Gardenhire, the 39-year-old son of longtime former Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, guided the Saints to a 67-63 record last season in his first season at the Triple-A level.
“I’m very, very proud of the way we competed,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “If that could have ended in a tie, that would have been better. But we did enough things to have success.”
Karl-Anthony Towns did a lot of the heavy lifting for Minnesota (21-22) through the first three frames. The center finished with 26 points and 11 rebounds in 30 minutes.
Minnesota was without defensive coordinator Elston Turner and strategy guru Micah Nori for a stretch of games, and is currently sans offensive coordinator Pablo Prigioni.
