I like the fact you cover BOTH sides of the glass, half empty AND half full!!
I hereby choose to respond to your half-FULL post.
To be honest, from what I saw in the game with Minny, our team was really lacking energy for about the first 30 minutes. The Gophers were out-hustling and plain out-toughing us. We came on late, and before it was too late, but the same lack of hustle and grit killed us versus a much-more talented (than Minny) OSU team. Not sure why, but the energy level seemed way down...both days.
While all your points have some validity, the one I'm most sold on is No.1 above: sometimes there's nothing a team, athlete (or human being involved in ANY field of endeavor) needs more than a good, solid, humbling, humiliating, welcome-to-planet-Earth KICK IN THE ASS.
(And our hated rival down south generously administered the medicine...)
I'll offer my more, ahem, analytic two cents (re: our upcoming game/games) later in the week. One thing I definitely want to throw out there now, though: ONE FREAKING GAME AT A TIME!!! TEMPLE BE DAMNED!