Stanzel’s Sports Takeout — BREAKING NEWS: 4.13.26
Spent the weekend in Coralville, Iowa, for dance, where next door to the convention center it’s unfortunate that the ECHL Iowa Heartlanders were playing their last series before what’s likely a franchise relocation. Iowa was the Wild’s ECHL affiliate. Tough sell in a college town.
I’m glad Rory won last year’s Masters, because I was sweating out the final couple holes including the tee shot on 18 as it was. CBS uncharacteristically dropped the ball, first losing Rory’s shot out of the woods (we never saw it until he walked into the sand trap minutes later), and a view of the winning put where you couldn’t actually see the ball go into the hole. For a moment I thought he left the foot-long putt short.
The Wolves will face Denver in the first round, starting on the road Saturday at 2:30 p.m. The (Iowa) Wolves wrapped up the regular season by welcoming Kevin Garnett back last night to see a win over New Orleans that didn’t matter to anyone. Teams were falling over themselves to try to avoid the Wolves; each Denver, the Lakers and the Rockets rested large numbers of players over the weekend.
The Wild will take a two-game losing streak into tonight’s game in St. Louis, but again it doesn’t matter. Then the home finale on Tuesday against Anaheim, with round one opening up in Dallas either Saturday or Sunday. Assuming each goaltender gets one more start, the gap is narrowing before Game 1…
Loons beat San Diego 2-1 to win for the second straight game. They’ve got Sacramento in a U.S. Cup game Tuesday in California.
No A.L. Team Has More Wins than Twins
Just like you all expected, no American League team has more wins than the Minnesota Twins through the first 10 percent of the season
The 9-7 Twins have won six of seven, including the last two of a three-game road series in Toronto. Minnesota is tied with Cleveland for the top spot in all of the A.L.
Minnesota roughed up Max Scherzer in an 8-2 win yesterday, behind a three-run homer from Tristan Gray. Taj Bradley allowed one run in five innings to move to 3-0. He’s allowed just three runs in 21 ⅔ innings in four starts. He’s outpitched Tarik Skubel and Scherzer the last two starts.
The Twins welcome the awful Red Sox and the Reds for three games each this week.
WNBA Draft Tonight; Lynx Lose Handful of Players in Free Agency
Around 80 percent of WNBA players became free agents thanks to the new WNBA CBA, and the Lynx took a big hit over the weekend. Before signing anyone, they’d lost Alanna Smith, Jessica Shepard, Natisha Hiedeman, DiJonai Carrington and Bridget Carlton. The latter was selected in the expansion draft. The Lynx also missed out on some free agents they rolled out the red carpet for.
The Lynx did re-sign Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams, and they brought in free agents Natasha Howard (a vet who won one of her three WNBA titles with Minnesota) and Nia Coffey. They still need to re-sign Napheesa Collier, but even when they do that, and add in whomever they select with the No. 2 pick in tonight’s WNBA Draft, they’ll be at just nine players on the roster. Phee, by the way, had lunch with A-Rod and Marc Lore over the weekend.
The Wolves will get a player in the Draft at No. 2 who will make an immediate impact. There’s no consensus No. 1; players available at No. 2 could be 6-foot-6 Spaniard Awa Fam Thiam, TCU point guard Olivia Miles or 6-foot-7 playmaker Lauren Betts out of UCLA.
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