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MINNEAPOLIS -- Drew Wolitarsky will leave Minnesota without a Big Ten championship or a high-profile bowl victory, with losses by the Gophers in the majority of their trophy games against longstanding rivals.Thats not where the story of Wolitarskys career ends, though. The Gophers seniors, for all the letdowns theyve had over the last four years, have 30 wins with two games to go starting on Saturday at Wisconsin. The last class with that many victories was 2006. The Gophers have reached eight wins, including five in the Big Ten, which remain notable benchmarks for this program even in a season with a softer schedule.Then theres the off-the-field part, the lessons learned that will linger long after the last route is run and the final ball is caught.Its a life-changing experience. It really is. The main thing it taught me is I have the ability to go out into something extremely new, whether Im nervous or anxious to do it, and excel in it, said Wolitarsky , whos third in the conference with 57 receptions and eighth with 711 yards. If anything, its given me the confidence to do it again. Go somewhere new, try something new and be able to acclimate to it and succeed.Wolitarsky left Canyon High School in Santa Clarita, California, as the states all-time leading receiver with 281 catches and 5,148 yards. He wasnt a five-star recruit, though, so with Arizona, Army and San Jose State also under consideration he took a chance on the Big Ten with the Gophers. The passing game hasnt always clicked, but the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Wolitarsky is on track to finish in the top five in Minnesota history for single-season receptions and in the top 10 all-time for career yards. Hes already ninth in career catches.Was this the production he envisioned?I did, and then that first camp hit me and all my futuristic thinking went out the window, Wolitarsky said. I definitely gained the ability to stay in the moment, and thats something I had to learn. Just being present, letting things come to you and not trying to force things. Because every kid wants to do well, have big games, go to the NFL, but if you cant keep your focus at the present moment, a lot of things can go wrong and you lose touch with who you are and what youre doing.The challenge of maintaining that mindset is made easier by his non-football pastime of writing. An English major who was sparked to pursue the skill by Mitch Albom and inspired by other authors like Stephen King, Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway, Wolitarsky has published several science-fiction pieces and had a six-part short story published in a student-run campus magazine . During this season, he has delved more into poetry and shorter essays.Despite the discipline and uniformity of the sport, Wolitarsky has found plenty of art form in football too.Try to get into the defensive backs head. Whats he thinking Im going to run, and then how can I deceive him based on what hes seen me do before, Wolitarsky said. So you can use your creativity, and thats what I try to do in my routes. Its fun that way.Whether he can make it in the NFL or not, Wolitarsky will have plenty of options for his post-football life. Mentoring is one passion, having worked for a Twin Cities non-profit organization that supports youth in the arts .Im very adaptive, and I can do a lot of things, he said. Im very creative, so whatever I do would have to be something where I could use my creative ability and not sit at a desk all day and stare at a screen.Hes more than a one-dimensional player on the field, too.Hes blocked well, too. I mean, he really has, and hes had a complete year, coach Tracy Claeys said.Wolitarsky and quarterback Mitch Leidner have also been the primary source of the positive energy that has helped carry a tight-knit class through the ups and downs of their career.Always carries himself with class, and you cant say enough good things about him and what hes done for this program, Leidner said.---For more college football coverage: http://www.collegefootball.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP-Top25 Cheap NFL Jerseys China .com) - Following a late-game loss to the reigning NBA champs, the Toronto Raptors will look to sustain their recent high-level play as they travel to Indiana to take on the Pacers. Wholesale Jerseys Authentic . Louis Blues absence from top spot in the TSN. http://www.cheapjerseysauthenticwholesale.com/ .Y. -- Marcell Dareus and the Buffalo Bills defence made life miserable for Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco. Cheap MLB Jerseys China . 31, the CFL club announced Monday. The team also has yet to decide on the future of Doug Berry, who began the season as a consultant to the head coach but took over the offensive co-ordinators duties in July. NFL Jerseys Cheap . Jeff Green scored 13 points and Kris Humphries 12 for the Celtics, who nearly blew an 18-point, second-half lead. Sullingers 20-20 was the first by a Celtics player since Kevin Garnetts first game in Boston in 2007. Garnett was dealt -- along with Paul Pierce -- to Brooklyn during the off-season. Building something that lasts in the NBA is hard. Even teams on top live in fear of one butterfly flap that might undo everything -- one injury, one trade gone bad, one unhappy player or even a blip of bad timing in the way contracts are staggered.Its amazing how fast things spin out of control, and how long it can take a team to find its bearings again. Teams crave control. They hoard draft picks to decide who gets to wear their uniform and craft five-year plans that make them feel and act as if they are a step ahead. Sometimes they really are! Play a couple of things wrong, and suddenly youre reactive and desperate, flailing one move behind everyone else.The Dallas Mavericks busting up their 2011 title team to chase free agents wasnt on its own a mistake. Those dudes were mostly fogies, and Tyson Chandler, the one core guy at the outer edge of his prime, has been up and down since signing with the Knicks. You cant control a free agents choice, especially when incumbent teams can outbid you, but it wasnt nuts to think some big name would take the Mavs money -- particularly given Mark Cubans cozy relationship with power agent Dan Fegan.But the Mavs have mishandled most of the things they do control. They traded down in drafts to save money, traded out of them and whiffed on most of the picks they did make. Donnie Nelson, the teams GM, begged Cuban to draft Giannis Antetokounmpo at No. 13 in 2013, but the Mavs instead traded down five spots to open up a few hundred thousand bucks in extra cap space for Dwight Howard. They ended up drafting Shane Larkin at No. 18 as part of a deal that sent away their first-round pick from the year before.Fewer teams had cap room then, but the Mavs could have picked 13th and found other ways to dump money in a pinch.Team building is hard, and it requires major luck somewhere along the way. Most picks below the lottery yield back-of-the-rotation guys or total busts. But to sustain success, you eventually have to hit on a few of them. Roddy Beaubois, the No. 25 pick in 2009, might have turned into a hit had foot injuries not ruined his career. Justin Anderson, the 21st pick last year, looks like a hoppy and versatile wing perfect for the modern NBA. The hits dont have to be Kawhi Leonard at No. 15, or Draymond Green in the second round. One or two Jae Crowders will do.The Mavs had the real Jae Crowder, and included him (plus this years pick) in their ill-fated gamble for Rajon Rondo. Boston got Brandan Wright in that deal, too. Crowder and Wright will earn $12 million combined next season, about 60 percent of Kent Bazemores likely salary. Dallas was brilliant to snag Al-Farouq Aminu on a minimum salary in 2014-15, but then let him walk to Portland to carve out max cap space for DeAndre Jordan.Dallas sacrificed a lot of good under-27 players in the pursuit of great ones, and the odds got worse when the cap boom gave everyone space.?Chandler Parsons is the latest such casualty. He went from bro-in-chief to outcast in record time, and no one will say exactly why. His knee issues certainly frustrated the Mavs, especially given the timing of flare-ups; Parsons appeared in just one of Dallas 10 playoff games over the past two seasons.The Mavs decision that Parsons is no longer a max player offended him, and the market has proved Parsons right; Memphis has offered him a max contract pending a physical that promises to be one of the most suspenseful moments of this free-agency period.Parsons didnt find a groove in Dallas until January, and hes a minus defender. But hes a high-IQ guy who shot 39 percent from deep in Dallas and can shoot, pass and dribble across both forward spots. Hes never made an All-Star team, and hes not a foundational piece. No one knows how his right knee will hold up going forwardBut Parsons is good, and the Mavs cant afford to let good 27-year-olds walk away without a Plan B. Their Plan A appears to have been a double-barreled signing of Mike Conley and Hassan Whiteside, but that left them once again at the mercy of variables they cannot control. Stud free agents want to see players with whom they can grow, but the Mavs have mostly punted on such players to pursue stud free agents.We know by now what Plan B is: Dallas has a list of canny veteran free agents they can nab after everyone has picked over the market, and they will mesh better than any of us expect. Dirk Nowitzki is a rising tide on offense, and Rick Carlisle is one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.It is hard, and perhaps impossible, to bottom out when you have someone as great as Nowitzki. Maybe it is time to try, one way or another. Before the Jordan hostage situation a year ago, Cuban said he had planned to tank had Jordan spurned Dallas. Its unclear how hed have done so without ordering Nowitzki to have some long-overdue surgery, but perhaps its time to do it now.Like it or not, that is a tried-and-true path you can control: lose a lot of games and take a shot at drafting a superstar. That is why Sam Hinkie scorched the earth in Philadelphia -- to eliminate as many of those noisy variables as possible, and draft over and over in the spots with the best chance of turning out a Nowitzki.You can get superstars without doing that, of course. The Mavs drafted Nowitzki at No. 9. The Spurs turned George Hill, the No. 26 pick, into Leonard, and leveraged Leonard into pole position for LaMarcus Aldridge. (Still: Ground zero of the Spurs dynasty was a blatant tank job that netted one of the half-dozen greatest players who ever lived). The Rockets transitioned from Yao Ming to James Harden while fighting for the playoffs every year.But that middle road is hard, and it requires maximizing every asset --- drafting well and keeping the cupboard stocked for deals. Its why Sam Presti in Oklahoma City keeps turning outgoing stars into younger players and extra draft picks. He knows he cant afford to be left with stars and nothing else. He wants things he can control -- draft picks, younger players on rookie contracts, matching rights.dddddddddddd They are hedges against the unknown, a future he can sell to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.The Mavs dont have that, and they are running out of time for Nowitzki. Set emotion aside and its probably best for them to part now. Nowitzki can chase one last ring, and the Mavs can bottom out ahead of a loaded draft in a year when everyone else is trying to win. It probably wont happen -- city and player care for each other too deeply -- but it would be the quickest path to a new foundation.The Knicks have their foundation, Kristaps Porzingis, and maybe that is all that matters. For now, Carmelo Anthony is almost their own, younger version of Nowitzki. Hes so good, they cant properly rebuild. Provide Anthony an average supporting cast and youll be around .500. Fail to do so, and all you have is a miserable superstar.The Knicks and Anthony are stuck with each other. The deal he signed in 2014 has a no-trade clause, and a suitor both acceptable to Anthony and stocked with assets the Knicks want just hasnt emerged. There was some internal hope the Cavs might become that team, but then they won the whole stinking thing.Even had the Knicks wanted to trade Anthony before re-signing him, the timing never broke right. Two years before the expiration of his deal in 2014, the Knicks won 54 games and snagged the No. 2 seed; no team would ever trade its star during a season like that. New York predictably slipped the next season, 2013-14, but Anthony was on an expiring contract by then, torpedoing his trade value.And so he were are, in 2016, with the Knicks building a team designed to make the 2012 conference finals. Theyve made a choice: as long as Anthony is in New York, they are going to try to at least be competitive. The Knicks dont really even see another choice. They might feel differently had they not traded so many picks and players in previous win-now moves, including the disastrous Andrea Bargnani deal. They dont have a lot of tools beyond money and a big city.Each of this summers moves is defensible on its own. They flipped Robin Lopez and Jerian Grant for Derrick Rose because the organization needed a galvanizing spark, and because the free-agent market is thick with centers to replace Lopez -- and thin on point guards better than Rose. OK, fine. If things go badly, the Knicks let Rose walk.Theyre about to sign Joakim Noah to a four-year, $72 million deal despite knee and shoulder injuries that have cramped Noahs game since a magical 2013-14 season in which he finished fourth in MVP voting.Again, fine. The Knicks need leadership and defense, and they are not really getting those things from any of their veterans. Noah is a beloved teammate, and he will help a defense that has been wretched almost every season since the Jeff Van Gundy era ended. He can spare Porzingis the brutality of playing center full time, cede the position to him for 10 or 15 minutes per game, and slide into a backup role whenever Porzingis is ready to start in the middle.Noah can facilitate from the elbows and resume setting nasty screens for his old Chicago point guard. He started looking like his snarling, rebound-munching self again in the month before his shoulder gave out last season. He even made some layups. Noah is hungry to prove he can rediscover his peak form, and even 85 percent of that player is damned good.None of these players is ancient, either. If Porzingis makes a leap in Year 2 or 3, the start of his prime might overlap with the very end of those of some other New York players.But zoom out and the vision is murky. Are the Knicks going to run any triangle with Rose, a non-triangle point guard, spotting up in the corner? Are they a fast-break team? Even if they sign another wing shooter -- Courtney Lee, Eric Gordon -- can they provide Melo enough space to rampage on the block with Noah and Rose clogging things up?If they do end up with Gordon, the collective health risk between Rose, Noah, and Gordon is enough to induce some panic dry-heaving.When the Knicks flipped Lopez for Rose, fans crowed about how much cap space New York could open for next summers insane free-agency class. But Lopez turned into Noah on a richer long-term deal, and if the Knicks commit $30 million combined in 2017-18 salary to Noah and Shooting Guard X, they might have only between $30 million and $35 million in cap space next summer -- enough for one mega-max but not for the dream scenario of two.That estimate includes $0 for Rose. He is a risk-free flier primed for a contract year, but thats exactly why Chicago traded him: to avoid the temptation of investing more in Roses knees after one good season.There is a lot of uncertainty between now and next July. The cap for 2017-18 probably will come in higher than the projected $107 million. New York could off-load Kyle OQuinn, Langston Galloway?and any free agent it signs now.But in the bigger picture, the Knicks are using equity to get these guys: a good center on a value contract (Lopez), a semi-interesting point guard prospect (Grant) and cap flexibility. They havent boxed themselves in, but they have exhausted assets they could have used in gain-an-inch moves that might have primed them for something bigger -- something that better fit Porzingis timetable.With Anthony around, they are not going to wait for Porzingis. But there were better ways to straddle the middle ground while still gathering goodies on the fringes that could pay off down the line.Again: Maybe all that matters is that they drafted Porzingis. Any team hoping to get anywhere needs to find a young star somehow. The Knicks have one. The Mavs barely have anyone young. Even for smart teams with good intentions, the NBA can be a hard place. ' ' '