Beat the Buckeyes and Gophers would have historic season at home

National signing day had passed, but Jerry Kill wasn't finished with his first Gophers recruiting class.

In February 2011, two months after Kill was hired, longtime assistant Pat Poore received a tip about an under-recruited running back from Killeen, Texas. Another top assistant, Jay Sawvel, found an intriguing defensive back in the middle of a southern California desert.

Those discoveries led to David Cobb and Cedric Thompson. Now, Cobb is threatening Laurence Maroney's single-season rushing record, and Thompson, a hard-hitting safety, has become the heart of Minnesota's defense.

Together, along with the other seniors on the roster, they have helped reshape the program. They were wide-eyed freshman in the team's 58-0 loss at Michigan that fall. And they were cool-and-collected veterans last week in that 51-14 rout of Iowa.

On Saturday, they'll play their final game at TCF Bank Stadium, and this has a chance to be the ultimate send-off. The Gophers, who haven't gone undefeated at home since 1967, are 6-0 at The Bank this year, and here comes No. 8 Ohio State, a team riding a 21-game Big Ten regular-season winning streak.

"After the Iowa game, I remember going home, and I was sitting there thinking, I couldn't believe we were 3-9 in 2011," Thompson said. "I couldn't believe how far we've come, and that gives me more motivation to go out there and dominate this [Ohio State] team."

The Gophers (7-2, 4-1 Big Ten) are tied atop the West Division standings with Nebraska and Wisconsin, but they enter this game as 12-point underdogs.

Ohio State (8-1, 5-0) won the de-facto East Division title game last week 49-37 over Michigan State and might be the Big Ten's last hope to make the College Football Playoff.

"We don't see it as a spoiler role," Cobb said. "We just see it as another opportunity to get where we want to go. And if we spoil their chances, so be it."

Cobb's choice

Before the 11 a.m. kickoff, the Gophers will honor Cobb, Thompson and 22 other players heading into the final home game of their careers.

"It hasn't hit me yet, but I'm sure it will when they call my name and I run out and meet my family," Cobb said. "By that time, emotions will be high, and the adrenaline will be running, and I'll just be ready to play."

After coming to Minnesota, Cobb spent two years wondering if he'd made a mistake. He got 10 carries as a true freshman, but just one as a sophomore.

His first college start came seven games into his junior season, but he finished with 1,202 rushing yards last year.

This year, Cobb has 1,205 rushing yards with four games left to eclipse Maroney's school record of 1,464, set in 2005.

"When I look back, I'm just happy that I never really gave up," Cobb said. "When I was buried down and wasn't really having fun my first two years, I'm proud of myself for fighting back and just for staying with it."

Hottest, coldest

Thompson will have more than 20 friends and family members at the Ohio State game, including his mother, grandmother and several cousins from California.

He grew up in Compton, Calif., but after his parents divorced, he knew he had to escape the gang violence, so he moved with his father to Bombay Beach, Calif., along the sweltering Salton Sea.

At Calipatria High School, Thompson rushed for 1,808 yards as a high school senior and showed just enough promise on film, defensively, to capture Sawvel's attention.

Thompson has blossomed into a team captain who ranks second on the team with 51 tackles, two interceptions and one forced fumble. He traded Bombay Beach, where temperatures routinely top 100 degrees, for Minneapolis, where the windchill could be 10 degrees for Saturday's kickoff.

"I've been in probably the hottest place in all of America, and I've been in the coldest place in all of America," Thompson said. "It's just crazy where my life has taken me."

Closing the gap

It's not just Cobb and Thompson, of course. This senior class also includes a bunch of other Gophers mainstays, including Michael Amaefula, Cameron Botticelli, Zac Epping, Isaac Fruechte, Drew Goodger, Tommy Olson, Damien Wilson and Derrick Wells.

Botticelli and Epping are among those who redshirted in 2010, the last time the Gophers faced Ohio State. Two games after Tim Brewster was fired, interim coach Jeff Horton was at the helm as the visiting Buckeyes defeated Minnesota 52-10.

Now, defensive coordinator Tracy Claeys said the Gophers have closed the talent gap.

"I'm not going to say we'll never be able to recruit all the same kids that Ohio State recruits, but everybody knows there are 10 schools in this country that can walk into anybody's house and recruit anybody they want," Claeys said. "The rest of us depend on getting just as good of kids, who may be two years behind, and developing them.

"Maybe they have 60 five-star guys on their roster, but they can only put 11 of them out there at a time. So the whole key comes down to getting your 11 to believe they can compete with the 11 they put out there."

This senior class has been part of victories over such traditional powers as Iowa, Nebraska, Michigan and Penn State. This will be their one crack at Ohio State, which is 36-2 against the Gophers since 1966.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate [the seniors] and what they've done," Kill said. "They've got a lot of great memories, and we need to make some more."