Gophers football coach Jerry Kill believes the talent in the 2015 recruiting class is improved over 2014. One of the reasons is the signing of defensive end Colton Beebe, who twice won the Bobby Bell Award as the outstanding small-class lineman or linebacker in Kansas City. He is the son of Tom Beebe, an offensive lineman Kill coached at Pittsburg (Kan.) State in his first college head coaching job.
"Tom Beebe was a great player at Pittsburg State, one of the best offensive linemen that ever played there," Kill said. "Tom was probably 6-2, played at 300, could move, a pulling guard. That's why Colton, he's 6-3 and about 250 now, but he'll be 6-3, 280."
Kill told another story about recruiting Dior Johnson, a four-star defensive back (according to Rivals.com) out of Michigan.
"I left his house in Detroit and I didn't know what he was going to do," Kill recalled. "So I got on the [charter] plane and I'm driving down the runway in the plane and I get a call and he commits to us, so I tell the pilot, 'Slow down!' There's a lot of good stories in the recruiting class and a bunch of needs in the recruiting class.
"Each year I feel like we're getting a little bit better, and I think we've proved that. We have a lot of speed in this class. We got a walk-on deep snapper that is one of the top five in the country. Then we also got a [walk-on] punter, Jacob Herbers. Trey Hansen is the snapper, from Cedar Falls, Iowa."
Fills holes
Kill said the most important aspect of the 24 players in this recruiting class is that they will fill a number of big holes at key positions in years to come.
"We needed secondary. We got a great secondary next year, but a lot of them guys are going to graduate," Kill said. "We brought in a lot of secondary players, and that will help us down the road. We brought in four corners, three safeties, and that's what we needed.
"We needed offensive linemen because of some of the guys we're graduating this year and next year. The offensive line class is the best offensive line class we've had overall. So those were our big, big needs, the secondary and offensive line.