JOTTINGS

• Vikings assistant head coach Gary Kubiak on how former Washington coach Mike Shanahan's system is helping him with Kirk Cousins: "The biggest thing is me watching Kirk, getting to know Kirk better each day. I had a little cheat sheet when I came in here, talking to Coach Shanahan, who worked with him for years. … It's about me getting to know him as good as I possibly can and then working my tail off for him to put him in the best possible position to be successful."

• Pro Football Focus recently published its ranking of the top 50 players in the NFL, and safety Harrison Smith was the lone Vikings player at No. 21. PFF also believes Everson Griffen is due for a big bounce-back year after the website rated him as the 10th-best pass rusher in the NFL in 2017. "Despite the year's [2018] challenges, Griffen still showed off his rare talent in bursts in 2018. He tallied three or more pressures in seven of the 11 games he played."

• Coach P.J. Fleck and the Gophers football team brought a lot of recruits to campus recently. "This is a busy time because it's a time for us to get live evals of 2020 recruits, but also 2021s, 2022s," Fleck said. "It's a very important time for us right now, and we are all over the country." According to 247 Sports, the Gophers now rank 24th in the country in recruiting for the Class of 2020.

• Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke to reporters about his newest Minnesota signee, 6-9 Matthew Hurt of Rochester John Marshall: "Obviously Matthew can really score the ball. He is a gifted scorer. He can shoot, he can handle, he can play inside and out. He can score from a number of different positions and he's a heck of a free-throw shooter."

• Another Minnesota high school standout, Zeke Nnaji of Hopkins, made the USA Basketball Under-19 squad. Nnaji will play at Arizona beginning this fall.