MINNEAPOLIS -- At this time last year, the daily practices felt like a chore for members of the Gophers football team. There wasn't much buzz on campus after Minnesota faded after its 4-0 start. As for those looking at Jerry Kill's program from the outside in, there were inevitably some doubters.
What a difference seven wins has made.
There's a noticeable air of confidence that Minnesota's players now carry. They admit they actually enjoy going to practice and look forward to improving on the previous week's performance. There are more well-wishers around Dinkytown, more congratulatory messages from fans, more classmates commenting on the games.
This is what Kill and his team expected when the season started. Few people outside the program might have anticipated seven wins at this juncture in the season, but Minnesota's confidence is growing with each Big Ten victory.
"Winning solves a lot of problems. It always has," Kill said Tuesday. "You see the confidence in practice and so forth. I think the most important part of this is (reminding) the kids ... you've got to enjoy the good moments, the pats on the back, that kind of stuff, but you can't forget where you come from. I think that's what we guard against."
The Gophers were underdogs in each of the last three games against Northwestern, Nebraska and Indiana. The result of each was a Minnesota victory, including Saturday's 42-39 barnburner in Bloomington, Ind., against the Hoosiers that improved the Gophers' record to 7-2. One week earlier, Minnesota truly turned some heads with a convincing 34-23 win over then-No. 24 Nebraska.
But this team truly started to believe in itself after a road win at Northwestern on Oct. 19. It was Minnesota's first game after Kill announced he would take time away from the team to focus on treatment for his epilepsy. Yet Kill surprised his players by showing up in Evanston anyway and delivered a halftime speech that helped jump start a Minnesota rally in the second half.
That win, coupled with the motivation to play hard for Kill, has sparked the Gophers' current three-game winning streak -- one they're hoping to extend to four games this Saturday against Penn State.
"Our coaches all believed we were getting better, but we didn't know when things were going to go our way," Kill said. "When I came back and came to practice, maybe it was because I was away from it, but our kids seemed to be popping around pretty good after the Northwestern game. I think that game did a lot for the kids. The coaches, those guys, they picked it up. I go to practice right now and I don't have to say, 'Hey, hustle up,' or, ‘Get your tail end in gear.' They do it."
Instilling that belief in a team is big part of rebuilding a program, something Kill and his staff previously did at Southern Illinois and Northern Illinois before once again doing it with a struggling Minnesota team. At Southern, Kill and Co. went from 1-10 to 4-8 to 10-2 in their first three seasons. At Northern Illinois, it was an improvement of 6-7 to 7-6 to 10-3 during a three-year span.
Now the Gophers have won seven games -- one more than last year -- and have a chance to win four Big Ten games in a row for the first time since 1973. Another win would mean another step up for Minnesota's already-high confidence.
"It'd be something that hasn't been done in a long time," said senior defensive back Brock Vereen. "We have the possibility of doing something really special around here. Rather than looking at it as an eighth win, we just have to be 1-0 at the end of the week. That needs to be our focus."
In a town where the Minnesota Vikings are top dog on the football radar, it's often hard for the Gophers to grab people's attention locally, let alone nationally. And even after improving to 7-2, Minnesota still hasn't cracked the Top 25 polls yet this season, something that could change with a win Saturday.
Frankly, though, Minnesota isn't concerned about being unranked.
"Personally, I don't want to be (ranked). I like being the underdog," Vereen said. "But if it comes, it'd be great for this program. If we keep on this track, it inevitably will."
In a similar vein, the Gophers aren't fretting over which bowl game they'll play in come December or January, although the players said after beating Nebraska for their sixth win that getting to a bowl game is now an expectation. That says quite a bit about just how far this program has come in three years. Kill inherited a team that went 3-9 in 2010 and finished with that same record in 2011. One year later, Minnesota earned a berth in the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas.
Now in 2013, the goals are set even higher as the Gophers' confidence continues to grow each week.
"It seems like yesterday we had two wins and were fighting for the third as far as these previous seasons, freshman and sophomore year," Vereen said. "It's a testament to coach Kill. We believed in his system and we're reaping the benefits from it, but we still have a ways to go."
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