2002

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan, top Wall Street firms paid $1 billion in fines for fraud and corruption, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, and Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize. 

2002 was a good year for the Minnesota Gophers. In coach Don Lucia’s third season, the Minnesota Gopher hockey team swept to the NCAA title, beating Maine 4-3 in overtime in the final, after finishing third in the WCHA. Jordan Leopold won the Hobey Baker Award while Johnny Pohl finished his career with 200 points. The Gopher wrestlers repeated as NCAA champions as Luke Becker and Jarod Lawrence won individual titles. The women’s basketball team had its first winning season since 1994, finishing 22-8 with its second NCAA tournament win ever behind guard Lindsay Whalen. Joel Maturi was hired as Gopher athletic director.

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Joel Maturi

Joel Maturi was named athletic director at the University of Minnesota in 2002, and the Gophers won two national championships in men’s golf and men’s ice hockey that year. It’s hard to give Maturi too much credit for that, but was a good omen. Maturi went on to become one of the most consequential ADs in Gopher history.

Biographies of Maturi often mention that he was hired to consolidate the men’s and women’s athletic departments into one. They also mention that he came on in the aftermath of the Clem Haskins-men’s basketball academic fraud scandal that ended up wiping the Gophers 1997 Final Four season off the books. In the first case, Maturi successfully merged the departments. There were hard feelings over the demise of the separate women’s program and especially the departure of the highly respected women’s AD Chris Voelz. But, not only was the merger accomplished, but both men’s and women’s sports have thrived since. The men and women have both won Big 10 titles at twice the rate they did in the 20^th century.

On the second point, the men’s basketball program has continued to struggle—and so, too, has the football team, though there was obvious progress under P.J. Fleck in 2019. In those very high-profile positions, Maturi hired Tubby Smith and Jerry Kill, but also Tim Brewster. Smith was considered to be a coup at the time, though fans grew tired of his slow pace of play. Kill was an unknown quantity, as was Brewster. Brewster was a disaster, Kill a huge success. Gopher football seemed to be on the way back under Kill, but then health problems sidelined the popular coach. 

Among Maturi’s other hires were such success stories as Brad Frost, women’s hockey, and Hugh McCutcheon, volleyball. After 2002, the Gophers won national titles in the Maturi regime in 2003 (men’s hockey), 2004-2005 and 2012 (women’s hockey) and 2007 (wrestling). Big 10 championships came fast and furious—49 of them in eleven years compared to 29 such titles in the 1990s and 20 in the 1980s.

• The Minnesota Twins made the playoffs for the first time in eleven years, and defeated the Oakland A’s in the ALDS three games to two. It was the last playoff series they would ever win (through 2019). The lost to the eventual world champion Angels four games to one in the ALCS. Centerfielder Torii Hunter went 29-94-.289 while Eddie Guardado got 45 saves.

• Southwest Minnesota Christian won its fourth straight boys Class A basketball title. It was just the second four-peat ever in a “major” team sport—boys or girls, including baseball and softball, basketball, football and hockey. The first was Eveleth hockey from 1948 to 1951, of course. (Some will disagree with this definition of “major,” of course, as Robbinsdale Armstrong won five straight volleyball titles through 1984, and Robbinsdale [1946], Staples [1985] and Apple Valley [also through 2002] won seven, six and four straight wrestling titles. The Edina girls won 15 straight tennis titles, and there are other multiples of golf and tennis.)

Year	Athlete of the Year	Team of the Year	Fearless Leader	Event of the Year
2002	1. Jordan Leopold, Minnesota Gopher hockey 2. Lindsay Whalen, Minnesota Gopher women’s basketball 3. Torii Hunter, Minnesota Twins	1. Minnesota Twins (98-73 including playoffs, Central Division champion) 2. Minnesota Gopher hockey (32-8-4, NCAA champion) 3. Minnesota Gopher wrestling (NCAA champion)	1. Don Lucia, Minnesota Gopher hockey 2 (tie). Tom Kelly and Terry Ryan, Minnesota Twins 3. Joel Maturi, Minnesota Gopher athletic director	1. The Minnesota Gophers beat Maine 4-3 in OT to win the NCAA hockey title. 2. The Minnesota Twins beat Oakland 3 games to 2 in the ALDS. 3. Southwest Minnesota Christian won the first state basketball four-peat.