Fifth-year cornerback Victor Pless has entered the NCAA transfer portal, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press on Monday.

Pless, of Kennesaw, Ga., did not play in his four seasons at Minnesota. Pless, who was academic all-Big Ten in 2021, will vacate a needed scholarship for the U to use for another incoming player.

The Gophers have had four players leave the program this spring, all of whom were backups: cornerback Tariq Watson and offensive linemen Cade McConnell and De’Eric Mister.

Pless, who’s exit was first reported by 247sports.com, had been practicing with the Gophers this spring.

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A St. Paul man was sentenced to nearly 26 years in prison Monday for fatally shooting a man in the head outside a North End home, then wounding another man who was headed to church with family on the city’s East Side four days later.

Kavion Jayvon Barnett, 29, of St. Paul, admitted in January to shooting James Jeffrey King Sr., who was sitting in his pickup truck in his driveway when he was shot in the temple on Feb. 9, 2022, and died March 1. Barnett also pleaded guilty to shooting a 45-year-old man who was driving on the Earl Street Bridge with his wife and two children on Feb. 13. That man was shot in the arm.

Kavion Jayvon Barnett (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Ramsey County District Judge Sophia Y. Vuelo followed the Jan. 29 plea agreement, which called for 22 years and three months for King’s killing and nearly 3½ years for the drive-by shooting. The sentences will run consecutively.

At the time of the shootings, Barnett was on supervised conditional release while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to an August 2021 shootout in St. Paul. In that case, Barnett, another man who was also charged and a woman were injured. In April 2022, he was sentenced to three years and three months for the shooting.

According to the murder complaint, officers were sent to the 200 block of Front Avenue on a report of a shooting just before 10 a.m. and found King in the driver’s seat of his Ford F-150 parked in his driveway. The driver’s window was partially shattered, and King had a gunshot wound to his left temple.

A neighbor told police he heard a gunshot the previous night, but he didn’t think anything about it because the sound of gunshots are not unusual in the neighborhood.

Officers found a .45-caliber shell casing near Front Avenue and Woodbridge Street. It later matched a casing found after the Earl Street Bridge shooting.

A man contacted homicide investigators and said he had witnessed King’s shooting. He said a Honda Odyssey minivan stopped at Woodbridge Street and Front Avenue, where the driver pointed a gun out the window and shot once.

Further investigation revealed that Barnett had ties to a silver Honda Odyssey that was involved in the bridge shooting. About four hours after the shooting, surveillance video showed Barnett abandon the minivan he’d been driving. Delaquay Levius Williams got out of the passenger side of the minivan.

Williams, 29, of St. Paul, faces charges in two St. Paul 2022 murders — one on Feb. 1, the other March 4. The cases are pending in court.

Analysis of a casing found in the Earl Street Bridge shooting showed the handgun was the same one allegedly used by Williams in the March homicide, according to the criminal complaint against Barnett.

‘Did not intend to kill’

Barnett was arrested on April 11, 2022, and spoke with investigators. When shown surveillance photos from both incidents, he admitted he was the person driving the minivan over the Earl Street Bridge and in the area of King’s shooting, charges say.

Barnett initially denied shooting anyone, then said it was “a manslaughter case because he did not intend to kill (King),” the charges read. “Barnett said he had prior confrontations with JK about loud music. The most recent incident occurred a couple of nights before the shooting.”

Barnett said he saw King in his driveway and that King “started talking crazy” and he shot him once from the minivan, the charges read. Barnett said he only intended to scare King.

When asked about the bridge shooting, Barnett said he shot once at the car because he thought it was a rival gang member — not a family on their way to church, charges said.

After admitting to investigators he fired a .45-caliber handgun in both incidents, Barnett claimed he threw the gun in the river, the charges said. But officers told him that was a lie, since the gun had been used in the March 4 murder after Barnett’s two shooting incidents. He refused to tell investigators who he gave the gun to.

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Nearly 83 years after he was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Fire Controlman 3rd Class William Gusie’s remains will be returned to his home state of Minnesota.

Gusie, who attended school in White Bear Lake, was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941.

William Gusie was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft in Pearl Harbor. (Courtesy of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)

The Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Gusie, according to a news release from Hawaii-based Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. For his service, Gusie was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.

Gusie, who was 19 when he was killed, was one of 13 service members accounted for by the Defense Department agency tasked with recovering U.S. troops listed as missing in action or prisoners of war.

From December 1941 to June 1944, unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma were collected and interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries on Oahu. The American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains from the Oklahoma in 1947, but were able to identify only 35 of the men at the time, according to the news release.

The unidentified remains were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. They stayed there for 68 years before the DPAA exhumed the unknown remains for testing in 2015.

The DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis and scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA analysis to identify Gusie, the news release states.

Gusie was accounted for on Sept. 23, 2021 – nearly 80 years after his death – but the announcement was withheld until now so family members could get a full briefing on his identification, according to the news release.

Gusie will be laid to rest on June 12 at Fort Snelling National Cemetery

Gusie’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII. A rosette will now be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for, officials said.

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Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant scored 31 points against the Timberwolves on 11-for-17 shooting Sunday in Game 1 of their NBA first-round playoff series.

The primary defender on Durant for most of that game was Karl-Anthony Towns.

“KD is just an unbelievable player, such a tough cover, we just wanted to put as much size on him as we possibly could,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said after Sunday’s game. “He had it going there. So many of those signature KD shots, and you just have to live with them at times, but I thought KAT really did a great job battling them, making it as hard as possible.”

And that’s really all Minnesota is asking Towns to do. It’s no secret the Wolves’ 7-footer is often the team’s worst defensive player in the game. He is special on offense, and average on the other end. But in Game 1 of this best-of-7 series against Phoenix — much like in last year’s first round against Denver — it’s Towns who has been called on to guard the other team’s best player. And he’s asked to do so without much help of any kind.

And in the end, what matters most is the Timberwolves won Game 1 by a score of 120-95.

The reasoning is sound — The Timberwolves will live with Durant or Nikola Jokic scoring 30 points a game if it means the ancillary offensive pieces are kept at bay.

In three regular-season games — all losses — the Timberwolves struggled to match up with the Suns. Towns was often chasing sharpshooting guard Grayson Allen around the court. So Phoenix was able to generate open looks for Allen at ease, and the Timberwolves spent much of their time on defense in some sort of scramble mode.

With Towns on Durant, Durant gets a lot of decent looks at shots he can knock down, but they often come out of isolation attacks that feature a lot of dribbling and, for his teammates, watching. It breeds stagnancy. Plus, all of Minnesota’s top-tier defenders are available to guard Phoenix’s other premier scorers.

Suddenly, the Suns’ potent offense becomes far simpler to contain in half-court sets. It’s a setup with which the Timberwolves have now had success against Denver and Phoenix. But the entire plan centers on Towns’ ability — and willingness — to compete in disadvantaged situations. He is set up to fail in the name of helping the Timberwolves succeed.

The casual onlooker will watch Towns give up 30 points and likely think he’s not doing his job on defense, when the opposite is actually true. No one likes to get scored on time and time again, but Towns exposes himself to criticism because it gives the Timberwolves their best chance to win.

“It’s fun when you get to compete against the best of the best. Last year, with Jokic, it was really fun to be able to guard, possibly, the three-time MVP, and a guy that I have tremendous respect for. This year, it’s the same thing,” Towns said. “I’ll take whatever challenge is needed for us to win, and if I’ve got to guard the best player and do what it takes to score, as well, I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ve never backed down from a challenge and I’ll continue to do that every single night for the rest of my career.”

This defensive matchup is just the latest example of Towns sacrificing to make the Timberwolves’ lineup work.

“Part of the secret of our success is KAT’s willingness to sacrifice on both ends of the floor and still find ways to make major impacts,” Finch said. “Finished second in scoring (Saturday), really efficient. Got to the free-throw line. Played physical (but) with intelligence. Thought it was outstanding. Gonna need more of it.”

Towns is putting himself out there defensively on the national stage. And, frankly, he did relatively well on Saturday.

It would be one thing if Durant was waltzing past Towns and driving for easy layups. But the Timberwolves big man is at least forcing Durant to settle for contested mid-range shots. And even if Durant knocks those down at a high clip, it’s by no means an easy form of offense.

“You know that they’re going to hit some really difficult shots, and we’re just going to have to live with those. My job is to make it as difficult as possible for them to even make one of those shots with great defense, then you’ve got to respect the offensive greatness that they possess,” Towns said. “It’s those kinds of guys you know you’re probably not going to be able to stop, you’ve just got to contain them as best as possible and make it difficult for them that night.”

“Looking back at a lot of those shots KD hit, they were superhuman,” Finch said. “You just have to compete your best, and KAT has done that all year.”

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