Jay Pivec's team reaches No. 10

Jay Pivec, the legendary coach of the MCTC's now-defunct program, is in his first year coaching Dakota County Technical College's inaugural team.

I spent a little time with Jay and his players earlier this season, and now DCTC is ranked No. 10 in the country and will play Bismarck State College, 1:30 p.m. Sunday, in Bismarck for the NJCAA Region 13 Championship.

DCTC is 24-6.

Here's the piece I did on Jay's team earlier this season: http://tinyurl.com/6plbb55
Here's the current NJCAA poll: http://www.njcaa.org/sports_polls.cfm?category=Polls&sid=5&divid=2&slid=2
And good luck to MCTC in the always-exciting Crochet Olympics.

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Twins manager Ron Gardenhire spoke of his unwillingness to accept ``scholarship players" today. What does that mean? That too many players in the big-league clubhouse last year were there because the Twins had no other options, or because the Twins had a lot invested in those players. This year, with Terry Ryan running the show, expect to see more merit-based promotions.

Of course, there were so many injuries last year the Twins simply ran out of good options. But Ryan is much more likely to force a player to earn his way to the big leagues.

Brett Favre is on Twitter. You have been warned. He's at @BrettFavre4. Until he retires from Twitter.

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Upcoming: I'll be on 1500espn at 2:05 with Reusse and Mackey. They disagree about baseball's new playoff format, and you may be surprised by the side I choose in that debate. I'll run Sunday Sports Talk, 10-12:30 on Sunday, from Fort Myers, with old friend Jeff Grayson joining me from the Twin Cities.