Hartman: Vikings' rookie Patterson learning as he goes

It is well known that Vikings wide receiver coach George Stewart has a reputation of coaching more great receivers than any NFL assistant, including maybe the best of all-time in Jerry Rice.

Now he has the opportunity to coach another gifted player in first-round draft choice Cordarrelle Patterson. The Vikings traded four picks to New England to get the No. 29 pick for Patterson.

Patterson continued his great performance in training camp in a 27-13 exhibition loss to Houston on Friday by catching four passes for 54 yards, a 13.5 average, and also returning a kick 50 yards.

A couple of the receptions were of the Randy Moss-type, which certainly impressed the coaching staff. But Patterson, while saying that he was thrilled with playing in his first professional game, wasn't ready to do any bragging afterwards.

"It was awesome, amazing, a great atmosphere. I loved it out here," Patterson said. "I felt that I did pretty good and could have done better in some areas. Everybody can get better, especially me. I just feel that I can always get better with what I do."

As for Stewart's size-up of Patterson, he described Friday's performance as a good beginning.

"It was a good start for him. We have a ways to go, but I'd like to thank our scouting department for having a chance to draft this young man, because he's our future," Stewart said. "He's learning from Greg Jennings everyday, but it's just a good start for him, and hopefully we can get better as we go.

Patterson was drafted as a player with great physical gifts, but also with only one year of major college experience at Tennessee after playing two years at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College.

"He's doing everything we ask him to do and it's just baby steps right now," Stewart said. "As he continues to take those baby steps he's going to be fine.

"He caught the football and that's the one thing, as a receiver you have to make plays. He did a nice job returning kicks and a nice job catching the football."

The receiving corps was certainly a weakness of the 2012 team. Friday night, wide receivers had 12 of the Vikings' 20 receptions, for 162 yards.

"I'll have got go back and look at the tape, it's too early, but I thought they did a nice job catching the ball," Stewart said.

Gopher athletic director Norwood Teague was willing to spend some $200,000 in building a wall on the inside of the Bierman Building gym with half of the wall glass and the other half a solid wall.

So instead of practicing at Williams Arena, Pitino will use Bierman for all the 1-on-1 workouts and also for a good share of the practices once the season starts.

However, Pitino might learn what predecessor Tubby Smith learned when he tried to practice in the Bierman gym, that the floor is too hard on the feet of the players to work on it for too long.

Want one reason why Jerry Kill is optimistic about building a winning Gophers football team?

"A thing that makes a big difference over time is the continuity of our staff. It's hard for kids to have different coaches every year," Kill said. "With the different terms and techniques, they don't know what's expected of them.

On why getting to a bowl last year was important, Kill said: "It's hard to tell how much difference [playing against Texas Tech in the Meineke Car Care Bowl] makes, but we got at least one kid because of it in this year's recruiting class. DeVondre Campbell was all set to go to Tennessee. When that didn't work out he had a strong interest from both Texas and Kansas State, but we were able to get to him."

Gophers men's track coach Steve Plasencia sees a great future for Devin Crawford-Tufts, the former state 100-meter champion at Edina High School who gave up a starting wide receiver position on the Gophers football team to concentrate on track.

"Devin can be one of the best sprinters, if not the best sprinter in the Big Ten within a year's time, I would guess," Plasencia said. "He's a very talented sprinter. He was fourth in the Big Ten last year without paying any attention to track. In the 60 meters indoors he was fourth overall and he spent very little time with us. If he can get healthy and have a good training season he's a very good sprinter."

Could he big a Big Ten champion? "He definitely has that potential," Plasencia said.

Sid's Jottings