David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Claeys Up for National Coach Award

Posted on November 27, 2013November 27, 2013 by David Shama

Next Monday the Gophers are hoping to learn Tracy Claeys is among the five finalists for the 2013 Frank Broyles Award recognizing the best college assistant football coach in the country.

Claeys took over as acting head coach this fall when Jerry Kill had to focus on his epilepsy struggles. With Kill either absent or coaching in the press box, and Claeys on the sideline with the players, the Gophers have won a surprising four of their last six Big Ten games including defeating nationally-ranked Nebraska for the first time since 1960. “He is very deserving (of the award),” Kill said.

Claeys, the team’s defensive coordinator, has impressed with his calm demeanor, leadership and knowledge. “Yeah, I’d vote (for) him. He would be a good choice,” Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez told Sports Headliners.

The five finalists represent “almost 1,500 assistant coaches” from 117 Division I programs, according to the award’s website. Each head coach can nominate one assistant from his staff.

The finalists are chosen by a committee of former head coaches including Arkansas coaching legend Frank Broyles. Others on the nine-man committee include coaching greats like Bobby Bowden, Vince Dooley, Hayden Fry and Barry Switzer. The 2013 winner will be announced in Little Rock at the awards banquet on December 10.

The Gophers, 8-3, have one remaining regular season game, at Michigan State on Saturday. Their eight wins have exceeded all but the most optimistic preseason predictions. The Gophers have four conference wins for the first time since 2005 and haven’t won eight games or more in a season since 2003.

Kill said “off-the-record” last summer he thought eight or nine wins were possible. “Our kids worked their tail ends off,” Kill said this week. “They showed commitment in the offseason and put a lot of time in. (I) felt like we were getting stronger. I am not one of those guys to predict but I knew we were going to be better. We are better than we were a year ago. I expect us to be better next year.”

Worth Noting

Kill has worked this season with a mostly inexperienced group of receivers and is pleased with their progress. He said wide receiver KJ Maye has been “slowed” by a groin pull and tight end Drew Goodger hasn’t been appreciated by outsiders.

“Nobody ever talks about Drew Goodger. He’s a pretty good tight end, too, and he’s made some critical catches for us.”

Kill had nine recruits at his house over the weekend with three visiting on Saturday night and six on Sunday.

Mike Cannon from Hutchinson, Minnesota was the referee in last week’s Gophers-Badgers game at TCF Bank Stadium. He is a regular with Big Ten officiating crews.

Ex-Vikings linebacker Ben Leber expects coaching changes with his former team (2-8-1) after the season. “I like and respect a lot of coaches on the staff but I don’t know how you can bring the whole staff back, or keep some of them,” Leber told Sports Headliners.

Leber doesn’t have a candidate to replace head coach Leslie Frazier but he mentioned Colts offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton. He has almost 16 years of NFL and college experience including working with quarterback Andrew Luck at Stanford and with the Colts.

Leber found it “baffling” that less than two weeks after the Vikings acquired Josh Freeman they started him at quarterback in their October 21 game against the Giants. He described the situation as “bizarre” that the Vikings could expect Freeman to be successful having to learn about new receivers, plays and terminology in such a short time during the season.

Leber doesn’t consider Christian Ponder a potentially elite quarterback. “I think if you’re looking for a franchise quarterback, I don’t think he is the guy who is going to lead the Vikings,” Leber said. “He could remain a No. 2.”

Leber will work for Fox 1 on a high school football game telecast in New Jersey on Thanksgiving Day. On Saturday he will be part of the Fox Sports Net crew for the Tulsa-North Texas game in Tulsa.

The record crowd of 53,090 for last Saturday’s Gophers-Badgers game included standing room only sales. That’s about maximum capacity for TCF Bank stadium unless there is expansion such as the 2,000 seat west end bleachers likely to be used for Vikings games next year.

KSTC-TV Ch. 45 will telecast all seven games of the Prep Bowl from the Metrodome on Friday and Saturday. Mahnomen (Class A), Hutchinson (Class 4A) and Eden Prairie (Class 6A) are hoping to defend their state championships. Eden Prairie (11-0) will be trying to win a third consecutive title when the Eagles play Rosemount (11-1) starting at 7 p.m. on Friday night.

With the Metrodome being torn down early next year, Brainerd and Owatonna, both 12-0 teams from Class 5A, will play the last Prep Bowl game ever in the building starting at 4 p.m. on Saturday. Seems appropriate with Brainerd’s Ron Stolski the winningest coach in Minnesota prep football history.

Linebacker Blake Weber from Prior Lake High School saw his team lose to both Eden Prairie and Rosemount this season. Who does he think will win that game?

“Eden Prairie is the better team,” Weber told Sports Headliners. “Our team would be the only team that would have a chance to give Eden Prairie a run for the money. Eden Prairie’s offensive line is by far the best I’ve seen in three years of varsity (football). They know their assignments. They’re big and strong, and get after you.”

Weber is the South Suburban Conference defensive player of the year. He is also on the Minnesota Vikings all-state team and one of 10 finalists for the state’s Mr. Football award sponsored by the Vikings and Minnesota Football Coaches Association.

Weber made an unofficial visit last week to the University of Minnesota and the Gophers want him to be part of their walk-on group for 2014. The Gophers have labeled their invitation as a “preferred walk-on” with his understanding that playing at a high level could eventually mean a scholarship. “The U is probably not going to offer me (a scholarship now),” he said. “I am pretty set on the U.”

In addition to the 30-member all-state team announced yesterday, Eden Prairie’s Mike Grant was named prep football Coach of the Year by the Vikings.

Vern Mikkelsen, 85, passed away last week and he will be fondly remembered for his Hall of Fame career, contributions to four world championship teams of the Minneapolis Lakers, and his kind heart. Mikkelsen, often referred to as the NBA’s first power forward, played for the Lakers from 1949-1959.

When owner Bob Short decided to move the Lakers to Los Angeles after the 1959-1960 season, he tried to persuade Mikkelsen to play for him in California. Short, in fact, offered Mikkelsen 25 percent of the franchise. Mikkelsen turned down the offer and mentioned the decision in his book, The Vern Mikkelsen Story.

“I talked it over with Johnny (ex-Lakers coach John Kundla) and we both kind of figured that basketball would not have much of a chance there,” Mikkelsen said in the book.

Several years after moving the team to Los Angeles, Short sold the Lakers for $5.2 million. Mikkelsen said his wife Jean always remembered that.

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Gophers-Syracuse Connections Surprise

Posted on November 25, 2013November 25, 2013 by David Shama

The Gophers take their first look at a top 25 team today when they play No. 7 ranked Syracuse in the opening game for both teams in the EA Sports Maui Invitational. Former Gophers coach Jim Dutcher told Sports Headliners he expects the Orange defense will target Minnesota’s Andre Hollins in the nationally televised game (ESPN2, 4:30 p.m. Minneapolis time). Hollins, known for his outside scoring, is the Big Ten’s third leading scorer at 18.8 points per game.

Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim is one of the few coaches who uses a zone as his primary defense. “They’re going to favor toward Andre Hollins,” Dutcher said. “No question. Make sure they play up on him and play off on some of the other players. Minnesota’s team is kind of set up as a team that should do a good job of attacking a zone.”

The Gophers’ strength is guard play with long range shooters like Andre and Austin Hollins. Minnesota coach Richard Pitino is committed to outside shooting with an emphasis on three-point shots. Spaces to shoot threes can be plentiful against zone defenses and while the Gophers have made an okay .341 percent of their shots, they have also attempted 126 three-point shots, among the most in the Big Ten Conference this fall.

The Orange annually play “probably” the best zone defense in the country, according to Dutcher. Boeheim, who has been the Syracuse head coach since 1976, is a zone guru and while his knowledge is impressive so, too, are his players. They’re usually talented and most always there’s a lot of size on the roster including players with long arms who make the zone a difficult defense to score against.

Typically, teams playing zone defenses struggle with rebounding because players aren’t positioned to block out opponents as effectively as in man-to-man. This year’s 4-0 Syracuse team, though, is out-rebounding opponents 174-119. The Orange is outscoring a so far weak group of opponents, 74 to 58.5 points per game.

The Gophers lack size and depth among their front court players while Syracuse regulars include 280-pound Rakeem Christmas and 250-pound DaJuan Coleman. The two 6-9 players are averaging 4.3 and 6.8 rebounds per game. The team’s leading rebounder is 6-8 Jerami Grant at 8.0 per game. Baye Moussa Keita, 6-10, averages 5.5 and 6-8 C.J. Fair, the team’s leading scorer at 18 points per game, averages 5.5. And that’s not mentioning three other players on the roster who are 6-7 or taller.

Minnesota and Syracuse have played one previous game prior to this afternoon’s match-up. The Gophers upset the Orange in the 1990 Southeast Region Second Round of the NCAA Tournament and for the first time in school history advanced to the Elite Eight. It was a stunning loss for Syracuse, a team that was No. 1 rated nationally before the season and was led by forward Derrick Coleman who became the overall first pick in the 1990 NBA draft.

Boeheim built his early success at Syracuse with several outstanding players including Leo Rautins, a 6-8 Canadian known as the “white Magic Johnson” because of his guard-like passing and dribbling skills. Rautins played for the Gophers as a freshman during the 1978-79 season. He was part of a national No. 1 rated freshman class recruited by Dutcher, but the Toronto native wasn’t happy at Minnesota.

“You never had to go to class. I wanted to go to school,” Rautins said in the Boeheim biography Color Him Orange.

Rautins wanted to be enrolled in CLA but the University wouldn’t admit him and instead placed him in General College where he was forced to take “remedial classes,” according to Dutcher. “I didn’t think he belonged in General College but that was where he was admitted to, so he was frustrated from day one.”

Dutcher said the other source of frustration was on the court because the Gophers had so many talented guards. “I don’t think he got the amount of floor time that he would have liked to have gotten,” Dutcher explained.

In the biography Boeheim credits Rautins with some big moments for the Orange but by leaving the Gophers he missed out on Minnesota’s 1982 Big Ten championship. Contributors to that Gophers team included Rautins guard rivals Trent Tucker and Darryl Mitchell.

The biography also includes Rick Pitino, the father of the Gophers coach. The older Pitino was the first assistant Boehiem hired when he became Syracuse’s head coach. The book recalled that Pitino was newly married and had just carried his wife over the threshold in a New York hotel when Boeheim contacted him by telephone to set up an interview.

Pitino tried to put off the meeting but Boeheim insisted on coming to the hotel. Pitino relented and told his wife he would return to their hotel room within 30 minutes. “And we went down about 7 o’clock,” Pitino said in Color Him Orange. “I came up a quarter to ten. And every half hour I was calling my wife to tell her I was to going to wrap it up. And every half hour I kept telling him, ‘Jim, all I want to do is get back upstairs.’ …”

Boeheim, who turned 69 on November 17, still hasn’t wrapped up his career and gives no indication of doing so. He is Mr. Syracuse, having played for the Orange as a starting guard in the early 1960s, then becoming a Syracuse assistant and leading the program for almost four decades as head coach. He has won a national championship, coached 27 NCAA tournament teams, never had a losing season and has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Along the way his relationship continued with Rick Pitino who became a close friend, according to the biography. In 1994 Pitino hosted a Kentucky Derby party in Lexington. It was there that a recently divorced Boeheim met one of Pitino’s guests, Juli Greene. “They were like two teenagers in love,” Pitino said in the book.

Boeheim and Greene later married and now have three children. Today in Hawaii Boeheim might think of his connections to the Pitino family, but don’t expect him to give the Gophers any “honeymoon” treatment.

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Barry Alvarez Believes in U Potential

Posted on November 22, 2013November 22, 2013 by David Shama

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez told Sports Headliners during a telephone interview this week the Gophers football program has the potential to rival his success with the Badgers. Alvarez turned around a morbid Wisconsin program as coach starting in 1990, taking the Badgers to a 10-1-1 record by 1993 and the school’s first Rose Bowl appearance since 1963.

Alvarez said the Minnesota football program has many resources that can assist Jerry Kill who is 8-2 in his third season as Gophers coach. “They have good football in the state,” Alvarez said. “You have a great university. Play in a wonderful conference. A lot of traditions. You’re the only Division I school in the state.

“They have a lot of positives and that’s what they should be selling. I am sure that’s what he (Kill) sells. There’s no reason for them not to be successful.”

Alvarez won three Rose Bowls and three Big Ten titles before he retired as Wisconsin coach after the 2005 season. He is the winningest football coach in Badgers’ history with a record of 118-73-4, a winning percentage of .615.

Could he have duplicated that success at Minnesota?

“You know what, I do (think so) because I am confident in what I do,” Alvarez said. “I think Wisconsin and Minnesota are very similar. The type of players you’re going to get. The type of high school football they play in the (two) states. The fact you got one Division I school in the state. I think that’s very important.

“I think they’re very similar situations. I wouldn’t see myself doing anything different or having any less success if I had gone there.”

Alvarez is impressed with the Gophers and the work of Kill who in his first two seasons won only four Big Ten games but was improving the program. Now the Gophers, who are 4-2 in league games, are among the surprise teams in college football.

“He’s implemented his plan and the kids all understand it,” Alvarez said. “They’re able to play fast because they understand what they’re doing.

“Before you start winning, you have to stop losing. They don’t beat themselves. They’re a physical team. He (Kill) believes in that. You can see it (and) I am impressed with what I see.”

The Badgers are 8-2 overall, 5-1 in the Big Ten. The seniors have been to three Rose Bowls. Alvarez said the Badgers are underrated nationally and he views Wisconsin as a one loss team. The Badgers lost a controversial game against Arizona State when time expired before Wisconsin could attempt a winning field goal. The team’s other loss was to No. 3 ranked Ohio State in Columbus, a game that Alvarez said turned on one possession.

During more than two decades of Wisconsin success, the Badgers have had at least a couple of seasons when they were national championship contenders. One opportunity slipped away 20 years ago when undefeated Wisconsin was upset by the Gophers in the Metrodome, 28-21. It was the Badgers’ only loss of the 1993 season.

“Had we won that game we would have been the only undefeated team in the country, probably would have been national champs,” Alvarez said. “I think we ended up fourth in the country.”

The Big Ten’s football teams will be aligned in new divisions starting next year as the league expands to 14 schools with the additions of Maryland and Rutgers. Alvarez likes the new setup that includes rivals Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska joining the Badgers in the West Division. He also isn’t buying the argument the East Division with historically powerful programs like Ohio State and Michigan will be better than the West.

“You can’t just look at the names just because they’re some of our brand names in Michigan and Ohio State,” Alvarez said. “They haven’t won the league every year. Penn State the same way. When you break it down over the last 20 years, I think Ohio State has the most wins. We’re second (then Michigan). …So there’s a pretty good balance there.”

Part of Alvarez’s argument, too, includes Nebraska which joined the Big Ten in 2011. Dating back to 1993 and up through last season the Cornhuskers have won more games, 199, than any Big Ten program except for Ohio State.

Wisconsin keeps some pretty good company now thanks to Alvarez who came to Madison as a relatively unknown assistant coach from Notre Dame. He inherited a Camp Randall Stadium that was sometimes half empty and a program that knew next to nothing about winning after compiling a 9-36 record from 1986-1989.

Now there’s a statue of Alvarez outside the stadium and the Badgers roll on.

Worth Noting

John Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, one day before the Gophers were scheduled to play the Badgers in Minneapolis. Many college football games were postponed on the Saturday following the death of the president, including Minnesota and Wisconsin. The teams finally played on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28, and the Gophers won 14-0.

The NFL played its regular Sunday schedule after the assassination. The Vikings, playing at home, defeated the Lions at Met Stadium, 34-31.

The 10 finalists for the 2013 Mr. Football Award have been announced by the Minnesota Football Coaches Association. The prep players and their high schools are Tory Adams, Hutchinson; Matt Christenson, Nicollet; Ejodamen Ejiya, Spring Lake Park; Jeffrey Jones, Washburn; Robert Olson, Eden Prairie; Jacques Perra, Roseville; Andrew Stelter, Owatonna; Michael Strand, Barnesville; Ezra Szczyrbak, Moose Lake/Willow River; and Blake Weber, Prior Lake.

Jones, a four-star running back, and Stelter, a three-star defensive end, have verbally committed to the Gophers, according to Rivals.com. The award, sponsored by the MFCA and Minnesota Vikings, recognizes an outstanding senior player and dates back to 2004. Gophers quarterback Philip Nelson, from Mankato West, won the award in 2011. Osseo running back Bridgeport Tusler won last year.

The 2013 winner will be announced at the Mr. Football Banquet on Sunday, December 8 at the DoubleTree Hotel in St. Louis Park. Tickets are $15 and can be ordered on the MFCA website (click on MFCA ad on this page). The banquet begins at noon.

The Gophers basketball team, 5-0 after wins this week at home against Coastal Carolina and Wofford, will play Syracuse on Monday in the opening game for both teams in the EA Sports Maui Invitational. The game begins at 4:30 p.m. Minneapolis time and will be televised on ESPN2.

The Orangemen were ranked No. 8 in the country by Sports Illustrated in the magazine’s college basketball preview issue. The November 18 publication ranked Michigan State No. 3, Michigan No. 7 and Ohio State No. 11.

The Gophers’ Andre Hollins scored 19 and seven points in the two wins this week. Those numbers knocked him down from No. 1 to fourth in Big Ten scoring average per game. He is now averaging 18.8 points per game.

Former Timberwolves guard and front office executive Fred Hoiberg has coached Iowa State to a 4-0 record so far including a 77-70 upset of Michigan in Ames and 90-88 win over BYU in Provo. It wouldn’t be that surprising if Hoiberg some day replaces Rick Adelman as Wolves coach.

Jim Smith of Saint John’s is three wins behind former Western Kentucky coach Ed Diddle on the all-time win list for college basketball coaches. Smith’s 756 career wins is one better than that of legendary Oklahoma State coach Hank Iba. In 50 years of coaching Smith is 756-537. The Johnnies are 1-2 this season.

The Gophers baseball coaches have an artist’s color rendering of the proposed baseball setup in the new Vikings stadium. The visual can help with recruiting and the Gophers hope to use the downtown covered stadium for about 12 games in 2017, the first year it will be available to them.

Here are the distances from home plate to the fences in the new stadium: left field, 330 feet; left center, 375; center field, 400; right center, 340; and right field, 305. The right field fencing will extend 30 feet in the air to make hitting home runs more difficult.

The irony of the Twins’ decision this fall to move Joe Mauer from catcher to first base is it appears to end the conversation about bringing free agent Justin Morneau, who is a Mauer pal, back to Minneapolis.

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