When Rick Rickert reneged on his verbal commitment to Arizona, and decided to play for his home state Minnesota Golden Gophers — two programs were drastically changed.

The Wildcats lost one of the most highly recruited players in the nation last year as Duke and Michigan State also sought the services of Rickert.

Rickert would have instantly injected the Wildcats with another scoring punch and could have put the Wildcats over the top this year in the Pac-10.

Rickert gave the Wildcats a verbal commitment in October of 2000, but then he decided to change his mind and he signed on Nov.13, 2000 to play for the Gophers. He was a consensus top 10 player in the nation and a McDonald's All-American.

"There were a lot of factors going into that (decision) and one is that it was the team from the home state," Rickert said. "I had a lot of family and friends here. It was also about wanting to play for an up and coming team."

For Minnesota, most importantly, landing a player of Rickert's talent does a lot to change the status of the Minnesota program after the shambles it was left in by the academic scandals in the Clem Haskins era.

A player of his caliber, no matter how long he stays at Minnesota, will draw attention to the school and should improve Minnesota coach Dan Monson's recruiting.

"He always has been — since the day he signed with us — waving the banner of the new era of Golden Gopher basketball," Monson said. "And as far as recruiting goes and what we are trying to accomplish here, restarting the program, there has not been a single person more integral in doing that."

Rickert has already proven to be crucial to the success the Gophers are having this year. They are currently 14-9 overall and sit at 7-5 in the Big Ten. The Gophers won just five games last season in the Big Ten.

Rickert leads the team in points at 14.6 and grabs 5.3 rebounds per game. He is shooting .526 from the field and has started all 23 games this season. He was the first freshman player to land Big Ten player of the week honors since 1998.

"Rick has obviously been an integral part of the success of this team this year," Monson said. "When Rick has had really big games we've usually won."

When the 6-foot-10 freshman made his decision to go to Minnesota, immediately speculation arose that his father had forced him to attend Minnesota and stay close to home. Rickert claims that although his father has been a big influence on his life, that was not the case.

"He did play for Minnesota for two seasons and then at UMD (Minnesota-Duluth)," Rickert said. "He was (pushing Minnesota), but that didn't play much of a factor."

This Saturday Rickert and company roll into the Bryce Jordan Center in desperate need of a win after the Gophers have blown leads in their last two games.

Rickert will be wearing No.4 this weekend. He wears No.1 at home and then switches to No.4 when the Gophers are away. The reasoning behind this is that Lou Hudson, whose number is retired took his first choice of No.14, and his second choice of No. 44 was taken by Kevin McHale, whose number was also retired. So he chose to take the best of both worlds.

Penn State coach Jerry Dunn is well aware of Rickert's talent and probably hasn't forgotten the 26 points he laid on the Nittany Lions in their last meeting in Minneapolis. He echoes the sentiments of some NBA scouts that Rickert could turn pro at the end of this year.

"Rick, I think is an NBA player I really do," Dunn said. "He's one guy that could go out after one year. He's a very skilled kid that has a great basketball intellect. He's an inside-outside guy who can hurt you in a number of different ways."

Come the second week of May when it's time to declare for the NBA draft the people in Gopherland are sure to be rooting for Rickert to make his a second major decision in their favor.