24 hours later, Wolves pull a 180 in Toronto

TORONTO - That fuzzy afterglow from Tuesday's home victory over Utah faded fast Wednesday at inhospitable Air Canada Centre, where the Timberwolves started strong and then went meekly into the good night with a 107-85 loss to the Toronto Raptors.

It thrived for the game's opening seven minutes, survived almost until halftime and then grew as cold as the winter wind that whipped outside. The Wolves were undone by All-Star Chris Bosh's 28-point performance and two conditions that particularly have not treated them well this season: the road and the second half of back-to-back games.

Leading 12-2 and 15-5 early, the Wolves surrendered runs of 11-2 midway through the first half and 9-2 that ended the second quarter and allowed the Raptors to turn the evening into a second-half rout when their lead ballooned to as many as 26 points. It was Toronto's eighth consecutive victory over Minnesota.

The Wolves ended Tuesday's victory over Utah with a 39-point fourth quarter and then rode Randy Foye throughout Wednesday's opening minutes.

"We scored so easy and so often early, we fell into a false sense of whatever," Wolves coach Randy Wittman said.

Either that or the Raptors awoke to extend a stretch where their last eight victories have been by an average of 25.6 points. Either way, the Wolves stopped moving the ball with ease and began turning it over, 14 times by halftime, 19 times by game's end.

Afterward, Wittman wondered if his team once again was too easily satisfied by victory.

"Not for me," said Foye, who followed Tuesday's season-high 20 points by scoring 13 of his 19 points in the game's first seven minutes. "We've only won 12 games. We can't be satisfied with that."

The Wolves, who just played 10 of 11 games at home, now are 2-24 away from Target Center and 1-12 on the second night of back-to-back games.

"It's just being consistent, especially in back-to-back situations," Wolves forward Al Jefferson said. "That's what makes a great team, a great playoff team. You have to be consistent, no matter how tired and sore you might be some nights."

Wednesday, the Wolves limited the league's most accurate three-point shooting team to a 3-for-18 night beyond the arc, but they had no answer for Bosh, the cornerstone for a Raptors building effort that is several seasons and high lottery picks further along than the Wolves' new plan.

"I always take that matchup with him seriously," said Jefferson, the Wolves' Chris Bosh who countered with 23 points and five rebounds. "If you don't, he'll embarrass you. He's a handful."

On Tuesday night, four Wolves scored 20 or more points, only the second time in a decade they've done that. Newly acquired Kirk Snyder was productive in his Timberwolf debut. On Wednesday, he didn't see the game's end after he was ejected in the fourth quarter because of his second technical foul. The first one came in the second quarter for contact after the whistle. The second came for throwing the ball against the basket stanchion, an automatic technical foul after a fairly recent rule change.

"It has been so long since I played," said Snyder, lost on Houston's bench until last week's trade. "I didn't know they had changed the rule. That's what happens when you don't play."

The Wolves on Saturday will launch a season-ticket renewal campaign (branded Let's Build It) that team officials say will keep base ticket prices the same for what team president Chris Wright calls "99.5 percent" of all seats.

Prices of some court seats will rise, and fans who bought promotional season-ticket packages for $20 each for lower-bowl end sections will now pay $25 for tickets that will be tiered by rows depending whether a full, half or 10-game package is bought.

An "MVP Renewal" rewards program is new. It gives away everything from an Al Jefferson bobblehead to an executive suite for a night or an exclusive team dinner for points accrued by team locations, number of season tickets purchased and tenure as a season-ticket holder Wright calls it a long-term plan "build back the season-ticket base for our franchise." The Wolves sold what they call the equivalent of nearly 7,000 season tickets this season.