Hartman: Gophers football makes progress despite weather

The Gophers were scheduled to scrimmage Wednesday night in TCF Bank Stadium as part of the eighth day of spring football practice, but they cancelled it because of snow in the forecast and replaced it with a practice Thursday.

However, coach Jerry Kill said bad weather this month hasn't prevented the team from showing a lot of improvement even though they haven't practiced outside.

"[The weather] hasn't been real cooperative but it hasn't deterred what we're trying to get done, we've just stayed indoors," Kill said. "We've been able to get everything we needed to get done. I think the weather is pretty much like that everywhere.

"We had Butch Jones in from the University of Tennessee at our state high school clinic, and they've only gotten out a couple of times this spring. So I don't think we're the only ones dealing with a weather situation.

"I think the whole group has improved themselves. They're working better together. We still have a lot of work to do, but I see a lot of good things out of the young people."

Kill makes sure the players are fully prepared for practice before they leave the locker room.

"When we meet as a team before we go out to practice, I tell them what we expect," he said. "I show them the pace, show them how we're going to practice . We call it 'The Daily News'; we show them clips of the practice before, the good things they did and the things they need to improve."

"I think competition is always good, and from the secondary to the offensive line, it's not only competition for us as coaches, it's building depth. We need as much depth as you can have, because the bottom line is the good teams in the Big Ten [are] going to have some depth. And you have to grow older.

"We were talking about it yesterday. It's hard to play offensive linemen in the Big Ten until you're a junior or senior, because of the physicality. You look at Wisconsin and most of their kids that are playing are juniors and seniors most of the time. Our kids, somebody asked me, 'What do you need to do, coach?' We just need to get older. We need to mature and get stronger and just get older."

The other day, a bunch of kids were attending practice that Kill had coached before and had attended practices at other colleges Kill had been. Kill said they were impressed what they saw from the Gophers in spring practice.

"They said, 'Man, Coach, it looks like to me the kids are on track, practicing with good intensity, gamelike intensity,' " Kill said. "I think the intensity of the workouts has certainly been good. I think we continue as a coaching staff to learn, you always do, a better way to teach. At the end of the day, we have to get our players to respond and play to the best of their ability. I think we've become better teachers through some work of our own."

There's no doubt the coaches, on the basis of the showing of the players in spring practice, expect a much improved football team this fall.

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