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University of Minnesota Athletics
Bowl Blog: Gophers Slog Through Insight Practice
12/26/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
The Minnesota Golden Gopher football team awoke to dry conditions in the desert Friday morning. But the rain that greeted them Thursday night upon their arrival to the Valley of the Sun would still impact their first practice here in Arizona.
The Gophers arrived at Corona del Sol High School for practice this morning and saw numerous puddles of standing water on both fields. And that was after the Minnesota equipment staff spent a couple hours pushing water off the field. It seems even a small amount of rain can cause such problems in the Tempe area, where it only rains an average of about 3/4 of an inch per month.
In addition to the rain, Minnesota was greeted with weather that was only about 10-15 degrees warmer than it was back in Minneapolis today. The temperature at the beginning of practice was a brisk 49 degrees.
But despite the field and the cool weather, the Gophers were in very good spirits and very loose as they warmed up for their 11th practice of the bowl season.
“I thought the energy was excellent today,” head coach Tim Brewster said after the workout. “The guys were excited to be back at it and were enthusiastic today. I thought that was great. I think we had a good carry-over effect from what we accomplished back on campus throughout our first 10 bowl practices.”
Many of the guys who have been banged up and bruised throughout the past few weeks were on the field for all or most of the session. They all look healthier and were moving around well. The four days off for the holidays apparently served them well.
As has been the case throughout most of the bowl practices, a good deal of the early portions of today’s workout was spent on the running game. Meanwhile, the defense did its “Takeaway Tuesday” routine. Does that make today a “Fumble Recovery Friday?”
There was a bit of team work, with the top offensive and defensive units working against each other. During that period, wide receivers Ben Kuznia and Da’Jon McKnight both made nice catches with a wet ball.
A little later, during work against the scout team, quarterback Adam Weber found wide receivers Brandon Green and Eric Decker for long touchdown passes. On the defensive side, Tramaine Brock got a pretty good lick on a scout-team ball-carrier, eliciting a great deal of cheering from that end of the field.
Today’s session wrapped up with a few wind-sprints for the entire team. The offensive and defensive linemen got a weight-lifting session in right after the practice. The team has the rest of the day off. Many of the Gophers were watching film studying the game-plan this afternoon, before heading out to explore the Tempe area later on in the day.
Following practice, the athletic communications staff (Garry Bowman, John Romo and I) headed straight for In-N-Out Burger, which is conveniently located between the practice facility and the team hotel. For those of you Midwesterners who haven’t spent much time out west, In-N-Out Burger is a west coast tradition. All they make are burgers, fries and shakes. But they are some of the best fast-food burgers, fries and shakes you’ll ever have in my humble opinion.
For those of you who are regular readers of our game-day blog here at GopherSports.com, I’ll put it this way, the In-N-Out Double Double with Fries is off the charts on the Finger-lick Scale that I’ve been using to rate the pre-game spread at press boxes this season. In fact, In-N-Out Burger is so popular, we ran into Coach Brewster’s wife Cathy and their son Eric at the restaurant. A few minutes later, most of the Gopher Athletic Training staff came in as well.
Tomorrow, the team will practice in the late morning once again, before taking part in a community service event in the early afternoon. We’ll have full details from tomorrow’s events here at GopherSports.com.
-Andy Seeley
