TwinCities.com

September 5, 2007

Vikings' Birk taking no leaps
Pioneer Press

SHOOTER CHARLEY WALTERS

The Vikings finished 6-10 last year. What kind of team will they present Sunday for their season opener against Atlanta in the Metrodome? If Pro Bowl center Matt Birk knows, he isn't saying.

"Every team is different," the 10-year veteran said Wednesday. "You've got to see how the season plays out, how a team reacts to the ups and down that are in a 16-game season. We have new personalities, new skill sets. Everybody's going into Week One still trying to establish what their identity is.

"You have an idea what you want to be, but what you put on the field is what you are."

Is this a playoff team?

"Time will tell," Birk said.

The Twins' inability to trade for offensive help when they were within a few games of first place last month had nothing to do with the team's budget, general manager Terry Ryan said.

"It wasn't an economic decision," he said.

Ryan said he tried hard to make a number of deals but couldn't get other clubs to agree to terms. He is not second-guessing himself about not making a deal.

"Because I exhausted about every angle I could have," he said. "There's nothing I could have made, or I would have made them."

The Twins, defending division champions, are limping toward season's end.

"We're going to keep trying as long as we're not mathematically eliminated," Ryan said. "We're in a deep hole."

Miami (Ohio), which plays the Gophers on Saturday in the Metrodome, heavily recruited Gophers freshman quarterback Adam Weber of Mounds View, and Weber said he gave the Redhawks serious consideration.

"I really liked Miami (Ohio) and their coach (Shane Montgomery), who's a great guy, and I have a lot of respect for them," Weber said. "But I'm a Minnesota Gopher now and they're Miami and we're going to try to win the game."

Denice Bay, 53, wife of former Gophers athletics director Rick Bay, was killed in a single-car accident in Morro Bay, Calif., last week, apparently after suffering a seizure and losing control of her car. The Bays, who were married 23 years, lived in Palm Desert, Calif.

Gophers men's basketball coach Tubby Smith is pursuing three top-100 recruits, one of whom, Toronto point guard DeVoe Joseph, visited Minnesota on Friday. DeVoe's final considerations include the Gophers, Illinois, St. John's and Connecticut.

Visiting this weekend are 6-foot-10, 230-pound Colton Iverson of South Dakota and 6-11, 220-pound Ralph Sampson III of Georgia. Iverson is considering Minnesota and Nebraska; Sampson has Kentucky, Maryland, Georgia and Georgia Tech among his finalists.

Masters TV golf tournament and NFL and college football broadcaster Verne Lundquist will be the keynote speaker for the Mount Olivet men's club banquet Oct. 23 in Minneapolis.

Two-time NCAA baseball coach of the year George Horton of Cal State-Fullerton got the Oregon job for which the Gophers' John Anderson was interviewed. Pay: $400,000 a year for five years, excluding performance incentives and other ancillary income.

Gophers football coach Tim Brewster's son Nolan, a senior safety and wide receiver for Mullen High School in Denver who has committed to Texas, caught two touchdown passes in a game Friday.

Inexplicably, former Twins Kent Hrbek, who played at Bloomington Kennedy, and Tim Laudner of Park Center are not in the Minnesota State High School League Hall of Fame.

The Twins have renewed a one-year deal with Class A affiliate Beloit (Wis.). The Twins' other minor league clubs are set for next season.

Eden Prairie 6-7, 250-pound tight end Carter Bykowski has committed to Iowa State.

Junior Anders Lee, who started at safety for St. Thomas Academy last season, then transferred to home district Edina to play quarterback, led the Hornets to an overtime victory over Chippewa Falls (Wis.) last week. He passed for 298 yards and one touchdown and rushed for 131 yards and two TDs, accounting for 429 of Edina's 482 yards.

With a big walk-up, on-street brokers had no problem selling tickets for the Gophers-Bowling Green game on Saturday.

Some NHL teams plan to reposition goal judges for the coming season, thus allowing the area to be used for luxury seating for fans. The Wild are not among those teams.

Former North Stars coach Pierre Page, in The Fischler Report: "Give the next (NHL) expansion team to the players. I'm sure their philosophy of what to play players will change."

Charley Walters' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at cwalters@pioneerpress.com.

DON'T PRINT THAT

Don't be surprised if a local automobile dealer buys enough tickets to avoid a TV blackout for the Vikings' opener at home Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons.

Gophers men's basketball coach Tubby Smith, hired in March, still hasn't signed a contract.

"Lawyers," athletics director Joel Maturi said, adding he's not concerned.

Wild goaltender Josh Harding had "I-35W" painted on his helmet to honor those affected by last month's bridge collapse.

According to scouts, the top high school baseball players in Minnesota are third baseman-pitcher Joe Loftus of Holy Angels, left-handed pitcher Brad Hand of Chaska, pitcher Jacob Esch of Cretin-Derham Hall and shortstop Matt Puhl of North St. Paul.

OVERHEARD

Gophers football coach Tim Brewster, asked his disposition with his team trailing 21-0 in his Minnesota debut against Bowling Green on Saturday at the Metrodome: "There was no panic. I wasn't ranting and raving. I told the staff, 'Let's give the kids a chance to come back.' And they did."