Golden Gophers – Page 288 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Lots of Questions about U Basketball

Posted on August 5, 2015August 5, 2015 by David Shama

The Gophers basketball team leaves for Spain next week, with the practices and games expected to improve the players and increase chances for a successful Big Ten season in 2016. When the Gophers return to campus later in the month they may have more answers, but there will still be intriguing questions about the future.

NCAA rules allow a college basketball program to schedule a foreign trip every four years. Because of the trip to Spain this summer, Minnesota has 10 extra practices and a few exhibition games to help prepare for next season. Here is a list of questions Gophers fans could be asking.

Q. What direction is the program trending?

Minnesota was a disappointing 6-12 in Big Ten Conference regular season games last season. Preseason expectations had them at 8-8 or better but the Gophers struggled in close games, losing eight league games by six points or less. Minnesota was 18-15 overall and not only missed an invite to the NCAA Tournament but also didn’t return to the NIT where the Gophers won the championship in 2014.

With key returnees a year ago including guards Andre Hollins and DeAndre Mathieu—and building off the NIT championship—the Gophers looked like a solid bet for the NCAA Tournament. Instead, they struggled through the conference season, producing a record that was better than only three other league teams.

Starters Hollins, Mathieu and forward-center Mo Walker, three of the team’s better players, have used up their college eligibilities. The returning personnel has plenty to prove, just like the team’s newcomers. That’s why the Gophers are a popular pick to finish again near the bottom of the Big Ten next season.

Head coach Richard Pitino acknowledged at his news conference yesterday that the expectations for next season by fans are low. “We try to get better everyday,” he said.

Q. Who steps up for the Gophers?

Everyone needs to but hopes start with sophomore guard Nate Mason and senior guard-forward Carlos Morris. Pitino wrote on his blog that Mason has all-conference potential. He’s also written that Morris, a very athletic but inconsistent player, will have much to do with determining the team’s success.

The 16-man roster consists of two seniors, four juniors, four sophomores and six freshmen. “We’re so young,” Pitino said.

Forward Joey King, a returning starter, is the team’s other senior and poster boy for max effort. Pitino has to hope his mostly unproven roster of players emulates King, and that they all try to take away his title as Minnesota’s best overachiever.

The Gophers will need help from newcomers including four-star freshman guard Kevin Dorsey from Waldorf, Maryland. Minnesota’s incoming recruits were rated No. 11 in the Big Ten by 247sports.com, and Rivals.com had four teams from the league in its top 30 national recruiting rankings but not the Gophers. Pitino’s incoming class has an opportunity to prove it’s better than expected.

Q. Will the roster stabilize after recent turnover?

During the last 12 months three players with remaining eligibility have left the program—Zach Lofton, Josh Martin and Daquein McNeil. Lofton and Martin transferred to other schools while McNeil has legal issues. A fourth player, incoming freshman Jarvis Johnson, was determined unfit to play because of a heart condition. All four players were once seen as either starters or key contributors. This spring the Gophers also lost assistant coach Dan McHale who became head coach at Eastern Kentucky.

Pitino and his staff have brought in two important transfers from other college programs, center Reggie Lynch and forward Davonte Fitzgerald. They will be eligible for the 2016-2017 season when the Gophers, with more experience and probably proven talent, could have their best team in four seasons under Pitino. With only two seniors on the roster now, the 2016-2017 team will be a veteran group.

Q. Will the Gophers receive commitments from top in-state high school talent like Amir Coffey and Gary Trent Jr.?

Coffey, who will be a senior guard-forward this fall at Hopkins High School, and Trent, a junior guard at Apple Valley High School, are nationally-recruited players. In recent years the Gophers have flopped in efforts to convince the state’s best prep players to stay home and play in Dinkytown.

Minnesota has homegrown talent that can compete with the better high school players in the country. Not every year will offer a prep group like 2014 with Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn and Reid Travis, but there are exceptional high school players in this state each season.

The Gophers have a 2016 commitment from Rochester John Marshall forward Michael Hurt. That’s a step forward in closing the recruiting borders but the Gophers will have to do a lot more lockdown in coming years with players like Coffey and Trent and their successors. Minnesota’s potential to contend for Big Ten championships depends on it.

Q. Can Pitino answer the critics?

Pitino impressed with his coaching in his first season at Minnesota. His 2013-2014 team was 8-10 in the Big Ten and surprisingly won the NIT championship. The league record was the same as coach Tubby Smith’s last Minnesota team, a group with more talent than Pitino worked with.

The disappointment of last season has been documented but the last several months have triggered controversy, too. During the offseason Pitino’s name was rumored with job openings at St. John’s and Alabama. He was too slow in countering speculation and declaring his commitment to Minnesota, according to critics.

Does the 32-year-old Pitino want to coach here long-term? An East Coast guy, he had no connection to the state before leaving his head coaching job at Florida International in 2013. Gophers athletic director Norwood Teague has been all in on Pitino—giving him an opportunity in big time college coaching, and, according to recent media reports, he is boosting the coach’s pay by a reported $400,000 to $1.6 million.

Media and fans ask what Pitino did to earn the $400,000? If you read his contract, though, it calls for annual increases, even though the $400,000 amount is much more than the University is obligated to provide. Advocates for the pay boost argue it’s the cost of doing business in the “arms race” to retain coaches (see Alabama rumors).

Pitino’s popularity, as with any coach, will be tied to winning games but he could become more engaged with the public and media. If he wants a role model, there’s a guy named Jerry Kill who offices within several hundred feet of the basketball office.

Q. When will the Gophers upgrade the nonconference home schedule?

For years now—long before Pitino arrived—Williams Arena has been the state’s largest “bakery” in November and December when the Gophers serve up a schedule of “cupcake” opponents. Yes, it’s understood all Big Ten teams do a lot of this “bakery” stuff to win enough games to make the NCAA Tournament. But the Gophers nonconference scheduling annually ranks with the most unappealing in the Big Ten and is a deterrent to buying season tickets.

In a competitive sports market, the Gophers need to upgrade the pre-Big Ten home schedule with a couple of big-time opponents that are in addition to those provided by the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. This December the Gophers play Oklahoma State in Sioux Falls in a neutral court nonconference game. Minnesota fans are being encouraged to make “the short drive” to Sioux Falls to see the game against the Big 12’s Cowboys. Sorry, that doesn’t count as an upgrade, critics respond.

Q. How much decline in fan interest could be ahead?

For years the Gophers program was among the most popular and lucrative in college basketball. Decades ago Minnesota led the nation in average attendance per game. But interest and attendance is trending downward. The Gophers sold out only one game last season at Williams Arena (14,625 capacity) after selling out four the previous year. The program has an aging season ticket base and younger basketball fans are drawn to the Timberwolves.

The Gophers and Timberwolves once had a sort of stand-off in competition for basketball fans in this market. But the Gophers haven’t had a winning season in the Big Ten for 10 years and while the Wolves’ losing ways have sometimes been even more abysmal, fan excitement surrounds the pro franchise that has a roster loaded with former first round draft choices. It’s a marketing mismatch for Gophers basketball right now when the Wolves can advertise players like last year’s NBA Rookie of the Year Andrew Wiggins, hometown hero Tyus Jones and Karl-Anthony Towns, the No. 1 overall pick in last June’s NBA Draft.

It’s easy to see why Wolves fans are anticipating a bright future during the winters ahead. The Gophers’ future is less clear.

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Kill: U Facilities Project Nearly Set

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by David Shama

Gophers football coach Jerry Kill predicted this morning on the Big Ten Network that work will soon start on a long anticipated new football complex at the University of Minnesota. The complex—which is expected to include an indoor practice facility and coaches offices—is part of a $190 million athletics project to upgrade facilities for Gophers men and women student-athletes. The entire project’s start date was delayed in June but Kill expressed no concern today when asked if it will be completed.

“Just got out of meetings…three or four days ago. We’ll be starting at the latest probably late September, early October,” Kill said from Chicago at a news conference for Big Ten football coaches. “We’ve already got a finish date where it needs to be finished.

“The hold up there (on the overall project) was probably football a little bit because we wanted to make sure everything we had in there, and what we wanted, was right before you take it any farther. We want it to be the state-of-the-art. We don’t want to do something and do it over again.

“It will be started and hopefully part of it will be finished at a year and a half, maybe even quicker.”

Kill didn’t elaborate on what parts of the athletics facilities project will start first but the implication from his remarks today and in the past about the importance of the football complex leave no doubt about it being at the top of the construction list. Kill has often referred to the importance of facilities to his recruiting and continued success at Minnesota.

The Gophers existing football complex has long ranked toward the bottom among Big Ten facilities. Iowa is the latest Big Ten program to move into a new facility. “The impact it’s had on recruiting has been exciting,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said yesterday.

The Gophers were 5-3 in Big Ten games last season, the program’s best league record since 2003. There are a lot of predictions the Gophers won’t match last year’s conference record that was part of an overall 8-5 record.

“We keep improving and keep getting better,” Kill said today. “Last year I said we’d have a better team (than) we had a year ago. We firmly believe that we’ll be more athletic and a better football team this year.

“But there are lot of other people that are here today that can say the same things but we feel good about our football team and the talent.”

Worth Noting

Colorado State, the Gophers second opponent of the season, was picked by the media on Wednesday to finish third in the six-team Mountain Division of the Mountain West Conference. Rams wide receiver Rashard Higgins, an All-American candidate, was chosen as the conference’s preseason Offensive Player of the Year.

Among the storylines at this weekend’s 3M Championship at the TPC in Blaine is whether Tom Lehman can become the first Minnesotan to win the nationally televised senior tour event. David Graham, a 2015 inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame, was asked yesterday about the Alexandria, Minnesota native.

“I think he could very well win,” Graham said. “He’s one of the dominate players on the Champions Tour. I would think that if he got off to a good start—which you have to do in any tournament to get into some kind of a rhythm and some kind of a flow—he would certainly be somebody who is more than capable of winning. No question.”

At age 56, this could be the time for Lehman to make a strong run at winning the 3M Championship. Graham said it’s proven golfers from 51 to 54 years old are the most likely to win on the Champions Tour. “Statistically, when you get to 55 or 56 you start to go down a little bit,” he said.

Admission and parking are free at this year’s event that includes a promotion with golf legends Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. Graham, too, is playing in the Greats of Golf Challenge on Saturday. The Champions Tour event here has donated over $23 million to charity since 1993.

Men and women participating in the University of Minnesota’s 23 sports averaged an impressive spring semester GPA of 3.27. The highest GPA was women’s track at 3.49. The football team, with the largest number of athletes in any of the 23 programs, had a GPA of 3.04.

The Vikings organization receives keys to the new downtown covered stadium on July 29, 2016. Shortly after that the team will play two preseason games in U.S. Bank Stadium, a facility boosters are predicting will be the best in the NFL. Although no preseason dates or opponents have been determined, don’t be surprised if the Vikings play their first two exhibition games on the road and then host a rivalry opponent like the Packers in the preseason home opener.

There will not be a major college baseball team in the country playing in a billion dollar stadium like the Gophers. Starting in 2017 the Gophers will play early season games in the projected $1.1 billion dollar U.S. Bank Stadium. Other college baseball teams from the state will use the stadium too.

Timberwolves forward-center Gorgui Dieng is expected to play for Team Africa tomorrow against Team World in the first NBA game ever in Africa. Dieng, a native of Senegal, is part of an NBA roster of players from Africa that also includes former Wolves forward Luc Mbah a Moute (Cameroon). The Team World roster includes NBA stars and brothers Marc and Pau Gasol. The exhibition game from Johannesburg will be televised on ESPN starting at 8 a.m. Minneapolis time.

The 11th annual Little League Wood Bat Tournament is a charitable event for Little League teams ages 10-12. The tourney began Thursday and 23 teams from the metro area are playing at Lakeview Terrace Park and Lee Park in Robbinsdale, and Isaacson Park (Honeywell Fields) in Golden Valley. Games are from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. today (Friday) at all three playing sites. The tournament, which goes through Sunday and exclusively uses wood bats, benefits Baseball in Benin. The goal is to bring a team from Benin, a small country in West Africa, to participate in next year’s Wood Bat Tournament. More at BaseballinBenin.org.

That was former Minnesota Daily sports editor Marshall Tanick, for decades a prominent Minneapolis attorney, explaining in an opinion article for the Star Tribune that there is precedent for considering revocation of Bill Cosby’s Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to him by George W. Bush. Tanick, writing in the July 28 Star Tribune, cited examples of organizations that have withdrawn honors in the face of controversy including the 2014 Chicago Little League Baseball team which had its national championship taken away. Tanick suggested President Barack Obama should consider revocation of Cosby’s honor in light of revelations about the famous comedian’s conduct toward women.

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Kill Ranks High in Big Ten, More to Do

Posted on July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 by David Shama

Jerry Kill will be in Chicago late this week for the Big Ten’s annual media days. After 21 years in coaching, including four-plus at Minnesota, where does he rank compared with the other 13 head coaches in the Big Ten?

The opinion here is that’s an easy question. Urban Meyer has won national championships at Florida and Ohio State. Rank him No. 1 in the Big Ten, if not the country. Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio has taken a program that failed for decades and turned it into a national power. He deserves the No. 2 ranking. Jim Harbaugh, now at Michigan, pulled off miracles at Stanford, and then revived the NFL’s 49ers.

Give Kill the No. 4 spot among the Big Ten’s coaches. He has an overall record of 152-99 in five head coaching jobs including Minnesota. He has won championships and coach of the year awards. Peers admire his character and would send their sons to play for him.

And yet Kill will be the first to tell you there’s a lot more to accomplish. He enters his fifth Big Ten season with a below .500 record in conference games, 13-19. He wants to win a first West Division title and then a Big Ten championship. Then win some more.

Those trophies will further elevate Kill’s status among the nation’s better football coaches. Top 25 rankings of coaches right now are not likely to include Kill. That’s because there are many superb college head coaches, and most are at schools with more resources and potential to win than Minnesota, and those coaches have won more games on bigger stages than Kill who came to Minneapolis from Northern Illinois. The head coaching position here isn’t easy and Minnesota isn’t a sexy name to national authorities who rank the country’s best coaches and may start their lists with Meyer or Alabama’s Nick Saban, and end with Arkansas’s Bret Bielema or Arizona State’s Todd Graham.

The right head coach in the right place at the right time is a huge difference maker in college football. Hire the wrong guy and even Michigan—the winningest program in college football history—can struggle. Make a near perfect hire and the ugliest of programs like Baylor emerges as top 10 teams.

Get a guy who can put a staff together, recruit, coach X’s and O’s, motivate, raise money and charm the public, and all of a sudden the change at a losing program is more than cosmetic. That’s what Kill has done at Minnesota. His staff is not only good but has been together longer than just about any in recent major college football history. Kill and staff have identified and recruited talent that has played better than early evaluations predicted. Part of that success has come from the teaching of fundamentals and techniques, and then on gameday coming up with strategies to maximize success.

In 2013 and 2014 the Gophers had consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 2004-2005. Minnesota’s conference record was 5-3, the best since 2003. The Gophers had four players selected in last spring’s NFL Draft, the most since 2006. And the 1950 NFL Draft was the last time the Gophers had four players picked in the first five rounds.

But there’s more to the success story than those numbers. Kill has insisted players excel in classroom work, and not only behave away from the football field but contribute in the community. Kill took over a program in 2011 with academic problems and now has many players earning degrees. Instead of making news because of police reports, the Gophers are publicized for GPA’s and community work.

Kill has become the face of the athletic department. Big money donors want to help him for projects including his quest to build a new football complex. Without that facility, it’s unlikely the Gophers can keep him at Minnesota long-term.

Another step forward on the field in 2015 will be huge for Kill and the program. He and the team are popular but they still struggle for attention following decades of low beam awareness of Gophers football. The home opener against national championship contender TCU on September 3 isn’t even sold out. The Gophers public season ticket total has been tracking similar to last season when Minnesota didn’t sell out a single game in 52,525 seat capacity TCF Bank Stadium.

Kill, who has overcome cancer and controlled epilepsy, is a tireless promoter of the football program, the University and charitable causes. He wills himself through long days and keeps a schedule that few others could manage. Wherever he goes in the state people tell him how much they like him and his team. And yet many who applaud him at a banquet or a welcome luncheon don’t show up on Saturdays to watch the Gophers.

That’s not going to change until the Gophers win the Big Ten title or pack their bags for the Rose Bowl, or cement a place in the national rankings of the country’s best teams. Then more fans will make the Gophers a priority in their sports/entertainment budgets. Then many will leave their cozy spots in front of HD televisions to watch the Gophers on a cold and windy day late in the season when another Big Ten West Division title is an opportunity to be realized.

Kill knows there’s plenty of work yet to do including stopping that 11-game losing streak against the Badgers, and winning his first bowl game at Minnesota. Also, push his Big Ten record over .500 before too long, and some day win Minnesota’s first Big Ten championship since 1967.

Do all that and watch Kill’s name land on everybody’s national list of the country’s best coaches. Those who have had Kill ranked there all along will say, “Welcome to the bandwagon.”

Worth Noting

BTN and BTN2Go will air live coverage of the Big Ten Conference football coaches’ press conferences on Thursday and Friday. Kill’s press conference is scheduled for Friday when BTN coverage starts at 8 a.m. Minneapolis time. The Gophers’ first practice will be August 7.

Lindy’s National College Football Magazine offers its opinion on the nation’s 22 best head coaches and the publication includes four from the Big Ten. Urban Meyer from Ohio State is No. 2 after No. 1 ranked Nick Saban of Alabama. Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh is No. 5, Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio No. 6 and James Franklin of Penn State is No. 18. Kill didn’t make the list.

How much job pressure and turnover is there in Big Ten coaching? Kill is about to start his fifth season at Minnesota and among the league’s 13 other coaches only Dantonio, Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald have longer tenures at their schools. Indiana’s Kevin Wilson and Maryland’s Randy Edsall—like Kill—are entering fifth seasons as head coaches at their schools.

News tip: don’t be surprised if the Vikings and Minnesota State announce this week the NFL team will extend its agreement for three years to keep training camp in Mankato. This is the 50th consecutive year the Vikings have been on the school’s campus for preseason camps. Only the Packers, who have been at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin for 58 years, have held an NFL training camp at the same location longer.

Adam Thielen was an obscure college recruit coming out of Detroit Lakes and few Vikings fans thought much about him when he signed with the team as a free agent in 2013. But Thielen, who played college football at Minnesota State, made the 53-man roster last year as a wide receiver and special teams player. He has won the admiration of Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer. “I think Adam does a lot of great things and he’s a guy that cares an awful lot. It’s important to him.

“He’s a smart guy and I think he’s continued to improve. …It’s really a tribute to his hard work, his dedication and his determination.”

Zimmer was asked what he learned about training camp last year—his first as a head coach in the NFL. With his background as a defensive coordinator, Zimmer was initially more in tune with the defense. “I took notes last year on a lot of different scenarios and I wrote them in a book. I kind of tried to continue to do that. Honestly, I feel so much more comfortable (now) with the team, especially the offensive guys and the special teams guys. …

“The other thing that really helps is that basically we have the same coaching staff back for another year. So the meetings that we have as coaches are a little bit shorter, just because we already know (what) the practice schedule is going to be like. We might change something here and there, but we don’t have to sit there and discuss a lot of different things. We’re able to get it going and go from there. I feel more confident about the way we’re doing things.”

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