Minnie Miracle Maker

When looking at the landscape of hearland sports, the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers are pretty a joke all the around. It's no news flash that Football and Basketball are the two most popular college sports nationwide, but as far as each goes on the Ski-U-Mah it's pretty pathetic. Sure they have some coaches with name recognition and the football team has had some players get drafted but those are not enough things to translate to success on the playing surface.

But this isn't actually about ripping the U. Just the opposite in fact!

I don't know where Women's college basketball would fall in the list of sports popularity but my guess would be that it isn't high on the list. Despite the level of popularity I've heard of a young woman doing pretty astounding things for their basketball team.

More on that after the break!So the young woman I'm talking about is named Rachel Banham. She's a 5'9" senior guard from Lakeville, Minnesota. To be fully honest, I'd never heard of her till Super Bowl Sunday. Let's just think about that for a second, a women's college basketball player from the University of Minnesota getting talked about on the same night as the biggest game of the biggest sport in the country. That alone is a very impressive fact but comes after the fact of what she did.

In a double overtime victory against Northwestern University she set school & Big Ten records while also tying an NCAA record with 60 points. 60. First time it's happened since Feb 16 1987. That's almost 30 years between happenings! So in case you're thinking about the double overtime part of the story, just stop. Positive history being made is always impressive and should be applauded!

If you aren't impressed well then you may not care about Basketball, and that would be fine, or you think you know more about the game then Kobe Bryant cause he thought it was pretty impressive.

But that was just chapter one.

Now granted, it's pretty much impossible to top that or even match it but she did have an excellent encore last night against Iowa. Enough words for a second, time for some video!

That wasn't the best video I found but for some reason the better one wouldn't show up through the youtube search here. I'm adding the link to the better video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSARedufXe4

I'm not a baller but shooting from the left side of the hoop, while falling to the left doesn't seem like an easy shot but she nailed it. To win the game. Clutch. It again got Kobe's attention which is just some cool frosting on the cake.

I have no idea where the team is in the race to the tourney but for a few days she's putting the Universities sports on the map positively! Despite that, I probably won't pay attention to the Gopher's women's team again, possibly ever. If she keeps doing the kind of things she's been doing lately then it's almost unavoidable thought!

I hate to diminish the word but she's working some miracles down in Dinkyville and as far as this sports fan is concerned, I'm impressed!