Minnesota’s big tests: Cal’s QB and the time zone change

It will be a rare edition of Late Night with Gopher Football on Saturday when Minnesota faces Cal in Berkeley, Calif.Make that a very late night.The contest will kick off at 7:30 p.m. local time — 9:30 p.m. CT — and likely will not end much before 1 a.m. for folks watching back home in the Twin Cities. Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck said he has gone over the best way to prepare for the late start with a sleep doctor.”We have a certain process that we do any time when we’re heading to different time zones,” Fleck said. “We gained a ton of data and then we put together the best plan we possibly can to make sure that we can play our best football from 9:30 Central to almost 1 a.m. Central on our bodies. There’s a lot of things we have to do for that to happen, not only just the football preparation like a normal week, but we have to do a lot of other things to move some schedule pieces around. I think our players are going to handle that really well.”Minnesota is 3-0 in West Coast games under Fleck, including a 21-17 victory over UCLA in Pasadena, Calif., last season. The Gophers also posted wins at Oregon State in 2017 and Fresno State in 2019.A bigger challenge for Minnesota (2-0) will be trying to deal with Cal’s talented true freshman quarterback, Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele.The 19-year-old left-hander became just the second Cal true freshman to start a season opener when he led the Golden Bears to a 34-15 win at Oregon State on Aug. 30, joining current Detroit Lions star Jared Goff, who did it in 2013.Sagapolutele earned ACC Rookie of the Week honors that week after finishing 20-of-30 passing for 234 yards and three touchdowns. He followed it up by throwing for 267 yards and rushing for a touchdown in a 35-3 victory over FCS Texas Southern last Saturday.

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