MinnesotaSportsScene.com

Canadian guard Devoe Joseph, a young athlete just now leaving the pimple cream crowd, was cleared by the NCAA to enter the University of Minnesota and be eligible to play D1 basketball for Tubby Smith’s Gophers last week. While Smith put together a Top 15 recruiting class and all of them are important, it is Joseph who might make the difference between another 20-win season and NIT appearance, or a 20-plus-win season and an NCAA bid.

“Talking to Devoe, he’s going to be starting,” Smith told TwinCities.com. “But that’s the attitude I love about him. He’s got the kind of mentality.”

With sophomore guard Al Nolan Jr. at point and Joseph as the two-guard, Minnesota may now have a back-court that can enable its sizable front court to match up well and create more victories than the team achieve prior to Tubby Smith’s arrival.

Minnesota Vikings starting quarterback Tavaris Jackson suffered a sprained right knee against the Baltimore Ravens in pre-season action on Saturday. The injury is to the medial collateral ligament and is expected to keep the signal-called out of action for the remainder of the pre-season.

The Vikings are eying a return in time for the regular season debut against Green Bay on September 8. That takes golf balls! While the wound is not expected to be serious, you can bet opposing defenses will be looking to test Jackson’s knee throughout the season.

Rodney Williams Jr., who Tubby Smith’s Minnesota Gophers are in hot pursuit of for the 2009 recruiting class, has five other schools he’s interested in who are currently pursuing him, according to recent online reports. That list includes Kansas, Connecticut, Memphis, Miami (FL) and Santa Clara.

Williams Jr., who is a longtime pal of Gophers commit Royce White, is expected to keep Minnesota high on his list, but competition for his services could be tough with Kansas, UConn and Miami (FL) in the mix. The Robbinsdale Cooper shooting guard is a Top 40 recruit on most national lists, and if paired with White, could vault the Gophers recruiting class near the top nationally for 2009, coach Smith’s second class since taking over the Gophers program in the spring of 2007.

Both of Smith’s classes are thus far also good character recruits so far, which hadn’t always been the case for recent Gophers regimes. No academic issues so far, no off-the-court shenanigans. The men’s team is now nearly as sedate as the women’s team, whose biggest issue is keeping around a handy supply of Progesterone.

Former Gopher wrestler and WWE star Brock Lesnar finally gave up on being a Viking and has set his sights on the world of ultimate fighting. Although he lost his debut match last February against Frank Mir, Lesnar learned to never let up in UFC and won a decisive victory over Heath Herring in from of a home crowd at Target Center this past weekend.

Lesnar, a real gym rat who is familiar with weight machines and treadmills, saw his record improve to 1-1 following the victory.

Over 15,000 attended the Target Center show, which featured 10 matches, and was featured on pay-per-view as UFC 87: Seek and Destroy. The only sour note is a special 10-percent surtax charged to promoters by the city of Minneapolis; word has it UFC may look to Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul for their next event in Minnesota, due to the issue.

When it comes to pharmaceutical companies, most people think of big corporations who charge “too much” for medicines people need to survive, and that’s about it. One of the big surprises for some people when they review the new Johnson & Johnson Web site is that there’s a lot more to Johnson & Johnson than the roughly 40 medicines they produce.

Johnson & Johnson are also well-known for their home health products, from baby care products like lotions and shampoos, to skin care, oral health, women’s health and over-the-counter medications like Tylenol. Heck, they’re even the parent company behind Splenda, the most recent sugar substitute to hit the market.

When it comes to brand recognition, Johnson & Johnson is already top-notch, but the mind boggles when one starts browsing their new company site and you get a handle on just how many things we take for granted in our daily lives come directly from Johnson & Johnson.

When Kevin Garnett was still a Timberwolf, he usually made in a single season what it will take Ryan Gomes five years to earn under the terms of his new contract with Minnesota. Gomes, arguably the second-most-important cog in the Kevin Garnett trade last summer, was an unrestricted free agent this off-season.

Although coming off another poor year for the Wolves in terms of wins and losses, Gomes is the kind of young, high-potential, high-character talent Minnesota was hoping to build around in the wake of the Garnett trade. Only 25 and still improving his skills each year, Gomes averaged 12.6 ppg and 5.8 apg, but is considered a locker room asset for the largely young and less experienced Wolves team McHale has assembled thus far. Gomes may be past his acne years, but he’s still a young player by NBA standards.

It’s only the first pre-season game - the kind that aren’t supposed to count for much except evaluating talent of those who are not obvious starters. Just the same, the Vikings lost to Seattle on Friday 17-34, and to add insult to injury, the team lost two players for the season, LB Heath Farwell and DE Jayme Mitchell.

Both injuries happened early in the game and so both are players who were likely to make the Vikings roster this fall; the Vikes have indicated that Farwell will be replaced from among those players already in camp, while Mitchell’s replacement may require the Vikes to go scouting the cut lists of other teams in the league as the preseason moves forward.

Although the Vikings traded for last year’s NFL sack leader, Jared Allen, in the offseason, depth behind him and on the other side of the D-line is questionable, so Mitchell’s injury status is particularly unwelcome news. Kind of like someone telling you that instead of a prime rib dinner, they’re serving you a round of diet pills.