Battle for Paul Bunyon’s Axe a season ago<\/a>, Wisconsin was 7-4 and would finish in a three-way tie for second in the Big Ten West. Minnesota was the youngest team in FBS, with a record of 5-6. Their only wins in conference play were against Indiana and Purdue. I don’t remember how much Wisconsin was favored by, but it was a significant amount. The game was at Camp Randall, which is not an easy place to play.<\/p>\nAnd then, to the surprise of everyone, Minnesota won.<\/p>\n
Head coach P.J. Fleck<\/strong> has pointed to that 37-15 victory as a turning point for this year’s Gophers. That game, he said, is when they started to believe. They followed it up with a 34-10 thumping of Georgia Tech in the Quick Lane Bowl, and winning their first nine games of 2019. The last in that string of victories, a 31-26 upset of #4 Penn State, was the most impressive and resulted in a leap up the rankings from #17 to #8. The team hit a speed bump against Iowa, dropping to #10, but rebounded a week later against Northwestern and regained the #8 spot. Just this weekend, Minneapolis received its first visit from ESPN’s College Gameday<\/em>. Had the team beaten Wisconsin, they’d be preparing to face Ohio State for the Big Ten Championship this week.<\/p>\nNot bad for a team that, a year ago, needed to win Paul Bunyon’s Axe just to be bowl-eligible.<\/p>\n
The seniors on this team deserve an extra helping of credit. Some of these guys have played under three head coaches- and even more coordinators and position coaches- in their time at Minnesota. Some of them could have gone to the NFL last year, and chose to stay. They were a huge part of the team’s success this year, and will be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Minnesota’s dream season ended not with a bang, but with a one-way ticket to Madison for Paul Bunyon’s Axe. The result notwithstanding, it’s incredible to look at how far the Gophers have come in just a year. Approaching the Battle for Paul Bunyon’s Axe a season ago, Wisconsin was 7-4 and would finish in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":945,"featured_media":26452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[5716,167,5715,85],"class_list":["post-26443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-bigten","tag-battle-for-the-axe","tag-minnesota-golden-gophers","tag-paul-bunyons-axe","tag-wisconsin-badgers"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/945"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}