The Gophers football program stacked up four commitments to its 2026 recruiting class before noon Sunday.<\/p>\n
Two offensive linemen were the first to join next year\u2019s class during the U\u2019s big official visit weekend in Dinkytown.<\/p>\n
Mataalii Benjamin, a 6-foot-6, 305-pound tackle from Lehi, Utah, picked Minnesota over more than 15 offers, including Nebraska, Utah, Oklahoma State, Washington and others. The three-star prospect is the second commit from Utah, a state usually untapped by the Gophers.<\/p>\n
Daniel McMorris, a 6-5, 255-pound tackle from Norman, Okla., chose the U over more than 20 offers, including Wisconsin, Kansas State, Iowa State, Stanford, Oregon State and others. The three-star prospect is the fourth O-lineman in the class; four-star Andrew Trout of Cold Spring joined last year and three-star Gavin Meier of Janesville, Wis., put himself in the group this spring.<\/p>\n
The U added two defensive players next.<\/p>\n
Angel Luciano III, a 6-3, 225-pound linebacker from Harrisbugh, Pa., took Minnesota over a group of Big Ten competition, including Michigan State, Wisconsin, Indiana, Maryland as well as Cincinnati, Virginia Tech and more. The three-star recruit is the second linebacker in 2026 class, joining Hudson Dunn of Peoria, Ariz.<\/p>\n
Aaden Aytch, who is listed at 6-4 and 220 pounds out of Lafayette, Ind., flipped his commitment from Northern Illinois to the Gophers. The three-star defensive end with a 6-7 wingspan pledged to Minnesota before scheduled visits at Iowa, Kentucky, Purdue and Michigan State later in June.<\/p>\n
Minnesota\u2019s class now has 14 total pledges for next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Gophers football program stacked up four commitments to its 2026 recruiting class before noon Sunday. Two offensive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[339,7,1454,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-96220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-college-sports","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-gophers-football","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114609429286825854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}