Good Luck Ducks, Week 12: Gopher Guts

It's a Friday night party as Mighty Oregon hosts some greasy and grimies.

We're already three-quarters of the way through the college football schedule now, as the Ducks are back on a short turnaround for a special Friday night appearance against Minnesota. In a conference jam packed full of eighteen schools, I suppose that there just isn't enough room for everyone to play on Saturday (or at least that's how the theory goes.) It appears that it's Oregon's time to play on a Friday this season.

The Ducks held off Iowa in another rainy slog, but there were more positive vibes around this win than the Wisconsin game. For one thing, Iowa is a legitimately good football team that just happens to run an offense that's stuck in some far away decade. To Oregon's credit, they were able to match the Hawkeyes at every step, resulting in one of the most run-dominant Ducks games on both sides of the ball that I can ever remember. Atticus Sappington (there's that name again!) and his 3 for 3 field goal performance, including the game-winning kick, won the day and kept Oregon's record at one loss.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers come in to Autzen Stadium with a 6-3 record, coming off of a blowout loss to Iowa before an OT win against Michigan State. They've been outscored 83-6 against ranked opponents (two of them) this season and most of their wins have come against subpar squads, but they do have an excellent pass rush that can't be discounted. While Dante Moore has adjusted to a more run-heavy offense as the season has progressed, you'll still expect him to make his share of drop-backs. Fortunately, the Ducks offensive line has held up fairly well this season, and their array of ball carriers should keep the Gophers guessing. Health is not on the Ducks side in the receiver camp, so they could be making use of a number of players that haven't gotten as many targets as they were forced to last week.

Notes and miscellany:

• A lot can happen in three weeks, but after Indiana survived a scare at Penn State last week, it's looking increasingly less likely that the Ducks will have a shot at playing Ohio State this year, unless the playoff bracket happens to swing that way. There could be an advantage (i.e. rest) of not playing in a conference championship game, of course. Oregon has a lot of work to do, however, as they haven't consistently looked like a playoff team over the course of an entire game in quite awhile.
• Opponent fun fact: Maybe this should just be renamed "Know Your Mascot", but it turns out that the so-called golden gopher is actually a certain type of ground squirrel and not a gopher at all. (We have an abundance of squirrels locally crawling all over the neighborhood, but as far as I know, none are of the "ground" variety.)
• Opponent history: Minnesota holds a 3-1 edge, with their most recent meetings occurring in the 1999 (Oregon win) and 2003 (Minnesota win) Sun Bowls.
  
• Game time is 6:00 PM PST on FOX in Eugene. Go Ducks!