ILB Kingsbury talks Minnesota pledge

Chicago (Ill.) St. Rita senior ILB recruit Matt Kingsbury (6-foot-4, 220 pounds) made an official visit to Minnesota, added a scholarship offer today from the Gophers and committed to head coach PJ Fleck. Kingsbury discusses his decision to give head coach PJ Fleck and the University of Minnesota his verbal commitment today in this update.

"Today is the best day of my life," Kingsbury said. "My official visit to Minnesota was amazing, Coach Fleck offered me a scholarship offer and I committed. It's pretty much everything I was hoping for and it's just an amazing feeling."

Kingsbury pointed towards a handful of key factors which led to his decision today.

"A big part of the official visit was for me and my parents to get to know the coaches and the team, and they also needed time to get to know us as well. I was treated so well all weekend long by everyone at Minnesota and the same with my parents. My favorite part of the visit was getting to see the team in a practice on Saturday morning. I was really impressed with how hard and how fast the team worked in practice.I love how they do things at Minnesota and I feel I will fit tight into the team and also buy into the culture. My player host on the visit was freshman linebacker Maverick Baranowski and he was really helpful and also very honest about everything at Minnesota. I was able to meet a lot of the guys on the team and it just went great."

After talking things over with his parents after receiving his scholarship offer from Minnesota this afternoon, it didn't take long for Kingsbury to make his college decision.

"I had a chance to sit and just talk about everything with my parents today. We definitely talked about the visit and what we felt about Minnesota without the coaches around. My parents agreed that Minnesota checked off all the boxes for me and for them as well. They agree that in many ways Minnesota is the perfect fit fort me. They approved of my decision and then we went and told the coaches. All of the Minnesota coaches got really fired up and it was a great way to end an amazing weekend visit. I'm all set and ready to sign my Letter of Intent on Wednesday to Minnesota."

Kingsbury, who was recruited by the Gophers as an inside linebacker recruit, is excited to play in the Big Ten and get an opportunity to show other schools that he was slept on.

"Coach Fleck said that he saw some of himself in me and my story. Coach Fleck and the coaches at Minnesota really believe in me. Coach Fleck said I had some o0f the best linebacker tape he's seen from the high school level in this class. The recruited and offered me at inside linebacker and they feel I can develop into a 6-foot-4, 245-255 pound inside linebacker for them. It's always been a dream to play in the Big Ten and now I have my chance. It's been a great day."

Matt Kingsbury is verbally committed to Minnesota.