By now, you’ve certainly heard about the Gophers winning a trophy game for the first time since 2006. That year, under then-coach Glen Mason, they again defeated the Hawkeyes for the Floyd of Rosedale. In the three and a half years that followed, when Tim Brewster was the head coach in Minnesota, they failed to win the Floyd, Paul Bunyan’s Axe (Wisconsin), the Governor’s Victory Bell (Penn State), or the Little Brown Jug (Michigan).
↵But those aren’t the only things that Tim Brewster’s team couldn’t do in three and a half years that Jeff Horton’s team managed to do in just five games.
↵Brewster’s Gophers not only failed to beat any of their rivals during his time at Minnesota, they never even beat a ranked team. The Hawkeyes were ranked #24 in the nation going into yesterday’s match-up.
↵The fact that’s even more mindblowing, though, is that Jeff Horton has more victories as the Gophers head coach in the month of November than Brewster. That’s right. . .after the calendar turned to November under Tim Brewster, the Gophers pretty much stopped winning.
↵They went 0-3 in November in Brewster’s first season in 2007. They followed that up by going 0-4 in 2008, part of the collapse after starting 7-1 that year and sneaking into the Top 25. In 2009, Brewster got his lone November victory, a 16-13 barnburner over noted powerhouse South Dakota State, sandwiched between two losses. He didn’t get an opportunity to lose any games in November this year, as he was fired following the Gophers’ October 16 loss against Purdue.
↵Horton, conversely, got two November victories in his five games as Gopher coach. Heck, he had an above .500 record in November, having gone 2-1.
↵Congratulations to Jeff Horton and the Gophers on finishing the season strong. There’s no chance Horton gets the interim tag removed from his title, and he’s going to be looking for work in a week or two, but he gave this Gopher senior class and their fans something special to remember. . .lord knows that, after the Tim Brewster error, they both deserved it.