at Joe Buck for re-appropriating his dad’s famous “We’ll see you… tomorrow night!” call from Game 6 of the 1991 Series. I suspect much of this is rooted in a dislike of Buck, and he’s not my favorite either. But I have two points to make. First, it’s simply the perfect call for that situation; if it’d been me in the booth, it’s exactly what I would have said, too. And that Joe Buck was paying tribute to Jack Buck, his own father, makes it doubly appropriate.

But even ignoring that, there seemed to be a number of people who felt that this had somehow cheapened the call from ’91, which brings me to my second point. Many people hearing that call will have understood that the younger Buck’s call was a homage, which arguably makes the original more well-known and more powerful, not less. And the only people who didn’t understand that it was a reference to twenty years ago are people who already have no feelings about Game 6 in 1991, so it couldn’t possibly have cheapened it for them. If anything, the original call is now more famous, and more meaningful. If anything, it should be Cardinals fans who are mad; the television call for their greatest moment of their 2011 championship is simply an echo from two decades ago.

But that’s not why you called. On with the links:

*RandBall’s Brandon makes the argument, over at his own site, that Nelson Cruz is actually a bigger goat than Bill Buckner. I find this argument convincing, especially since Cruz could have won the Series for the Rangers, whereas there’s a chance we’re remember Game 6 in 1986 as the Bob Stanley Game or the Calvin Schiraldi Game even if Buckner does make that play.

*Parker Hageman thinks that re-signing Joe Nathan as Twins closer might be a good idea, based on the way that the big righty ended the season.

*The Economist talks about how to fix the game of tennis, which is one of those topics that seems to come up every few years. As long as I can remember, both golf and tennis have been on the verge of being overtaken by equipment advances. Golf seems to be in a bit of a lull with that at the moment, but the common opinion seems to be that tennis is now verging on impossible to play, what with the amount of power and topspin that’s generated these days. It’s an interesting discussion, even for a tennis novice like me.

*And finally: the state of Minnesota goes for its second championship of the year tonight, as the NSC Minnesota Stars travel to Fort Lauderdale for the second leg of the finals. Brian Quarstad at Inside MN Soccer has your match preview, but here’s my short prediction: Fort Lauderdale was awful last week, and unless they use a different set of players tonight, the Stars should be able to hold on to their 3-1 lead for the first leg and take home the trophy. The match is at 6:30 and is available live online; if you want to head out to watch, the Sweetwater Bar and Grill in St. Paul will no doubt be showing the match, and Brit’s Pub downtown will show it at 9pm on tape delay.

That’ll do it for me; enjoy your Saturday. WHO HATES IOWA?

Yeah, this is probably the defining story about Americans and cricket. From a Radio Times interview with Gwyneth Paltrow (who is married to Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin):

“I try to understand cricket, really, I try and I try,” she smiles. “Chris is a big fan and one day, I was like, ‘Right, I’m going to get into it,’ and I sat down and I was watching. And watching. And I carried on watching and then I said to him, ‘Look, I am enjoying the game, but is anything ever going to happen?’

And he said, ‘Is anything going to happen? These are the highlights!’”

I’d like to be among the first to congratulate the following high schools: Mankato Loyola, Long Prairie-Grey Eagle, Albany, Maple Grove, and Chanhassen. I’d like to really congratulate the following: Sauk Centre, Annandale, and Cloquet.

The first list is the list of all of the #6 seeds that won in the first round of the high school football playoffs on Tuesday night. The second list is all of the #7 seeds that pulled off an upset.

By my count, there were 172 games in the first round of the section playoffs on Tuesday night. 151 of these were won by the higher-seeded team. Let’s break this down by seed:

#1 seeds: 32-0
#2 seeds: 41-3
#3 seeds: 43-5
#4 seeds: 35-13

31 of the 48 sections will match up #1 vs. #4 and #2 vs. #3 in the second round. Only three sections – 2A, 6AA, and 6AAA  – had more than one upset. Class 4A didn’t have a single upset in the entire first round.

At some point, I feel like we need to ask ourselves – do we really need to have eight teams make the playoffs in every section? Seems like we could get rid of the first round and its weird Tuesday game without losing too much from the prep football experience, with the obvious apologies to the schools listed above. And it might save a few teams from a Tuesday beating – like my school, Ortonville, which got beat 79-14 by Dawson-Boyd last night.

Here’s the list of all 21 upsets in the state:

6-9MAN: #5 Hillcrest Lutheran 20, #4 Norman County East 14
7-9MAN: #5 Mountain Iron-Buhl 31, #4 Ely 12
2A: #5 Minnesota Valley Lutheran 20, #4 Sleepy Eye 16
2A: #6 Mankato Loyola 28, #3 Lake Crystal-Wellcome 13
3A: #5 Springfield 21, #4 Martin County Werst 20
4A: #5 BBE 26, #4 Royalton 13
8A: #5 Northern Freeze 48, #4 Red Lake 20
5AA: #5 Benson 30, #4 Morris 14
6AA: #5 Holdingford 28, #4 Upsala/Swanville 0
6AA: #6 LP-GE 15, #3 Breckenridge 14
6AA: #7 Sauk Centre 56, #2 Osakis 29
1AAA: #5 Stewartville 10, #4 Byron 7
5AAA: #5 Rockford 35, #4 Blake 13
6AAA: #6 Albany 26, #3 St. Cloud Cathedral 18
6AAA: #7 Annandale 21, #2 New London-Spicer 20
7AAA: #7 Cloquet 21, #2 Pine City 14
8AAA: #5 Park Rapids 13, #4 EGF 10
1AAAAA: #5 Lakeville South 35, #4 Rochester Mayo 7
4AAAAA: #5 East Ridge 33, #4 Hastings 14
5AAAAA: #6 Maple Grove 36, #3 St. Michael-Albertville 0
6AAAAA: #6 Chanhassen 27, #3 Shakopee 26

A couple of weeks ago, I received a breathless text and photo from my Dad: “TAJ SHOWED UP THIS MORNING TO SURPRISE A GIRL SHE CORRESPONDED WITH. Remarkable.” He was referring, of course, to center Taj McWilliams-Franklin, fresh off winning a WNBA Championship with the Minnesota Lynx. And she’d driven all the way to Ortonville just to visit a high school sophomore she’d been writing back and forth with. No cameras. No reporters. No fanfare or publicity – just a visit.

I am not a very good reporter, but even I knew that this is one of those stories that doesn’t need much work to become really good. And so I forwarded the details I had on to my friend Michael Rand. Meanwhile, Dad was writing a very nice letter to the Lynx about the visit. The team was as surprised as anyone – they didn’t know any more about McWilliams-Franklin’s plan than anyone else.

Eventually, Rand tracked down the letter, and published it on RandBall. If you missed it before, go read it now. And not just because my dad wrote it – because it’s a really good story, and you’re going to feel good about the Lynx and about McWilliams-Franklin and what a great thing she did for no reason at all other than because she’s awesome.

The Rangers just went up 3-2 in the World Series. Nick Punto was 0-3 with a walk and two strikeouts. He was up three times with runners in scoring position and he drove no runs home. I recapped the game for Twinkie Town, but really, it just turned into a mini-essay on Punto.

NSC Minnesota Stars 3:1 Fort Lauderdale Strikers
Minnesota: Hlavaty 3, Mulholland 53, Rodriguez 72
Fort Lauderdale: Davis (og) 52′
Highlights: Via YouTube

A few quick thoughts from last night’s first leg of the NASL finals:

• You couldn’t ask for a nicer night for a game, at least in Minnesota in late October, and the crowds came out. The Twins bought 500 tickets for the game, the Wild and Vikings bought 500 more, and so a thousand fans walked through the gates for free, courtesy of the area’s biggest teams. According to the Stars ticket office, they think about two-thirds of these fans were attending their very first Stars game. If so, they really should be back next season, because they got a heck of a game to watch.
• In a related story: I’ve never seen such a big turnout from the Dark Clouds, the fan group that supports the Stars. Three sections of the bleachers opposite the main stands were full of folks jumping up and down and waving flags and singing songs. The beer tent was three rows deep, too. It was a playoff atmosphere.
• I sat in the reserved stands on the halfway line, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had better seats for a pro sporting event. (Why was I in the reserved section? It’s the only one with chairbacks, and I like to lean back. And though I love the atmosphere the Dark Clouds provide, I feel weird standing amongst them by myself. Gopher hockey fans have long complained of the energy-less “corpies” in the good seats at Mariucci Arena; I guess I’m a soccer “corpie.” In my defense, I didn’t spend all game chatting to my neighbor, and I yelled abuse at several Strikers players.)
• Neil Hlavaty‘s free kick in the third minute was wonderful – low, powerful, around the wall and inside the far post. Just unsaveable. Luke Mulholland’s goal in the second half was just as good – a blast against the grain that the keeper had no chance of stopping. Lucas Rodriguez scored the third, as four Strikers defenders stood still while Rodriguez scored. As for the own goal by Justin Davis, you have to admire the sheer failure of it – no pressure, a ball that would have gone out for a goal kick, and a redirection via the chest right between the keeper and the post. Everything had to go wrong, and it did.
• Take my biased opinion for what it’s worth, but Fort Lauderdale was absolutely awful. They created nothing. Their defenders did convincing imitations of traffic cones. I can’t remember if they even played any midfielders. Hlavaty and Andrei Gotsmanov kept receiving the ball in midfield, turning around, and realizing that they could run for thirty yards without being bothered. 3-0 or 4-0 would have been a more deserved scoreline.
• On the other side, the Stars really controlled all but about twenty minutes of the game. For the middle part of the second half, they seemed to temporarily forget they were allowed to pass the ball from defense to midfield; every time a defender got the ball, he’d take two touches, look up, and boot it long at the lonely figure of Brian Cvilikas, who’d then get to try to win a header against three Strikers defenders.
• For Man of the Match – Mulholland was tireless and scored a cracker of a goal, and Hlavaty was imperious in midfield. But my pick is central defender Cristiano Dias, who didn’t put a foot wrong all night. He was, in my view, absolutely flawless.

The second leg of the match is next Saturday, 6:30 pm in Fort Lauderdale. The Stars managed just two draws in four regular-season matches against the Strikers, so I can’t believe Fort Lauderdale will come out and be as bad as they were last night. But if they are – then the NASL trophy is coming to Minnesota.

*This is a perfect edition of the weekend links, by which I mean that it’s pretty much what I strive for – a plug for soccer at the top, two really good long reads from out-of-the-way sources, the best Twins post of the week, a hockey joke, and a few references to cricket. If you don’t like this, you won’t ever like the weekend links. As always, this post appeared first at RandBall, your internet destination for light rail-themed pub crawls.   *

Just a reminder, for those of you who were thinking “Boy, it’s an awfully nice day today – I wish there was some kind of sporting event I could attend tonight”: your local pro soccer team, the NSC Minnesota Stars, play the first leg of the NASL Championship match tonight at 7:30 pm. The game’s at the National Sports Center in Blaine. I’ll be there. It’ll be fun. There will be free beer and free tacos.

On with the links:

*We start this week with Mark Kelly’s long profile of Alabama radio host Paul Finebaum. It’s a fascinating read for those of us in Big Ten country and especially here in Minnesota, who maybe don’t quite understand just how important football is in the South.

*Tony Johns at Pop Off Valve, an IndyCar blog, had to write the post that nobody wants to write following the tragic death of Dan Wheldon last weekend in Las Vegas. It’s a touching eulogy for a guy who didn’t deserve to be gone, not now, not this early.

*Parker Hageman wonders if there’s any hope for Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Apparently, our best hope is that offensively Nishioka may someday approach Alexi Casilla. Given that defensively, Nishioka’s best hope is for the other team to make a “no hitting the ball to shortstop” rule, I think you’ll join me in hoping that Nishioka spends the next two years anywhere but on the Twins’ major-league roster.

*Down Goes Brown has written a hockey fan’s guide to the World Series. NOTE: This post will only be funny to you if you are a hockey fan, so those of you that aren’t will want to skip this one.

*And finally: Here’s a picture of Jay Cutler playing cricket. I have been trying and trying to think of a joke to go with this picture. I can’t decide between “Moments later, Cutler became the first cricket player in history to be sacked five times in a match,” or “Just out of frame is bowler Donovan McNabb, who’s finally found a sport at which he can utilize his skill at throwing the ball into the ground.” Also, if you want video of Charles Tillman swinging like a girl, here you go.

That’ll do it for me. I’m planning to go sit outside today and watch football – both the American kind, and the “pretentious people that call soccer ‘football’ even though they are American” kind. Enjoy the weekend. It could be our last really nice one until about May.

This week at Twinkie Town, I take a research-free look at the St. Louis – Texas World Series. I haven’t seen the Cardinals play, and I can’t remember much about the Rangers except for the night they put up a million runs against the Twins this summer and Michael Cuddyer pitched the ninth inning.

With this in mind, here’s my uninformed guide to this year’s Fall Classic.

A note on SB Nation stuff: there used to be a little feed in the sidebar that showed all of my SB Nation posts. That is now broken, though I’m not sure why. Anyway, all this means is that I’ll have to be better about posting stuff here in the main area. Which would be fine, except I’m posting this six days late (though the timestamp will show otherwise.)