Hunter: You'll miss me more than Johan

Torii Hunter, the former Twins center fielder now with the Los Angeles Angels, wasn't bragging when he said that he believes his old team will miss a position player like him more than a pitcher like Johan Santana.

"Yeah, well, you know for me, I think pitchers give you one game, that's it," Hunter said Sunday at the Metrodome, after the Angels worked out in preparation for today's 2008 season opener against the Twins. "Pitchers give you one, that's it. So you miss Johan, Johan, he's going to win one game for you, but the other four, it's somebody else's turn.

"I think they'll miss a position player before they miss a pitcher. So, you're going to miss Johan, but I think they've got four or five pitchers out there -- you know Scott Baker, and other young guys, but they have so much talent, and I think that's going to be key for those guys, is pitching. Hitting, I don't think they're going to have a problem at all."

Los Angeles plays a four-game series against the Twins to open the season, and Hunter, who signed a five-year, $90 million contract with the Angels this offseason, will play his first game with his new team against his old one.

Even though the experts are picking the Twins to finish no better than third in the American League Central, Hunter encouraged fans not to give up on the team.

"Man, please don't turn your backs on them now, because I think they're going to surprise a lot of people," he said. "Hopefully they don't surprise nobody these next four days, but they will.

"... I think they're going to be tough to beat. They're going to give a lot of teams a go. I don't know if they're going to be a contender. You never know in sports, man, any team can come out and surprise you and shock you, and that's one thing the Twins are known to do is shock a lot of people. So, hopefully they get it done."

On what he told Gomez, Hunter said: "Just don't panic, keep your eyes up, and wait till it comes down. It will drop out of somewhere and you'll be able to see it, but it's pretty tough. I mean, you have the low lights, so you run into the right side or the left side trying to get the ball in the gap you lose the ball in the lights, and you've just got to try to make adjustments while you're running."

Hunter said that Gomez -- one of the four prospects the Twins acquired from the New York Mets for Johan Santana this offseason -- will learn from experience, both in the field and at the plate.

"He's not going to come in and just jump in and hit .340 and hit 40 bombs, 30 bombs," Hunter said. "If he does, it'd be nice, but I think that you give him some time, give him some [at-bats], don't try to take anything away from him, let him struggle, let him have fun and learn the most he can I think he'll be fine."

Hunter said he will miss spending time with many of the young Twins players whom he watched break into the big leagues and spent time with helping them adjust.

"Those guys are talented. You don't have to work with them as far as baseball ability, but mentally I tried to talk to them and give them what they need to be mentally, as far as how to carry themselves and different things like that," he said. "But as far as ability, [Joe] Mauer was born to hit. You can't teach that. He was teaching me how to hit. And [Justin] Morneau, he's so strong, he's strong like a bull, and you can't really teach that either. So, just talking to those guys about how to carry themselves in different situations, I talked to those guys about that, but pretty much they already had it."

"I honestly think he can help the team," Hunter said. "Yeah, one year, you've got an off year, everybody has off years, and they're human. You're going to fail sometime and I think that you know what Craig went through last year was pretty difficult, but the year before that, he led those guys [the Tigers] to the World Series."

Jottings Now that he is 100 percent healthy for the first time in a long time, Rashad McCants is proving what a wise first-round draft choice he was for the Timberwolves in 2005. McCants shot 6-for-10 from the floor in scoring 16 points in Sunday's 110-103 victory over the playoff-bound Utah Jazz, and 13 of those points were scored in the second half. ... The Wolves finished the month of March with a 7-8 record and have won four consecutive home games, which is good for the team's record but hurts their chances at getting a top-three pick in the 2008 draft lottery.

Gophers men's basketball coach Tubby Smith was familiar with former NBA player Dell Curry -- the father of Stephen Curry, who had a fantastic NCAA tournament, averaging 32.0 points per game in four games for Davidson. He was named Most Outstanding Player of the Midwest Regional despite the Wildcats' loss to Kansas on Sunday in Detroit. "His dad was an unbelievable shooter, too," Smith said. "I coached against [Dell] when I was at VCU, he was at Virginia Tech. He had some great games, he had unbelievable range. ... So, his son grew, and no one really -- I can't say no one, some people offered him [a scholarship] -- but he was about 5-11 at the time and now he's 6-2, 6-3." Smith said he didn't recruit Stephen Curry at Kentucky, but he added, "I wish I had."

Cole Aldrich, the former Bloomington Jefferson star now a freshman at Kansas, will get a chance to play in a Final Four in his first year in school. However, because Kansas has so many upperclassmen, Aldrich has scored only four points and played 21 minutes during the tournament. He played five minutes against Davidson on Sunday. ... Incidentally, Jayhawks coach Bill Self, who is headed to his first Final Four, was a leading candidate for the Gophers job before Dan Monson was hired and turned down a chance to be interviewed. He was at Tulsa at the time.

Ben Fischer of Wausau, Wis., was a receiver for the Gophers football team last fall after redshirting in 2006. He decided to transfer to play basketball at Winona State, and on Saturday he scored eight points in 24 minutes off the bench to help the Warriors beat Augusta State for the Division II national championship.