NCAA – Page 37 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

U No. 13 in Football Recruiting Rankings

Posted on April 23, 2023April 23, 2023 by David Shama

With 11 commits, the Golden Gophers are No. 13 nationally in the 247Sports composite rankings of football recruiting classes for 2024.

The Gophers have picked up five of those verbal commitments this month. “It’s been quite the run the last few weeks,” recruiting authority Ryan Burns of GopherIllustrated told Sports Headliners.

The two recruits with the 247 highest composite rankings are players that excite Burns the most. Offensive lineman Riley Sunram of Kindred, North Dakota and safety Koi Perich of Esko, Minnesota are from small towns but are big names in the recruiting world. Burns said, “I think in this day and age, it proves if you’re good enough they will find you anywhere. …”

Sunram has offers from Big Ten schools, plus Kansas State and Miami (Florida). At 6-5, 295-pounds he is athletic and capable of playing both sides of the football. “I am a big fan of Riley Sunram from North Dakota,” Burns said.

He raves, too, about Perich who not only turned down Iowa and Wisconsin but said no to Michigan. Burns said Perich’s highlight tape just goes on and on with impressive plays, while those of most prep players are much briefer. Perich averaged over 20 points for a winning Esko basketball team and is a track star with achievements including winning the state Class A long jump as a sophomore.

Perich is one of five Minnesotans who are verbal commits. Burns thinks head coach P.J. Fleck and staff are connecting with Minnesotans because the program is winning.

Throw out the COVID year of 2020 and the Gophers have won nine games or more each of the last three seasons and had winning records in the Big Ten. The 2019 team finished No. 10 in the country and qualified for a program rarity, playing in a New Year’s Day bowl game. “They (recruits now) saw the Auburn win,” Burns said about the Gophers winning the Outback Bowl.

The hope is to bolster the 2024 recruiting haul by adding two of the most coveted state players who haven’t committed anywhere yet. Offensive tackle Emerson Mandell from Irondale High School and edge rusher Wyatt Gilmore from Rogers have plenty of big schools in pursuit including the Gophers. “I mean they’re (the Minnesota staff) certainly making a big push; I’ll tell you that,” Burns said. “And those are two big fish that are out there right now.”

Gilmore attended the Oklahoma spring football game Saturday and Burns said potential visits to Wisconsin and Purdue may await. Mandell’s offers include Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Penn State.

“Now I think (the Gophers) they’re trending positively with both,” Burns said. “Do I think both are going to make a decision here in the coming weeks? I wouldn’t say that. But Wyatt Gilmore was just back on campus for what I believe was his fifth visit to campus since he was offered in June. …Emerson Mandell I believe has already been here four times. So they’re (the Minnesota staff) doing their part. We’ll see what those two kids decide.”

Burns said both players have a lot of offers, including from schools with more established Name, Image and Likeness success than the Gopher program. Realistically, what are Minnesota’s chances of commitments from both home state stars? “I think 50-50 to land both is probably a good number right now,” Burns said.

The Gophers had their spring game on Saturday, but they have a double digit number of 2024 recruits and that’s ahead of other years. The Gophers definitely have momentum in recruiting. None of the 11 players are composite four-star players but the possibility is there for that to change. “I think a lot of these kids in this (2024) class already have four-star potential,” Burns said.

In addition to Burns’ input on Sunram and Perich mentioned above, here are comments from him about the other nine verbal commitments the Gophers have. Players are profiled in the order of their 247 recruiting rankings, starting from the highest (after Sunram and Perich) to the lowest.

Jide Abasiri, defensive lineman from Prior Lake High School. At about 6-5, 265, Burns describes Abasiri as “incredibly, incredibly long” and with the potential to perhaps someday “play on Sundays.” The physical ability is there. “He looks the part of what Big Ten defensive linemen look like,” Burns said.

Mo Saine, defensive lineman from Eden Prairie High School. Like Abasiri, he is new to playing football but has the makings of a special player, too. At 6-5, 270, Saine needs more coaching, playing time and dedication in the weight room, but the promise is there for an outstanding college career.

Zahir Rainer, safety from Richmond, Virginia. At 5-10, 185, Rainer takes inspiration from former Gophers All-American safety Antoine Winfield, Jr. who was a dynamo at a similar size. Burns expects Rainer to play with a “chip on his shoulder” and maybe contribute early on special teams. “…Being able to land the son of an eight-year NFL vet with 30 plus offers is a big deal,” Burns added while referring to Wali Rainer.

Corey Smith, wide receiver from Brownsburg, Indiana. Burns said Gopher coaches saw him run in January and were impressed, including the speed of the 6-1, 170-pound athlete. The Gophers were his first Power Five offer, but attention has been growing. “Any time he touches it, he can potentially take it to the house,” Burns said.

Mason Carrier, linebacker from Detroit Lakes High School. Burns said Carrier, at 6-2 and 225 pounds, is an athlete that runs 4.6 in the 40 and reminds him of current Gopher Cody Lindenberg as players deserving of more recruiting interest. Burns added that Carrier is “steadfast” in his commitment to Minnesota and that he’s “very excited about” the northern Minnesota linebacker.

Brady Pretzlaff, linebacker, Gaylord, Michigan. At 6-3, 215, Pretzlaff is long in build and can move well and accepted a Gopher offer in January after Minnesota defensive coordinator Joe Rossi saw him, according to Burns. Stanford offered Pretzlaff recently.

Jaydon Wright, running back, Kankakee, Illinois. Wright is a powerful runner at 220 pounds and reminds Burns of former Gopher Ky Thomas. “He can move like he’s not 220 pounds,” Burns said. “He moves incredibly well for his size.” Illinois has now offered Wright but he remains committed to Minnesota.

Dallas Sims, wide receiver from Clearwater, Florida. The Canadian native has about 20 college offers and at 6-2 has more height than wide receivers on the Gopher roster now. Burns admires Sims’ ability to go up in the air and catch the football, and his competitiveness. “Love that kid’s mindset,” Burns said.

Simon Seidl, cornerback from Hill-Murray High School. Seidl plays for former Gopher assistant coach Rob Reeves who told Burns his player has everything needed by a Big Ten corner. Another player new to football, the 5-11, 170-pound Seidl is “very, very fast,” per Burns, and is an exceptional athlete who also plays hockey and had double digit points last season.

Burns believes Minnesota’s recruiting class for 2024 could eventually total about 22 players.

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Wolves & Denver Looks Like Mismatch

Posted on April 17, 2023April 17, 2023 by David Shama

There was a significant discrepancy in talent, scrap and performance between the Nuggets and Timberwolves last night. It’s just one game in a potential seven game series, but based on what happened in Denver late Sunday night and the season long reputation of the two teams it appears this playoff matchup could end soon.

Denver, the No. 1 seed in the NBA Western Conference, encountered little resistance from No. 8 seed Minnesota in winning 109-80. The Nuggets, led by two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, finished with a regular season record of 53-29. The Wolves, who prompt a lot of head scratching to figure out their team MVP, were 42-40.

The Wolves look like a team that has regressed from a year ago when they opened the playoffs by defeating a solid Grizzlies team in Memphis after finishing the regular season with a 46-36 record. The 2023 team looks dysfunctional too much of the time including in last night’s game that saw the Wolves out scored 32-14 in the third quarter after trailing 55-44 at halftime.

Even at the intermission the Wolves were drawing criticism from TNT analyst Charles Barkley. Targeting the Wolves’ Twin Towers of 7-foot Karl-Anthony Towns and 7-1 Rudy Gobert, Barkley said “Minnesota’s biggest problem” is the combo isn’t effective enough on offense to justify playing them together.

Gobert, acquired in a controversial trade last summer with the Jazz, scored eight points, while Towns, picking up some late points in the meaningless fourth quarter, had 11. And it wasn’t just scoring where the Wolves’ bigs were lacking. In plus-minus stats that measure a player’s contribution on the floor, Gobert was a team-high -28 while Towns was -11.

The Wolves used 13 players last night and Wendell Moore Jr., who played for two minutes, was the only individual with a plus rating (two).

Denver coach Mike Malone wanted his team to be more aggressive and disciplined than the Wolves for the playoff opener. Combine those elements with better talent, the result is what happened last night.

Worth Noting

Because of national TV scheduling the game had an absurd start time of 10:51 p.m. Eastern, 9:51 Central. The next game is Wednesday (also in Denver) with a scheduled tipoff at about 9 p.m. Central.

Walker Kessler, among five players and multiple draft choices the Timberwolves gave up in the trade to obtain Gobert, is one of three finalists for NBA Rookie of the Year. The 7-foot Jazz center averaged 9.2 points and 8.4 rebounds in his first professional season.

Only three other NBA players bettered Kessler’s 2.3 blocks per game. The other finalists for Rookie of the Year are Paolo Banchero of the Magic and Jalen Williams of the Thunder.

Former Wolves star Jimmy Butler, now with the Heat, is a finalist, along with De’Aaron Fox of the Kings and DeMar DeRozan of the Bulls, for NBA Clutch Player of the Year.

The Wild-Stars playoff series opens tonight in Dallas with possibly seven games needed to decide the winner. The two teams played a combined 55 overtime games during the regular season. Both franchises have recent histories of scoring droughts in the playoffs. The Wild hasn’t advanced out of the first round since 2015.

The Wild was 7-2-3 when star scorer Kirill Kaprizov was injured and unable to play late in the season. Minnesota had balanced scoring during that stretch and must continue that with forwards Matt Boldy, Ryan Hartman and Mats Zuccarello needed to step up on the playoffs.

The Stars franchise, known as the Minnesota North Stars until relocating to Dallas in 1993, might never have moved if the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission had funded a major renovation of Met Center in the late 1980s.

The Frozen Four championship game April 8 on ESPN 2 between the Gophers and Quinnipiac averaged 808,000 viewers, a 100 percent increase over the 2022 title game, per Front Office Sports.

St. Paul native Bill Robertson, commissioner of the USHL, said there were 80 alums of his league playing in the Frozen Four that also included Boston University and Michigan. Twenty-three of those players were from the state of Michigan and 22 from Minnesota.

Since 2017 the Twins are 4-18 at Yankee Stadium in regular season games. That record includes wins Thursday and Friday that ended up giving Minnesota a series split over the weekend.

Minnesota’s Sonny Gray, 2-0 with a gaudy 0.53 ERA, will start Tuesday night in Boston when the Twins open a three-game series against the Red Sox. The Twins’ starting staff, all of whom were acquired from other teams, has been leading MLB in multiple statistical categories including ERA and batting average against.

Happy 90^th Birthday today to former Gophers’ head basketball coach Jim Dutcher. Articulate and sharp as ever, Dutcher has always been a great family man and travelled to Houston this spring to watch son Brian’s San Diego State men’s team finish second in the Final Four.

Joe Salem, who was the Gophers’ head football coach when Jim Dutcher’s 1982 team won the Big Ten title, will be 85 on May 1. He told Sports Headliners via email his health is “okay,” but wife Sue has dementia and is in memory care in Sioux Falls. He spends much of his time following football and literally has a family coaching tree.

Sons Tim (a former Gopher quarterback) and Brad coach tight ends at Pittsburgh and Memphis State respectively. Both programs won their most recent bowl games. Brad’s son Eli is a reserve quarterback at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois and the team won the Division III national championship Stagg Bowl last year. Jeremiah is a freshman quarterback at Eastern Michigan, 2022 winners of the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

“The family was 4-0 in bowl games last fall,” Joe Salem wrote. “Not bad.”

Son Wade sells motivational programs to school athletic teams while son Brent, a former college football coach, is an insurance executive in the Twin Cities.

The Capital Club’s next breakfast program at Mendakota Country Club is April 27. Charles Adams III, head coach of the North Community High School Polars football team and a recently retired Minneapolis police officer, will help lead an “important conversation about life, death, humanity and how sports can bring people and communities together,” according to an email from club organizer Patrick Klinger. Former Gopher football star Darrell Thompson, president of the Bolder Options mentoring program, will be the program moderator. More information about the Capital Club is available from Klinger, patrick@agilemarketingco.com

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Give a Nod to Karma & U at Frozen Four

Posted on April 4, 2023 by David Shama

I’ve never been known as a sports writing prophet with a shiny crystal ball resting next to the keyboard. Shama the Seer, the great purveyor of the future? Nope, not me.

I make this confession knowing I put at risk my prediction the University of Minnesota men’s hockey team will win its two games in this week’s Frozen Four in Tampa and come home with the national championship trophy.

My history, though, is that of a dysfunctional prophet. Consider the following.

I could have been the guy who bet his retirement nest egg on the 19.5 point favorite Timberwolves to cover the spread on Sunday. They made national news by losing 107-105 to the Trail Blazers.

I once worried the world would end with Y2 K. A computer bug didn’t spin the world into chaos, but Armageddon remains top of mind. I keep Nostradamus on speed-dial.

Remember Rocky-like punching bag Chuck Wepner? I might have predicted he was going to knock out Muhammad Ali back on my birthday of March 24, 1975. Before you snicker, remember Wepner did go 15 rounds with the heavyweight champ before losing on a technical knockout.

Thomas Dewey? Wouldn’t be surprised if someone in my family wagered cold cash on Dewey winning the 1948 presidential election instead of Harry Truman. Heck, the Chicago Tribune even got it wrong, printing this headline the day after the election: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

On my mother’s side, we had family who fought in the Revolutionary War. They might have held rifles in one hand while wagering on the British Redcoats.

So more than 200 years of bad family luck predicting outcomes doesn’t deter me from writing with confidence that the No. 1 seeded Gophers will not only win Thursday night against No. 4 Boston University but emerge Saturday evening with the 2023 NCAA Division I championship. I am overdue and so are the Gophers.

Minnesota hasn’t won the national title since 2003. That’s 20 years ago and a good omen.

The Gophers lost in the Frozen Four semi-finals a year ago. Coach Bob Motzko and the players benefit from that experience.

The Gophers, 28-9-1, are the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament and have been considered the nation’s best team in 2023 boasting a 26-man roster with 14 of those players NHL draft choices.

Minnesota is loaded with talent including goal tending and perhaps the best scoring line in school history with Logan Cooley, Matthew Knies and Jimmy Snuggerud. Gopher goalie Justen Close is third in the nation in shutouts with six and has a 2.08 goals against average versus top 10 teams.

Cooley and Knies are two of the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Award recognizing college hockey’s best player. Cooley’s 37+ rating leads all NCAA players, while Knies is a tight moments specialist and has scored seven game winning goals. Snuggerud is fifth in the country in points per game at 1.32, while the third Hobey Baker finalist, Michigan’s Adam Fantilli, is No. 1 at 1.85.

Brock Faber photo courtesy of University of Minnesota.

Knies typifies the Gophers’ play in clutch moments, and this team also excels on the power play and defensively. The Gophers rank fourth nationally in power play percentage at 0.264 and that’s better than any other Frozen Four team. The defensive corps of Jackson LaCombe, Ryan Johnson and Brock Faber is special.

Minnesota won three national championships in the 1970s under the peerless direction of the late Herb Brooks. Later Brooks built the St. Cloud State program where Motzko was on his staff. Good connections, great karma. Gotta believe Herbie is watching over things in Tampa this week.

The hockey gods deem not only that the Gophers win the national title but take revenge against Michigan in Saturday night’s championship game. The No. 3 seed Wolverines, who need to beat No. 2 seed Quinnipiac Thursday to set up the retribution, defeated Minnesota 4-3 in Minneapolis last month to win the Big Ten Tournament title.

It’s always triumphant to beat Michigan in anything—from tiddlywinks to robotics to ice hockey as they call it in Tampa. To do so in the national championship game is this soothsayer’s dream.

And one so richly deserved!

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