Is there any sense in writing another postgame blog about the same old game? Does anyone want to read this again?
It never fails -- just as I am finishing the final tweaks of a buoyant "Gophers are finally playing like the team they need to be" story for my running edition (the one I have to file immediately as the game ends), this team goes and does ... this.
You only get so many chances, so many golden opportunities in one season, and the Gophers have had more than their fair share, probably. Unfortunately, they don't have much to show for it.
And they're running out of answers as quickly as I'm running out of ways to describe how they lose different games the same way, over and over.
"It's just fighting hard and coming together as a team at the end and saying 'We're going to have to stop this from happening,'" Ralph Sampson III said. "You've got to get over that final hump at the end and come out with a win."
So why can't they? Not in this game, not in the Wisconsin game, not in the first game of the Big Ten season.
"I don't have that answer right now," Sampson said.
Smith's answer?