transferring to UND

im on record as wanting him to lead our program.

http://www.espn.com/college-footbal...-walk-western-michigan-broncos-coach-pj-fleck

Anu Soloman from U of Arizona is transferring as a grad student... hint - hint

Jackson excited to be a Gopher

Spoke to Bryson Jackson tonight after he decided to commit to Minnesota. Seems excited to be a Gopher, and was fueled by current linebackers that he spoke to on his visit.

Link: McLaurin excited to be golden

I would definitely expect Minnesota to stay involved as they're willing to take both a JUCO and high school quarterback.

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Leaving Florida State. We should go get himhttps://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/p...florida-state-after-one-season-144201262.html

I'm confused with all the secret visitors and intrigue. Are we still waiting for another commitment this week?

MW back at QB in practice.
Verbal commitment from Neil Mc, 3 years of eligibility and mid year. Looks strong in read option and has lots of snaps at JUCO. Probably needs work in passing game, but has a good arm.
Glover de-commits from CSU and we are the favorites. Athletic, can throw, can run read option.

If we land Glover this is good progress at a position we all agree needs to be addressed.

Good news: The mystery visitor did end up visiting, and Minnesota is now his definite leader. Since he's still technically committed elsewhere, I can't reveal his name quite yet. Also, there's going to be another commitment soon that you guys will really like.

Bad news: Kyrei Fisher was visited by Texas this past week and went on a visit there this weekend.

Other news: Nate Bursch and Blaise Andries both had leave for part of Saturday to play in basketball games, so they missed out on position meetings and some other things. No biggie as both are very solid to Minnesota.

I heard Jake Paulson was a little more reserved on his visit. He likes Illinois a lot and has had some recent interest from Syracuse and Nebraska.

.

Interesting article on how & why the DFL lost the F in DFL. Mn Rep Collin Peterson blames gerrymandering & the fact that the D's no longer care to woo the rural Democrats, nor to represent them. He doesn't think the party will ever get them back. It is interesting that the DFL has turned their back on the people who built their party, both the F in DFL (Farmers) and the L (Laborers) and now really have disdain for them.

U.S. Rep. Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota is one of the last members of a dying breed: the rural conservative Democrat. He has represented Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District for a quarter-century, since 1991. The district encompasses most of the western half of the state. It’s farm country, a broad swath of fields and open prairie running from the South Dakota border all the way up to Canada.


The people Peterson represents are overwhelmingly white and moderately conservative. According to the Cook Political Report, Peterson was one of nine Democrats sent to Congress from a district that voted for Romney in 2012.


Most counties in Peterson’s district swung hard toward Trump this year, by margins of 20, 30, 40 percentage points or more. But Peterson himself still earned 52.5 percent of the vote, enough to head to Congress for a 14th term.

In a conversation with the Washington Post, Peterson said that Donald Trump owes his victory to rural voters who feel they’ve been abandoned by a Democratic Party that has become increasingly urban and liberal. That abandonment has happened in part because of Republican efforts to gerrymander Democratic voters into tightly packed urban districts, he said. Few Democratic lawmakers now represent rural districts such as Peterson’s, where voters care more about agricultural policy and trade than they do about gun control, LGBT issues or questions about minority representation.


Unless Democrats are able to regain control of governorships and statehouses before the 2020 Census to “un-gerrymander” the districts, that dynamic’s not likely to change, no matter what policy proposals Democrats put on the table.


The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.


The Washington Post: What kind of things had you been hearing from voters in this district in the run-up to the election? What issues and policies were people concerned about?


Collin Peterson: They talked to me about farm programs and farm prices. Different specific issues that deal with agriculture. But I could tell something was going on. Just the amount of Trump signs that were out there.


Post: More than usual?


Peterson: Way more. It was clear that (the number) just kept growing, and there were no Clinton signs. People were fed up. It was kind of interesting: They didn’t really want to talk about it too much. And then after the election, it’s kind of like they’ve been unleashed.


Post: What do you mean by “unleashed”?


Peterson: A lot of it is backlash against all this political correctness that’s going on. That’s what I hear from people, and I was hearing that before the election, too.

They don’t like the government telling them what to do or telling them how to live their lives. They think (the government is) coddling people, like when people’s feelings are hurt at the colleges and they send somebody in to make them feel better. Stuff like that drives (voters here) crazy.


I heard a lot about the Affordable Care Act, too. About how people in the individual market were getting clobbered with all these increases, which is a legitimate issue. You know what the economics are like in Red Lake County. There’s no way a family can pay $15,000, $20,000 a year for health insurance and make it work. You just can’t do it. It’s got to change.


I always run ahead of the ticket (compared to Democratic presidential candidates). But this time there were a lot of people that just voted party line, a lot more than usual.


There’s no question that Trump got elected because of rural America. And our party still is in denial. They don’t get it.


Post: So what does the Democratic Party need to do to ‘get it’? What do they need to start talking about to win these voters back?


Peterson: Well, I don’t know if they can. What’s happened is the Republicans have been smart. They’ve spent a lot of money redistricting and everything, getting control of these governorships and statehouses.


So they packed all the Democrats into districts, very Democratic districts. What that’s done is made our party urban, more liberal, and so those people are doing what their constituents want. But that’s not what my constituents want.


I don’t know how you change that. There’s hardly anybody left like me in the Democratic Party in Congress. These districts have been so gerrymandered that, in most of them, a Democrat can’t win. Somebody like me trying to start off today, he’d never get endorsed. Because I’m too conservative.


So it’s a problem. Pushing gun control drives people (in my district) crazy, gay marriage, abortion, deficit spending, you name it. All of that stuff adds up to be a problem for Democrats.


Post: Trade’s been a big issue in the campaign. Do you hear a lot about that from voters out here?


Peterson: Yeah, that was clearly a factor. That was a complete reversal of where things are normally at. Usually Republicans are all for free trade. Sanders tapped into that; that was part of his support. And then when he didn’t make it, some of those Sanders people went to Trump.


I agree with Trump: These trade agreements have not been good deals for America, and they need to be fixed. I fought NAFTA when it passed; it has been a big disaster for us, in my opinion. If we can renegotiate that, it would be wonderful.


Post: What have you heard from voters up here about how they’ve been affected by NAFTA or how they’d be affected by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?


Peterson: Well, the sugar guys have been dealing with NAFTA ever since it passed. Now we’ve got Mexico dumping sugar that’s subsidized by the Mexican government into our market in violation of the World Trade Organization, because NAFTA gave them open access to our sugar market. They claim they’re not subsidized, but the government owns half the industry in Mexico.


NAFTA’s been a big problem for sugar. And when it (NAFTA) was sold, we were supposed to get two or three times more exports to Canada or Mexico than they exported to us. It’s been the exact opposite.


Post: So there’s a big discussion happening within the Democratic coalition right now, about how the focus on issues of plurality and diversity and minority rights are essentially shutting rural voters out of the discussion. What do you make of that?


Peterson: I think that’s unfortunately true. We have become a party of assembling all these different groups, the women’s caucus and the black caucus and the Hispanic caucus and the lesbian-gay-transgender caucus and so forth, and that doesn’t relate to people out in rural America. The party’s become an urban party, and they don’t get rural America. They don’t get agriculture.


Post: From a purely practical standpoint, is there anything Democrats can do policy-wise to reach out to these rural voters, or do they essentially have to write them off?


Peterson: Well, they have written them off. Some of the people in my caucus, some of the people in the state party in Minnesota have basically said, “We don’t want to deal with these guys because they’re too conservative,” or “We don’t agree with them on social issues.”


But you can’t have a majority party in Minnesota or throughout the country without (support from) the people in these (rural) districts. Given the position (the Democratic Party) has taken, it’s very hard to see how you can do that.


The only thing I can think to do is if the Democratic Party can do what the Republicans have done, which is go in there and take control of these legislatures and governors’ areas. Try to un-gerrymander these districts so that you’re not packing all the Democrats into one district, so you’ve got districts that are competitive, so that you’ve got a shot at electing Democrats. But that’s more a long-term proposition, if it can even be done.


Post: So in your view, gerrymandering is the cause of the increasing urbanization of the Democratic Party?


Peterson: There’s no question about it. If you look at the map, there’s hardly any (Democrats representing rural districts). There’s me, (Rick) Nolan, (Tim) Walz, (Dave) Loebsack and Cheri Bustos. So that’s five. And all the rest of them are in urban cities. That’s a problem.


If everybody in our caucus had a 50/50 (Democrat/Republican) district, we’d have a lot different discussion. But if they have a 90 percent Democratic district, they don’t ever talk to a Republican, they don’t have to and they don’t want to.


Post: If you were to have readers in cities like D.C. understand one thing about voters in your district, what would it be?


Peterson: They have a different view of the world than people do in these urban centers. They have a different lifestyle, and they don’t want to change it. They’re happy with the way things are. It’s causing the party political problems.

http://www.twincities.com/2016/11/2...r-vote-democratic-in-minnesota-and-elsewhere/

I did this a day early as I dont know if I will be able to do this tomorrow(possible family issues).... LIU Brooklyn is coming fresh off a one point upset of St Johns, who Minnesota beat earlier this year. St Johns was playing without the services of their leading scorer, Marcus Lovett, and the announced transfer of their big guy mentioned on this board, Yankuba Sima.. A bit skewed but a good victory for their program, in name... They also beat Northeastern, who upset UCONN earlier in the year. They have a 7-3 record going into the game against Minnesota on Wednesday. They were picked 4th in the preseason, in their conference. They play a few games at the NBA's Barclays Arena(home of the Brooklyn Nets), which is a short walk from their campus but that is not their home arena.

Their coach, Jack Perri, is a life long 'northeasterner'... He played at a Division 2 school. Bentley, in Massachusetts then was an assistant there.. He made his name by being the lead recruiter of the Bentley team that had a small dynasty in Division 2 basketball before he took the head coaching job at LIU Brooklyn. That Bentley team still has the Division 2 record for consecutive victories.

I actually watched a whole game of LIU against Massachusetts Lowell. I would not call anything they do as really impressive.. They just kinda stay with it, hang in there, and convert possessions and get stops in their victories.. They dont have any size to speak as their tallest player is in the 6-7, 6-8 range. The guards are ok, for that level. The 6-7, 6-8 guys they play are built strong in the 230-240 pound range. Their guards are small. and we will have a decided size/athletic advantage in the backcourt and at center. Jerome Frink is a senior frontcourt player from the storied St Anthony's program in Jersey City. He is probably their best player and a crafty big... He will wander out and shoot a 3 pointer or two, each game...An athletic built, solid player at that level who averages 17 points and 8 rebounds a game. They have a guard, Iverson Fleming, who has won conference player of the week twice already this year. He averages a little over 13 a game. Those guys are where the shots come from the most, on their team... Fleming is a good FT shooter. They have a freshman PG Jashaun Agosto that is decent playmaker for them.. Lots of role players.. They had a guy get hurt in their first game that was a senior, Joel Hernandez, that was a good player.

In light of our recent games, I would be shocked if they come within 15-20 points of us.. We just have to come to play as they have 4 seniors...Can NEVER take an opponent for granted, especially if they have decent upperclassmen.. Have to come relaxed but with a business like approach that puts these guys away early.. Love to see our backups get significant playing time in this game. When you formulate a game plan strategy, you evaluate where you have the advantage and where the opponents have the advantage.. In my opinion, LIU Brooklyn does not have an advantage at any position so this should be a feel good "W" going into finals week......The game is on BigTen2Go on Wednesday at 8 pm EST(7 PM Central time) but will be re-broadcast on the Big Ten Channel on Thursday, December 15 at 1:00 EST(Noon, central time).

Trey Creamer had a TD catch and three rushing touchdowns for his team in the state championship this weekend. Vote for him for player of the week right here: http://usatodayhss.com/2016/poll-vote-for-the-super-25-top-star-week-15#sthash.wvUAVVmt.uxfs

I'm very happy that the Gophs are trying to get a QB that will allow them to run their full offense and really make the zone read dynamic. Personally I'm also happy about it because I think dual threat guys are more fun to watch. But you can count me as someone who's extremely skeptical that McLaurin will turn out to be a decent Big 10 QB.

NJCAA is missing stats for one of the games but here are the stats for the rest of them... 28/62 for 279 yards, 2 TDs, 4 interceptions, 27 carries, 83 rush yards, 1 rushing TD. That's a 45% completion percentage. Averages out to 9.3 completions on 20.6 attempts for 93 yards per game...not exactly encouraging.

Looks like Seth Green will be our QB next season. Hoping he does well!

On the bright side I'm thrilled with this Jimmie Terry commit.

Nice read on Holmes

http://www.nola.com/recruiting/index.ssf/2016/06/lsu_mississippi_state_others_s.html

https://iowa.rivals.com/news/dl-green-recaps-illini-visit

Fresh off an official visit to Illinois, 3-star lineman Kendrick Green from Peoria (Ill.) could be nearing his college decision.

“I think it’s going to be soon,” Green said. “I’m going to take some time to think about it and go with what I feel is best. I’m going to talk it over with my coaches and my family."

According to Green, Illinois improved its position on the visit this weekend, and are now among his final list of schools along with Iowa and Minnesota.
---
He’s not exactly sure when his final decision will be made, but he is in the final stages.

“I’m just going to line up the pros and cons and talk it over with people in my circle,” Green said.

Green also says he has a strong relationship with the coaching staffs at Minnesota and Iowa.

Proximity to home is a big plus for Iowa, while Green says the opportunity to play early at Minnesota is a draw for him. He also likes the big-city campus in Minneapolis.

For those who look at P5 offers of our recruits. Below is the # of reported P5 offers for each recruit. Not looking great especially if we lose Fisher, but Andries was a nice get. I think some of the guys with no P5 offers would have probably got 1 or 2 if they were actively marketing themselves.

Name P5 Offers
Jimmie Terry 0
Brett Kitrell 0
Joshua Croslen 0
Nathan Bursch 0
Dominik London 0
Claudin Cherelus 0
Neil McLaurin 0
Eric Abojei 1
Jakyle Holmes 1
Jaquarius Landrews 2
Javan Hawes 2
Grant Ryerse 2
Raheem Layne 3
Kyrei Fisher 5
Trey Creamer 6
Blaise Andries 20

Lamar Jackson (Louisville) is the most dynamic college player we have seen in a long time. 55 wants some of that.

Our coaches are clearly transitioning to a more much more mobile QB and a modern offense.

We comin' and you nitwits are complaining?

So you asked for it

Seth can pass!
Demry can pass!
Neil can pass!

And RUN!!!!!!

If we are going to endure 53% passing let's at least get a burner out there.

My recruiting question revolves around players that are currently playing D1 basketball.

Last night Wilson looked pretty good for N.Illinois; would he be a guy that could potentially end up back at the U? Would the U be "interested" in him playing for them?

Interesting to say the least.

Link: Terry is a fit for Bart Miller and Minnesota

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Tyler JC guard Jimmie Terry, who committed and enrolled at Louisville out of high school, just committed. Terry's 6'3", 330 and will compete for playing time right away.

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Kyle Goblirsch‏@GobieMN
Kyle Goblirsch Retweeted EJ Holland

#Gopher commit Kyrei Fisher on visit at Texas.



EJ Holland‏@EJHolland247
Texas is set to host a surprise out of state official visitor today. Details here #HookEm. http://texas.247sports.com/Bolt/Oklahoma-LB-to-make-OV-to-Texas-before-dead-period-49721253…

Getting the feeling he is not all that settled with MN! Just saying!!!