MinnesotaSportsScene.com

Despite a loss to Northwestern on Saturday, on Sunday Gophers coach Tim Brewster came up the big winner when he received an oral commitment from five-star WR Hayo Carpenter, currently a sophomore for College of the Canyons in California; he turned down Arizona State, Boise State and Nevada to wear the maroon and gold.

That’s a bigger deal than landing a good price on cell phone amplifiers, that’s for sure.

Even though this weekend was a bye week for the football Gophers, Minnesota debuted in the BCS Top 25 poll for the first time this season, and the first time since 2005. While the Tim Brewster-coached Gophers are ranked near the bottom of that poll, at number 24, it is still a huge achievement for a team that no one - including MinnsotaSportsScene.com - expected much out of this year.

Color us humbled. Still, despite the team’s current 6-1 record (2-1 in the Big 10), there’s still a long and difficult schedule ahead for the maroon and gold, and to achieve a top bowl bid, they can’t drop more than one game the rest of the way. If they do, I wouldn’t bet my MBT shoes on a January bowl appearance.

The remaining schedule for the Gophers is somewhat favorable. There are only two road games left, including Purdue and Wisconsin. The team also faces home games against Northwestern, Michigan and Iowa.

The team ought to be able to win three of the last five, given their performances so far this season. That would put Minnesota at 9-3, which would ensure a good bowl, but probably not a January bowl. If the Gophers can manage four wins, a January bowl would not be out of the question, but that would mean beating either Wisconsin on the road, or Michigan at home - tall order.

Minnesota Gophers receiver Eric Decker is making maroon-and-gold fans forget all about the one that got away, Cretin Durham Hall grad Michael Floyd, now with Notre Dame. That’s because Decker currently leads all Division I receivers with 696 receiving yards through six games; he’s also third in the nation in catches, with 50.

By comparison, Floyd has only 21 catches for 333 yards over five games.

So forget all those Fenphedra-popping wannabes; Decker is the real thing for the Gophers and is a big part of elevating the team from a one-win train wreck last season to a 5-1 phenom this season.

While the Big 10 schedule is sure to take its toll on the Gophers and add a few more losses, one more win will make the Gophers technically bowl-eligible, and two more wins in the Big 10 will seal the Gophers for a post-season bowl bid.

Considering where the team was last season, anything beyond seven wins is gravy!

I’m itching for the start of the Vikings-Packers game tonight and one of the biggest questions on my mind is whether Adrian Peterson can be great again this year. Certainly, despite missing four games last season, he has already established himself as possibly one of the best runners ever to wear the purple and gold.

The question is, can he avoid the sophomore slump? Can he improve on what he did last season? With the healing that’s gone on in his knee in the off-season, I’d venture to say it’s possible, even plausible. Only time will tell and kickoff’s in about 12 hours. No time left for those Caribbean cruises. It’s football time, baby!

With won-loss results as reliable as mortgage quotes last season, after we won a close game against Northern Illinois last week, I wasn’t sure we’d see another Gophers win this season. However, the Gophers somehow remembered they play in the Big Ten Conference and posted a more convincing 25-point victory over Bowling Green this weekend.

Thank goodness.

Adam Weber proved he’s a legit starter by completing 21 of 25 passes for 233 yards and three scores; he was not intercepted. The game stands as one of the most accurate single-game performances in Gophers history.

Running back Duane Bennett had a great start in the game, gaining 92 yards on the ground and 142 all-purpose yards before being injured in the third quarter on Saturday. Scheduled for an MRI, Bennett’s knee injury could keep him out the rest of the year, which could damage the hopes of this team to keep from repeating last year’s dismal failure of a season.

However, Shady Salamon and DeLeon Eskridge stand ready to fill in, and personally I think Salamon stands the best chance to break through in relief of Bennett. Time will tell.

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.

Practices will soon be underway for Minnesota Gophers football.

The second year for the program has to be better than the first, and that’s largely because there’s not much further down for the program to fall. Under coach Tim Brewster last year, the Gophs went 1-11, bottoming out so badly, even his own son decided to transfer out of the program.

(Not really… his son had other reasons to leave.)

But this season really ought to be better. Adam Weber has some experience at QB now, and if he falters, we have some great QBs recruited behind him who are more than anxious to take over the reigns.

Most importantly, this year’s squad as a full defense; last year, about half his starters never even made it to the first game due to being idiots off the field. When you don’t have a great defense, it doesn’t matter how many succesfful drives your QB leads your team on. You have to stop the other team because even if your score 70 points, you lose if your opponent scores 71.

That lesson learned and that problem corrected, it’ll be intriguing to see what coach Brewster can do this season with a year under his belt, a full defense, and more of the squad he’s coaching consisting of kids he recruited himself, and that’s worth all the Cat5e patch cables you can count.

Former Champlin Park, MN linebacker and Gophers freshman Sam Maresh, one of coach Tim Brewster’s top “gets” in the class of 2008, may never play a single down for the maroon and gold. Not because Maresh is transferring out or because of antics on or off the field, but sadly, due to health problems.

Maresh went for a routine physical and found out he has a serious heart condition; he is sceduled for open heart surgery on June 26. The medical conditions Maresh has been diagnosed with include, “a congenital heart defect, an aortic valve leak and an enlarged ventricle and aortic root,” according to an email released by Maresh’s parents to the media on Tuesday. Any one of these conditions would be serious enough on its own; together, they make the procedure later this month that much more urgent.

Maresh was never detected as a candidate for a heart condition because the young athlete kept himself in such good shape, he never felt ill effects from the condition. According to the email, Maresh’s parents are unsure if Sam will ever be able to play football again, a projection that likely won’t be able to be determined until some time after the surgery.

It’s tragic; some kids mess around with generic Phentermine, steriods and other garbage and never suffers ill effects or even catches a cold. Then, along comes a solid kid like Maresh, who never does any of that foolishness, who many top-notch schools recruited, and BAM!, something like this happens.

The prayers of MinnesotaSportsScene.com are with the Maresh family.

Minnesota Gophers football coach Tim Brewster is already looking ahead to 2009; not that this season doesn’t matter - it does, a lot - but he’s already secured an oral commit out of Houston Cypress Ridge RB Hasan Lipscomb, who Rivals.com rates as a four-star prospect and one of the top 250 juniors in the nation.

While he may live where cell phone repeater aren’t needed in the Houston area, Lipscomb comes from an area like that; he moved from New Orleans to Texas following Hurricane Katrina.

Rushing for 1600 last season as a junior, Lipscomb may be the first back to commit to the Gophers under Brewster that has the potential to make Gophers fans reminisce a bit less about the glory days of Lawrence Maroney and Marion Barber III sharing the same maroon-and-gold uniforms for a couple seasons.

I’ve been thinking about how some sports bloggers get invited to do local radio interviews and the like, and why I always seem to be left out of the fun. Granted, my blogs are relatively new - haven’t been around for a decade or more like some folks - but still, it’d be nice to be prepared if that day ever comes, y’know?

So, I recently had a chance to try out LogoYes.com and try my hand at creating some branding for myself. I kind of like the results. Using LogoYes.com’s logo design and business card creation tool, it was quick and simple to get the elements of my logo together and start fiddling around with them until I found a look I like. (I did the same thing recently over at ProWrestlingViews.com, with terrific results.

What I like about their tools is that there’s plenty of clip art, a decent amount of flexibility, and so the limits, really, are more about creativity than anything else. I was able to get a look I like put together in about 15 minutes or so, and I like that I was able to incorporate both Vikings purple and Gophers maroon into the gold card design that both teams share in common; gives the card a real “MinnesotaSportsScene” look, which is what branding is all about.

If I had had the money to invest, I would have ordered a set of 100 on the spot.

While the Vikings’ recent signing of DT Kendrick Allen, as a backup to the aging but effective Pat Williams, is a solid move, one might hope that their first defensive lineman of the 2008 free agent period might have beena potential starting end, not a backup tackle.

Of course, Allen’s not a condo hotel type of signing; he’s more of a Red Roof Inn sort of prospect. He’s a solid but not spectacular performer who will be good in relief of Williams and has the potential to develop further.

Starting only three of 31 career games, the big advantage Allen brings is that he’s not likely to be demanding a starting position that would break up the Willaims wall. That, in and of itself, makes him a decent fit for his role on next year’s Viking squad.

With no Vikings currently residing in drug treatment centers, it appears Zygi Wilf’s efforts to clean up the team’s image has been bearing fruit. Now that character is being managed, it’s time to consider the question of talent.

One potential weakness is at quarterback. Despite a decent record as a starter, QB Tavaris Jackson is still a question mark as a starter for the Vikings, carrying around an abyssmal passer rating, even though he improved during the team’s five-game winning stretch. The question is, can he improve enough to give an Adrian Peterson-fueled team the firepower it needs to win in the five-to-seven year window that Peterson’s career is likely to provide when it comes to going deep in the playoffs and make a Super Bowl.

Probably the most established name still out there is QB Byron Leftwich, formerly of the Jacksonville Jaguars, most recently of the Atlanta Falcons. Leftwich has shortcomings but is considerably more experienced and could be a proficient enough caretaker to make plays and keep the team from losing off his own mistakes; but Leftwich wants to be an immediate starter, not a number two, and is certain to demand a meaty contract that would be substantial enough to force the team to give up on T-Jack altogether.

Probably not a direction the Vikings are ready to go just yet; look for them to draft a project QB in the middle rounds, perhaps late on Day One.