Gophers fans have longed for years for head coach P.J. Fleck to be aggressive and play to win the game.

Well, he did in an a huge moment Saturday and it paid off as Minnesota upset 11th-ranked Trojans 24-17 on Saturday in front of an announced crowd of 50,913 at Huntington Bank Stadium.

Instead of kicking a go-ahead field goal with 56 seconds remaining, Fleck opted to run a quarterback sneak on fourth down from the 1/2-yard line. It was marked short of the goal line, but quarterback Max Brosmer crossed the plane upon review.

The U needed it as USC drove to Minnesota’s 28-yard line, but U true freshman safety Kio Perich intercepted Miller Moss to end the game.

The Gophers (3-3, 1-2 Big Ten) beat a Top 25 team for the first time since No. 24 Iowa last November.

Fans stormed the field and fireworks exploded.

Minnesota had first half problems against Michigan in a 27-24 loss last week and second-half woes in losses to Iowa and North Carolina at toward the beginning of the year.

Minnesota got the ball to start Saturday’s second half, but its offense was ushered off the field after four plays. Then USC marched 91 yards across 12 plays to take a 17-10 lead.

The Trojans looked like it would put the game away at the start of the fourth quarter, but Jah Joyner’s speed rush got to Miller Moss as he threw and the fluttering pass was intercepted by Devon Williams.

Minnesota answered with a 5-yard touchdown run from Max Brosmer to tie the game, 17-17, with seven minutes left.

The Gophers were the more aggressive team to start the game and took a 3-0 lead through the first quarter. Minnesota established the run with 59 yards on the ground, most coming on a nine-play, 49-yard drive.

The U’s success on the ground didn’t lead to head coach P.J. Fleck to decide to go for it on fourth and 2 from the Trojans’ 14, and Dragan Kesich gave the U an early lead 32-yard field goal.

The Trojans responded with its own running game, adding up 45 yards on a 15-play, 75-yard drive capped by Duce Robinson’s 3-yard catch in front of U safety Darius Green. USC took a 7-3 lead with seven minutes left in the half.

Minnesota came right back with another touchdown drive as Max Brosmer plunged in from 1-yard out.

Perich’s helmet forced Quinten Joyner to fumble and Ethan Robinson recovered it. But the U gave it right back with running back Darius Taylor being stripped five plays later.

Former Gophers kicker Michael Lantz then hit a 54-yarder to make it 10-10 at the half.

Minnesota United sure picked a good time to play its best soccer of the season.

The Loons beat Vancouver 1-0 on the road Saturday night, the only goal a first-half penalty kick from Hassani Dotson. It was a win that moved Minnesota above the Whitecaps in the Western Conference standings, up to seventh place and out of the 8-vs-9 wild-card places.

It was Minnesota’s fifth win in seven games, and they did it with defense; the Loons held Vancouver to a few half-chances, earning the team’s fourth consecutive clean sheet — a franchise record that couldn’t have come at a better time for the team’s playoff push.

“What we’ve done over the course of this week, when you consider the travel, the altitude and the quality of the sides we’re playing, it’s really impressive,” manager Eric Ramsay said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with what they’ve done, and the discipline they’ve showed, that is required to do what we did tonight.”

The team’s shutout streak reached 405 minutes on the evening, also a franchise record; by the time the Loons play again, two weeks from Saturday, it’ll have been a calendar month since they last allowed a goal.

Minnesota had the better of the play in the first half-hour of the game, and 24 minutes in, they were rewarded — from the penalty spot.

Center back Carlos Harvey, up for a corner kick, picked up the ball at the edge of the Whitecaps penalty area and drove into the box. He beat Vancouver’s Mathias Laborda, who unwisely tried to kick out a foot behind himself to stop Harvey — and brought down the Loons attacker in the process.

Dotson had never before taken a penalty for Minnesota, but he stepped up to take the spot kick, and converted to give the Loons a 1-0 lead.

Ten minutes later, Vancouver thought that they’d leveled the match, with a helping foot from Miguel Tapias. The Loons defender, attempting to clear a fairly tame Sam Adekugbe shot in front of his own goal, instead did something no opposing player had done in more than three games, and beat Dayne St. Clair.

Referee Ramy Touchan, though, ended up in front of the video replay monitor, and saw that the chance had clearly been created when Sang Bin Jeong was fouled by Vancouver’s Ryan Gauld, and so waved off the own goal — and saved Tapias some serious embarrassment.

The VAR decision also wiped an attempted shot off the board — notable, because the disappeared attempt would have been the only Whitecaps shot of the first half.

Vancouver came back in the second half, eventually tallying a number of corner kicks and one or two decent shots, but St. Clair wasn’t required to make any saves that were anywhere near his best.

The Whitecaps have two games remaining on their schedule, so they still control their own destiny in terms of leapfrogging back over the Loons in the standings, and potentially pushing Minnesota back into the wild-card game. But given how well Minnesota is playing, it’s clear the Loons are better than their spot in the standings.

Said Ramsay, reflecting on his team’s summer swoon, “I think if someone had said two months ago or three months ago, that we would have been in this position come this point in the year, I’d have bitten their hand off.”

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By Anne Sara Bien-Aime, Forum News Service

Two former Hawley, Minn., residents are working to pick up the pieces after Hurricane Helene destroyed their business in North Carolina.

Brian Fetting and Dan Juhnke were at Junkyard Brewing Co. in Moorhead, Minn., before they started their business venture together in 2020. Just a year later, they opened the New Origin Brewing Co. in Asheville, N.C.

“North Carolina was kind of the perfect place for us because the temperature year round was great, and the beer culture was phenomenal with so many breweries there, it’s also a tourist city. They have really high quality water,” Fetting said.

They were prepared for the potential for floods in North Carolina, but they never expected anything like the wrath of Hurricane Helene.

“We had water pumps ready, we had sandbags ready, but this was levels of magnitudes above and beyond what anybody was prepared for,” Fetting said.

By Thursday night, Sept. 26, the storm worsened. Employees and customers were evacuated.

By Friday night, the brewery was destroyed.

“The building wasn’t there, it was a pile of bricks. We could find our logo on various pieces of steel and broken glass. The office building was lifted up and brought away. We’ve been finding our fermenter tanks up to miles, miles away,” Fetting said.

Now that the storm has passed, they’re left worried about recovering.

“We did have to take out a SBA (U.S. Small Business Administration) loan to start our business and that loan still exists, but the collateral, the assets, everything that we had that was generating revenue and we were paying for that loan is now gone. We have flood insurance, but the reality is that only covers a portion of it,” Fetting said.

Between banks, insurance and cleanup, Fetting said it can take years, and anywhere from $600,000 to $1 million, to recover.

They’re hopeful that the rebuild can be bigger and better.

If you’d like to help, you can donate to their GoFundMe page. at gofundme.com/f/support-for-new-origin-brewing-after-hurricane-helene.

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