Wins, losses and departures: The top stories of 2024 in Minnesota sports

Never a dull moment around here, is there? The year in Minnesota sports began with three unexpected championships and one notable firing, and ended with the local NFL team rolling with a new quarterback and the baseball team up for sale.

So let’s get right to it: Here are the Seven Top Minnesota Sports Stories of 2024, from No. 7 to No. 1. Your list may vary.

7. Minnesota State men’s and women’s basketball teams win NCAA Division II championships.

It’s hard enough to win one of these, let alone two by the same university in the same season. But that’s what happened on consecutive days in March.

First the Maverick women, a No. 5 seed, dispatched Texas Women’s University 89-73 in St. Joseph, Mo., to win its first NCAA title since 2009. Sophomore Natalie Bremer of Lake City won the Elite Eight Outstanding Player Award, scoring 27 points in the final and 70 in the final three games for the Mavs (32-5).

Then in Evansville, Ind., the Maverick men pulled out an 88-85 victory over Nova Southeastern, with Kyreese Willingham hitting the game-winning three-pointer from the corner off a feed from his brother Malik, the Elite Eight MVP. The Mavs (35-2) had never won a men’s basketball championship. 

Months later MSU nearly bagged a third NCAA title, as the women’s soccer team (18-2-7) advanced to the final before losing 2-1 to Cal Poly Pomona. That’s some year for the folks in Mankato.

6. Kirk Cousins leaves the Minnesota Vikings in free agency.

Cousins always struck me as a guy who played well enough to give Vikings fans hope, but not well enough to deliver a Super Bowl. With Cousins approaching age 36 and coming off a ruptured Achilles tendon, the Vikings declined to offer him a multi-year extension this off-season. So Cousins grabbed a four-year, $180 million offer from Atlanta, with $100 million guaranteed.

So far, it’s working out great — for the Vikings. 

Sam Darnold, an underachiever with the Jets and Carolina and a backup in San Francisco, excelled after arriving in Minnesota as a one-year stopgap, leading the Vikings to five consecutive victories to start the season and a 12-2 mark by mid-December. Against Atlanta and Cousins on Dec. 8, Darnold threw for a career-high 347 yards and five touchdowns in a 42-21 victory. And Cousins, after nine interceptions and only one TD pass in a five-game stretch, soon lost his starting job to rookie Michael Penix Jr.

5. The Minnesota Lynx make the WNBA finals.

Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve challenged captain Napheesa Collier before the season to put herself in the conversation for league MVP and Defensive Player of the Year.

Collier did just that, establishing herself as one of the WNBA’s best players in a season that saw her win DPOY, finish second in the MVP balloting and carry the Lynx to within a jump shot of its first league title since 2017. All-Star Kayla McBride and free agent newcomers Courtney Williams and Alanna Smith helped Collier lift the Lynx from middle-of-the-pack to championship contenders.

Bandwagon jumpers discovered the surging Lynx late; crowds of more than 19,000 turned out for Games 3 and 4 of the WNBA Finals at the Target Center, with the Game 3 total of 19,521 breaking the club record. That the New York Liberty prevailed in overtime in Game 5, 67-62, still stings with the players, some of whom returned to Minneapolis this fall to prepare for 2025.    

4. The Minnesota Timberwolves trade Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks.

This was an even bigger shock than the Timberwolves making the Western Conference finals last spring for the first time in 20 years. President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly sent the popular Towns, the last player remaining from the late Flip Saunders’ tenure with the club, to New York in a multi-player, three-team deal in early October to gain salary cap flexibility.

The New Jersey-raised Towns got to go home in a sense and move back to center, his best position. Tortured Wolves fans shouldn’t be surprised that Towns is thriving in New York under former Wolves Coach Tom Thibodeau, averaging 24.8 points per game while leading the NBA in rebounding (13.9) through Dec. 18. 

The Wolves, meanwhile, struggled early as former Knicks Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo adjusted to their new teammates and new surroundings, and co-owners Glen Taylor, Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez went to arbitration to settle purchase issues. 

3. Suni Lee and Regan Smith win Olympic gold medals.

Lee, the defending artistic gymnastics all-around champion from St. Paul, overcame a debilitating kidney ailment to win a team gold medal and bronzes in the all-around and uneven bars at the Summer Olympics in Paris. That gave Lee six career Olympic medals, tied for third-most by an American gymnast. 

Earlier, Lee delivered a stunning performance at the Olympic Trials at Target Center in June, taking second in the all-around to Simone Biles and winning the uneven bars — a triumphant homecoming for Minnesota’s most accomplished Hmong-American athlete.

Smith, of Lakeville, won five medals in Paris — silvers in the 100- and 200-meter backstrokes and 200 butterfly, and golds on two world record-setting relays. Smith now owns eight Olympic medals, the most by any Minnesotan. 

In all, Minnesota athletes brought home 12 medals from Paris, matching the 2021 haul in Tokyo for the most by our state at a single Games. It’s 14 if you count part-year Minnesota residents Anthony Edwards (men’s basketball) and Napheesa Collier (women’s basketball). 

2.  PWHL Minnesota GM Natalie Darwitz is fired after winning the league championship.

League officials dismissed Darwitz, the Hockey Hall of Famer and Minnesota women’s hockey icon, nine days after the team she assembled won the Walter Cup title. Locally, it spoiled an otherwise terrific inaugural season for the Professional Women’s Hockey League, the latest and best-funded attempt to establish women’s pro hockey in North America.

Darwitz’s accomplishments included securing ice time and locker room space at TRIA Rink, the Wild’s practice site, and arranging for home games at Xcel Energy Center. PWHL Minnesota (now the Minnesota Frost) was the only club in the league to play regularly in an NHL building. The club drew 13,316 on Opening Night, and its average attendance of 7,138 trailed only Ottawa (7,496).

Minnesota barely qualified for the playoffs after losing its last five games, then rebounded to oust Toronto and Boston in consecutive series to win the championship, with former University of Minnesota star Taylor Heise winning the playoff MVP award.  

But Darwitz and Coach Ken Klee didn’t get along, according to media reports, and the league resolved the conflict by firing Darwitz after a lengthy review. Klee had been Darwitz’s second choice as coach, brought on after Charlie Burggraf resigned unexpectedly a week before the first game. 

1. The owners of the Minnesota Twins consider selling the team.

This one took everyone by surprise. Forty years after Carl Pohlad bought the club from Calvin Griffith, grandson and executive chair Joe Pohlad announced in October the family would “explore selling the Twins.” Pohlad’s statement didn’t go into why, and he hasn’t spoken publicly about it since.

It followed a torturous season where fans vilified Pohlad and the club for reducing payroll by $25 million, in response to a sizable drop in local TV revenue from the Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy restructuring. 

The Twins weren’t the only MLB club that cut back spending. But Pohlad took heat for making what he called “a very difficult business decision,” one he defended in late September after the Twins collapsed the final six weeks to miss the playoffs. Pohlad aptly called that 12-27 finish a “trainwreck” as the Twins again failed to draw two million fans, a baseline number the club hasn’t exceeded since 2019.   

The “explore selling” part of the statement gives the family wiggle room to change its mind, though the windfall from a sale (well north of $1 billion, based on recent valuations) may be too lucrative for the Pohlad grandchildren uninterested in owning a team to pass up. 

Via media reports, potential buyers have emerged: Marty Davis, the Cambria CEO and former co-owner of Sun Country Airlines; and Mat and Justin Ishbia, billionaire brothers who own the Phoenix Suns and Mercury and made their money in high finance. Expect the process to last well into next summer.

Pat Borzi

Pat Borzi is a contributing writer to MinnPost. Follow him on Twitter @BorzMN.

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