Sid Hartman: Gophers' hot hands have lost their touch

Including the 68-63 loss at Penn State on Saturday, the Gophers men's basketball team has lost three out of five since upsetting Illinois at Williams Area, and for some reason the Gophers are not playing the kind of basketball that they had been playing earlier in the season, when they reeled off 14 consecutive victories.

Except for Paul Carter, who hit for 22 points in the Indiana victory last Tuesday, and Devoe Joseph, who converted seven three-point shots and scored 23 points in the second half against the Nittany Lions, the previous hot shooters, such as Lawrence Westbrook and Damian Johnson, have lost their touch.

The chances of getting an invitation to the NCAA tournament, which appeared so bright early in the season, suddenly don't look as good despite the team's 19 victories. They have a tough schedule to close out the season before the Big Ten tournament.

As coach Tubby Smith pointed out after the Saturday's game, the players are failing to drive aggressively to the basket and are not playing very smart basketball -- for example, turning the ball over with seconds to play before the end of the half and permitting Penn State to get a three-point basket that turned out to be critical at the end.

On the other hand, the Gophers' 7-6 Big Ten record and 19-6 overall is much better than expected. The Gophers graduated three veteran players after last season, when they were 20-14. They had to replace Dan Coleman, Spencer Tollackson and Lawrence McKenzie.

With five newcomers in Joseph, Carter, Devron Bostick, Colton Iverson and Ralph Sampson III, most of the experts believed this would be a rebuilding year.

Before the Big Ten season opened with a loss to first-place Michigan State, the Gophers had shown their mettle by defeating Louisville and Virginia. They beat Penn State and Ohio State at home and Iowa and Wisconsin on the road before being upset at Northwestern. Since losing to the Wildcats, the Gophers are 3-4.

Jottings Mark Hill is the strength and conditioning coach for the Gophers football team, and he's one of the best in the business. Hill was asked how Sam Maresh, the Champlin linebacker who had heart surgery a year ago, is doing now that he has been given permission to play football by the Mayo Clinic physicians who operated on him. Hill verified what coach Tim Brewster had said: Maresh will play football this fall. "He's not quite up to full strength, like normal guys, but he's working his way back in," said Hill, who is supervising Maresh in the weight room each day. "He's got a ways to go. He's close. Because of what he went through, he's just got to get back to comfort point." ... Asked to name his best lifters in the weight room, Hall named defensive linemen Eric Small, Anthony Jacobs and Barret Moen and center D.J. Burris.

Mike Dunbar, the former Gophers offensive coordinator, hasn't found a job, so he will be paid his salary of $270,000 for the 2009 season. ... One reason Gophers receivers coach George McDonald was hired by the Cleveland Browns is that he served as an intern recently on the Jets staff of Eric Mangini, and when Mangini got the Browns' coaching job, he remembered the strong impression McDonald had left. ... One recruit who didn't receive much recognition before signing with the Gophers was Irondale tackle Jimmy Gjere, who was recruited hard by Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. The 6-7, 285-pound Gjere also plays hockey, and the other day Brewster visited Gjere at the rink.

The Minnesota Football Coaches Association high school football clinic scheduled for April 2-4 at the Bierman Building and in St. Louis Park will include two of the great offensive football brains in Brian Billick, the former Vikings assistant and former coach of the Baltimore Ravens, and Minneapolis native Marc Trestman, who did one great job coaching the Montreal Alouettes to a Grey Cup appearance in the Canadian Football League this past season. Trestman is one of three finalists for the CFL Coach of the Year.

About 11,000 tickets have been sold for first and second rounds of the regional NCAA basketball tournament to be held at the Metrodome March 20-22, but Bill Lester, executive director of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, is worried that the teams likely to compete here will not draw interest in the Midwest, because Iowa, Iowa State and Wisconsin are not having good seasons. The Metrodome will be set up set up to seat 30,000 fans during the tournament.

Gophers men's track coach Steve Plasencia reports that he has signed three outstanding athletes: Clay Gosse, from Appleton, Wis., who competes in shot put and discus; Oladipo Fagbemi, from Marshfield, Wis., 400-meter runner and triple jumper; and Jim Lehman, from Coon Rapids, a discus thrower. He was also an all-state football player.

Gophers recruit Trevor Mbakwe is averaging 14.7 points and 12.6 rebounds per game for the Miami Dade College men's basketball team, which is ranked third in the NJCAA polls.

Gophers outfielders Matt Nohelty and Eric Decker and pitcher Scott Matyas were named to the preseason All-Big Ten baseball team by Baseball America. The three also were named among the top five draft prospects in the conference.

Nohelty was also named the best defensive outfielder, best baserunner and one of the top pure hitters in the conference by CollegeBaseballInsider.com.

The Gophers were picked to finish seventh in the conference. Indiana was chosen to win the Big Ten.

The Gophers open their season against Seton Hall on Friday in Clearwater, Fla. The game is part of the Big Ten/Big East challenge.