Holding out Hope

I’m a pretty uninteresting person.  I readily admit this.  I don’t belong to any sort of club, I don’t have any outlandish hobbies—to be honest, I don’t even know if I have a hobby, period—and I don’t have any notable talents.  I’m not even one of those weirdos who doesn’t like chocolate or pizza or something like that.  My last “guess what I just did story” involved finishing a book at Walter Library.

J.D. Salinger did more interesting things than me.

I guess I’m only notable for two things: A completely useless battery of random knowledge and tidbits, and a penchant for self-deprecation.

Oh, and I also have an embarrassing infatuation with Bruce Springsteen.

So when I say that I think the Gophers will make the NCAA tournament this season, rest assured that the comment doesn’t come from a man who tends towards wanton behavior or predictions.  It comes from an entirely uninteresting individual, without a rash bone in his body, who may or may not have been drinking some Kool-Aid lately.

Here, let me type that again: The Gophers will make the NCAA tournament this season.  Yes, I said it.  And, yes, I actually believe it.  I’ve thought about it for a few days, but the extra time has made me even surer in my conviction.

The Gophers will make the NCAA tournament.

That’s not a common opinion in Gopher land lately.  The pretty humiliating loss to Ohio State, followed by the official departure of Royce White, has eradicated most enthusiasm from Gopher fans.

(Have you ever heard the song “Ophelia” by the Band?  Probably not, but you should listen to it.  I’d like to dedicate it to Royce White.  It pretty closely describes what I imagine Royce’s legacy as a Gopher will be.  If you can call it a legacy.  Is there such a thing as an anti-legacy?  If so, that’s what Royce will leave.  Anyway, listen to the song to see what I’m talking about.  And, also, the Band is fantastic.)

A year that started with a sense of tournament inevitability has now become filled with NIT discussions.  And it’s easy to see why.  Our 13-8 record is worse than anyone imagined.  The Royce, Al, and Trevor situations not only negatively affected game day performance, but also hampered the enthusiasm of the fan base.  And a number of close losses have dried up a lot of confidence for a lot of fans.

It has been a sad, frustrating year.  And I’m as sad and frustrated as everybody else.  I had the Gophers pegged to finish second in the conference, and their struggles have come as a shock to me.  It’s been a year of seemingly perpetual bad news for the Gophers.  I’m starting to think Williams Arena is on top of an old Indian burial ground.

To a lot of people, and part of myself, it has turned into a what-could-have-been year.  And that’s a question you never want to ask: What could have been?  It could be the worst question in the sports world.

Honestly, I’m wondering why I’m writing this.  The part of me that has followed Minnesota sports too long is shouting at me, yelling that I’m just setting myself up for disappointment.  Another part of me, a part that isn’t familiar with Dylan Thomas, is asking what shreds of hope I’m still holding on to.  Another part of me is thinking about Caroline Wozniacki.

But most of me is basking in the eternal sanguinity surrounding Minnesota sports.  Wait, something isn’t right about that last sentence.  But either way, I’m optimistic.  And I don’t know why.  It’s actually kind of scaring me.

Who couldn't be optimistic in weather like this?

After the internal battle, though, I’m utterly convinced that the Gophers are going dancing.  And I haven’t had any Kool-Aid in days—sadly.

As I’ve said since the start of conference play, an 11-7 conference record would be a lock for the tournament.  If you win 11 Big Ten games, and didn’t have an abysmal non-conference showing, you’ll go to the tournament.  Period.  That’s not up for debate.  If the Gophers win 11 conference games, they’re an absolute lock.

So that’s what we’re gunning for: 11 conference wins.  That’s a 7-2 finish to the season.  Admittedly, after dropping four of our last five, that seems like an unreasonably lofty goal.  But this team is not done.  Trust me.

Our first half of conference play was much, much harder than our second half.  Two games against Michigan State, two against Ohio State, and a trip to Purdue.  I don’t think a 5-4 conference record through those games would be too disappointing.  In fact, 5-4 may have been a pretty reasonable expectation.  So we’re 4-5.  The loss to Indiana is the only one that we definitely should have won.  But by no means is that a devastating start.  We just have to make up a game or two in our next nine.

Three of those five losses (at Michigan State, at Ohio State, and at Purdue) came on the road to teams who are a collective 38-1 on their home courts.  One of the other two came at home against the best team in the conference.  No need to go over the Indiana game; that one hurt.

Thankfully, it’s a long season.  Our conference schedule was top-heavy, and now we have a chance to catch back up.  Our remaining games: at Penn State, Michigan, at Northwestern, Wisconsin, Indiana, Purdue, at Illinois, at Michigan, Iowa.  7-2 is certainly an attainable goal during that stretch.

Let’s throw out the Iowa game.  It’s a win, and there’s no need to include it in any of this analysis.  And if we don’t win that game, we don’t belong in the tournament, making any of this moot anyways.

So I’m marking the Iowa game as a win and forgetting about it.  That would leave us with eight games, over the course of which we would have to go 6-2.  And I think we can do it.

It starts at Penn State this Saturday.  Yes, we’ve struggled on the road.  (Again, in our defense, three of our five road losses came to teams collectively boasting a 38-1 home record.)  But Penn State is 0-10 in conference play.  0-10.  Try not to over-think this one.  We’ve struggled to win on the road; Penn State has struggled to win, period.  Struggled to win as in they haven’t won a single Big Ten game.

I think the Gophers win that battle.  Penn State is not good.  Enough said.  I don’t want to think about that one anymore.  I think we’ll win, and I’m going to start fidgeting if I don’t move on.

We then host Michigan.  Like the Gophers, the Wolverines have been caught in some sort of basketball Bizarro World.  They’re 11-11, and currently have the Gophers beaten out for the “most disappointing Big Ten team” title.  I’m thinking about connecting with some Wolverines fans and commiserating.  If you’re an interested Michigan fan, let me know.  We could even get some UConn and North Carolina fans and form a support group.

We struggled with the Wolverines last year, dropping both games to them.  But I think we’ll exorcise our Michigan demons in this one.  If there’s one thing about this Gophers team, it’s that we’re tough to beat in Williams.  Michigan has had issues on the road, going 1-6.  So I think we have the advantage in this one.

That would put us at 2-0.  4-2 the rest of the way.  Again, not including Iowa.

Then we go to Northwestern.  We did not look too good against the Wildcats in our first meeting.  We couldn’t figure out the 1-3-1 and had to salvage a 65-61 victory.  And our trip to Evanston last year was a little underwhelming.

Northwestern is a decent team.  They’re not great, but they’re not bad, either.  This is the type of game we have to figure out this year.  Go on the road and beat a decent team.  I don’t think we have a long enough leash to drop this one, and this is the kind of game we have to win to make up for the Indiana loss.

The Wildcats have an absolute joke of a schedule the rest of the way.  They play Indiana, Iowa, and Penn State twice apiece.  They have a game against Chicago State.  And the way the schedule is shaping up, this looks like the game during which the Wildcats could either play themselves into or out of the tournament.  That doesn’t bode well for the Gophers.

You don't scare me, Welsh-Ryan Arena.

But, to be frank, I think Northwestern will fade down the stretch.  I really do.  They’re not a winning program.  They’re the antithesis of a winning program.  And you just don’t break a rich history of losing by thundering home down the stretch.  You need some heartbreakingly close disappointments.  You need to almost have it before letting it slide through your fingers.  Only after coming painfully close but failing are you able to finally break through.  And The Wildcats have not had that wrenching disappointment yet.  Northwestern won’t go 7-1 in their final conference games to secure their first NCAA tournament berth.  It won’t happen.  That’s not how things work.

And that’s why the Gophers will win this game.  That, and the fact that we are much more athletic and much more balanced than the Wildcats.  I think we are a better team than Northwestern.  Scratch that: I know we are a much better team than Northwestern.  And we will prove it in this game.

That brings us to our sole game against America’s worst neighbors: Wisconsin.  We are profoundly lucky that we don’t have to go to the Kohl Center.  It could very well be the hardest place to win in the Big Ten this season.  And we get to skip it.  That’s just about the only luck we have had through the entire year.

On the road, though, Sconnie is not the same team.  They’ve actually pretty closely mimicked our road performance.  They are 2-4, with losses at Ohio State, Purdue, and Michigan State, with a bad one at Green Bay.  (One of their road wins was at Northwestern, which further encourages me in our trip to Northwestern.  If our away doppelgangers can win in Evanston, we should also be able to.)

And, honestly, do you think there is any way that the Badgers are going to come to the Barn, in a game with tournament implications, and beat the Gophers?  It’s not going to happen.  No way, no how.  The Gophers will win.

Then we get to avenge the loss to Indiana.  This is another one that it’s useless to consider too deep. We’ll beat the Hoosiers at home.  That’s enough about this one.  It’s a win.

So that’s our next five games.  And, really, I don’t think 5-0 is much of a stretch during that set of games.  I’d be surprised if we didn’t win at least four of them.  The only one I have a little doubt about is the trip to Northwestern, but, again, I think we’ll get the win there.

But let’s run with this 5-0 business, both because it is attainable and it sounds really nice.  Toss in the win over Iowa, and that leaves us three games during which to go 1-2.  Those three games: Purdue, at Illinois, at Michigan.  Those are three tough games.  Purdue is a great team.  Both Illinois and Michigan are solid, and are both tough to beat on the road.

1-2 is doable in those three games.  I don’t know if we can beat Purdue.  We don’t really match up well with them, although they did struggle with the press in the game at West Lafayette.  If the Boilermakers are on their game, we probably can’t beat them, even at home.  But if they’re having an off night, we could certainly upset them.  And we have one thing working to our advantage: They play Michigan State three days after they visit the Barn.  We could certainly catch them looking forward to their Spartan showdown.

The trips to Illinois and Michigan are hard to call.  Michigan can be tough to beat at Crisler, but they have lost home games to middle-of-the-road Boston College and Northwestern.  Illinois is 11-2 at home, but they struggled to beat Indiana and Penn State at home, winning those two games by a combined three points.

But neither place is an easy trip, especially for a team who has had some problems on the road.  Our best shot would be at Michigan.  By the time we go to Ann Arbor, the Wolverines will probably be out of tournament contention, barring an unlikely turnaround.  And if the Wolverines are firmly off the bubble, I imagine the crowd may have a little trouble getting into a Tuesday night game against Minnesota.  If the situation were reversed, I don’t think there would be a boisterous crowd at Williams.

I see two potential wins in those three games.  I don’t think we will win in Champaign, but the other two are certainly a possibility.

And then we have the Iowa win.

So, adding it all together, here’s how I think the season will play out:

at Penn State: Win

Michigan: Win

at Northwestern: Win

Wisconsin: Win

Indiana: Win

Purdue: Loss

at Illinois: Loss

at Michigan: Win

Iowa: Win

7-2.  11-7 in conference.  Dancing.

By no means are these results certain.  But I don’t think they are unrealistic, either.  Even the two I have as losses are winnable games, just as a couple of the wins are losable games.  Balance it all out, and, in those nine games, seven wins are definitely possible.  And I think we get them.

We might not even need seven wins.  If we finish at 10-8, but beat both Wisconsin and Purdue, we may have a good enough resume.  We can go 10-8, win a couple of games in the Big Ten Tournament, and still go dancing.  11-7 is not the bare minimum; 11-7 would be a lock, regardless of our performance in the conference tournament.

I think we are yet to see the best from Tubby and crew this season.

Right now, all of this is just a gut feeling.  But it’s a strong feeling.  And I have to say, my gut probably knows more about sports than I do.  I had a gut feeling we would lose to Indiana.  I had a gut feeling we would lose to Portland.  I had a gut feeling we would beat then-Number 10 Butler.  My gut is at least decently reliable.

I think right now is the valley for our season.  Ohio State just dismantled us (although I doubt there is a team in the nation that could have beat the Buckeyes the way they played on Sunday).  Ophelia White skipped town.  The fan base is officially down on the team.

But I think we will pull it together.  I think the remaining players will gel and block out all the bad news and negativity.  I think the best is still ahead for this team, and that we will see the true character of this squad over the next month.

Call it a gut feeling.

Just Win, Baby

Al Davis, back before he spent his time roaming the Greater Bay Area scaring little children, used to have this expression: Just win, baby.

It didn’t matter how it happened, it just mattered that you won, baby.

And, for a pleasant and overdue change of pace, the Gopher’s adopted Davis’s motto in Tuesday’s win over Northwestern.  By no means was it a pretty win.  It came with a little additional, unnecessary anxiety.  But wins don’t have to be pretty.  It was a must-win game for our tournament aspirations, and we got it.

At times, it was downright ugly.  We handled that 1-3-1 zone about as well as Tiger Woods handles marriage vows.  We suffered through some long and frustrating scoring droughts.  We squandered a healthy second half lead and had to scrap out a win that had earlier seemed imminent.

But no matter how ugly it sometimes got, it added a W to the record and pulled us back to .500 in conference play.  And, most importantly, the win kept alive our hopes to go dancing.  A loss would have put us firmly behind the 8-ball.  But with the win, we are still in decent shape.

To be honest, it was probably better that the game was close.  Not that it wouldn’t have been nice to absolutely dominate Northwestern.  It would have been.  I don’t really care for the Wildcats, and I would have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed absolutely rolling them.  But, until Tuesday, we hadn’t won a close game against a good team all season.  We handled Butler pretty easily in the second half.  Same with Ohio State.  Those games weren’t in question like this one was.  Penn State was a pretty close game, but Penn State isn’t good.

So it was nice to finally be in a close, tense game against a solid opponent and come out with the victory.  It was nice to hear the assuaging swish of late free throws.  That sensation was long past due.  In football, the best play is the kneel-down to run out the clock; in basketball, it’s late free throws to ice the game.

Obviously, we had a pretty poor track record in close games this season.  Michigan State squeaked by; we fell short against Indiana despite a late comeback; we let Miami, Portland, and Texas A&M inch by down the stretch.  We could never put it all together late in games, and that has cost us.

Performance late in close games is all about confidence.  Some teams seem to always find ways to pull through in the close ones.  Other teams always seem to wind up short.  And, unfortunately, we have belonged to the latter category this season.  We have had zero confidence late in games.  It was starting to feel like we might go all year without pulling out a close one.

So that late win over Northwestern was therapeutic.  It was a needed dose of Febreze to our previous late-game stink.  And hopefully it will give us some momentum that we can use for the remainder of the year.  While a blowout win would have been immensely satisfying, it was much better to cleanse ourselves of our close-game stench.

For the first time this year, we just won, baby.

This is the guy I'm drawing my inspiration from. What am I thinking?

And that’s how we’ll have to do it against Ohio State on Sunday: Any Gopher win will not be pretty.  It would have to be a gutsy, slow, physical, ugly win at Columbus.  But any win is a good win.  Just ask the New Orleans Saints.

Sunday’s game at Ohio State could be our toughest remaining game.  It’s our last away game against a top team, since we (luckily) don’t have to visit the Kohl Center this season.  It will be a tough challenge for the Gophers after we have picked up some confidence and momentum after the Northwestern win.

It’s hard to beat anybody on the road in college basketball.  It’s even harder to win a road conference game.  And it’s even harder if you haven’t displayed a particular aptitude for winning on the road.  This Sunday isn’t looking too promising, is it?

Toss in the fact that Ohio State is 12-0 at home this year, that they will be looking to avenge their loss at the Barn, that there will undoubtedly be some ill-will following some confrontations both during and after the last game against the Buckeyes, and that there is still lingering animosity about the 1972 brawl, and it looks like it could get ugly for the Gophers.

But maybe ugly is a good thing.  (Not an ugly loss, obviously.  But an ugly game.  Work with me.)  If we can turn it into an ugly, physical, defensive game, we have a shot at winning.

Look, we’re not going to go to Columbus and win a pretty, open, free-flowing, offensive game.  It’s just not going to happen.  Ohio State shoots too well.  They’re too strong offensively.  They’re too good at having Evan Turner.  A clean, offensive game is a win for the Buckeyes.

But a slower, physical, defensive game is another story.  We might actually have a chance to win that game.  The key is to force that type of game.  We can’t let the Buckeyes dictate the pace.  We have to turn it into a defensive battle.  We should use Ohio State’s animosity towards us against them. These two teams don’t like each other.  Ohio State will want to bump bodies and play physical.  I hope they do.  If they turn it into a slugfest, it could only be good for the Gophers.  We can’t play pretty, but we can play tough.

Plus, Ohio State has struggled with turnovers this year.  They don’t play a legitimate point guard.  Turner is forced into the spot, but, as good as he is, he has had ongoing issues with ball control.  (He’s averaging four turnovers a game.)  Lighty (three turnovers a game) and Buford (two turnovers a game), their other main ball handlers, have also struggled with similar issues.

At Williams, we exploited these issues by hounding the Buckeyes with the press.  It killed them.  They looked as bad against that press as we did against Northwestern’s 1-3-1.  The press will have to be just as effective if we hope to win in Columbus.

It will be harder without Al.  His defense is irreplaceable.  But it still needs to be done.  The press was successful against Northwestern.  It had switched into an immediate corner trap, but it still forced a few turnovers and helped to swing momentum.

And hopefully Turner and the Buckeyes will struggle against it again.  Hopefully it can force a few turnovers that lead to easy points.  Hopefully it can slow down the pace of the Buckeye offense and disrupt their rhythm.  Hopefully it can frustrate Turner as much as it did in Williams.  He was visibly flustered in the Barn.  He was so mad he couldn’t even keep his contacts in properly.

Really, I think the success of the press will rely on our offense.  I see Turner struggling with the press again.  He’s just not a point guard.  It’s that simple.  He shouldn’t be the primary ball-handler.  He probably won’t struggle with the press as much as he did at Williams, but he will still struggle with it.  We’ll just have to make shots to be able to set up our press.

Our road offense this year has been less than stellar.  No point in rehashing that fact.  We can’t afford another plodding offensive performance against Ohio State.  If we don’t make shots, we can’t press.  And if we can’t press, we probably can’t win.  Our offense doesn’t need to be electric.  But we need to make enough shots to allow us to get into the press regularly enough to affect the game.

A hot shooting game from Blake could carry the Gophers in Columbus.

Can we do that?  It’s easy to look at our offensive road woes and conclude that no, we cannot.  But Ohio State doesn’t play great defense.  They’re not bad, but they’re not great, either.  Blake has torched them the last two times we played them, including last year in Columbus.  (And Ohio State has struggled defending the three-pointer this year in general.)  Lawrence has had a couple of really nice games in a row.  Volume III’s offense is progressing, as is Devoe’s.  The point is this: We have a chance at a nice offensive game.  Blake could get hot.  Lawrence may have the type of game where he just decides to take over and carry the team.  Ohio State isn’t a defensive juggernaut.  I won’t say we will have a strong offensive game, because that could just set me up for disappointment.  But I’m not counting out the idea.

Let’s get down to the cut-and-dry.  Ohio State is good.  They’re very good at home.  They have the best player in the Big Ten and one of the best in the nation.  But it looks like we match up well against them.  Our defense can give their point guard-less offense fits.  Their lack of strong perimeter defense suits our offense well.

Are our advantages enough to overcome the fact that we are 1-4 on the road while they are 12-0 at home?  Honestly, probably not.

But if we can turn it into a physical, defensive game, we’ve certainly got a shot.  If Lawrence and Devoe stay hot, and Blake continues to play well against the Buckeyes, we’ve got a shot.  If Turner and Thad Matta still struggle to figure out our press, we’ve got a shot.

Going into Columbus, we’ve got a shot.  And that’s about all you can ask for on the road in the Big Ten.

And a win at Ohio State would thrust us right back into the tournament picture, likely on the right side of the bubble.  As I’ve said before, it would likely take 11 conference wins to be a lock for the tournament.  That’s 7-3 the rest of the way.  Sunday at Ohio State is certainly one of our three toughest remaining games, so a loss wouldn’t sink us.  But a win would make attaining that goal much, much easier.

So here’s to hoping for that ugly game.  That physical, defensive game that would certainly draw the ire of the fans at the atrociously named Value City Arena at the Jerome Schottenstein Center (I did not make that up.)  Because we don’t have to win pretty.  We just have to win.

Baby.

Tough Times in Tubbytown

It hasn’t been an easy season to be a Gopher’s fan.  At all.  We had high hopes for the season.  I think a lot of us, myself certainly included, took a tournament berth for granted.  This year wasn’t going to be about getting into the tournament; it was about how far we could get.

Needless to say, the season has been disappointing.  A lot of tough losses (and a seeming inability to play a team on an off-night).  Three crucial suspensions now that Al Nolen has been declared academically ineligible.  Failing to make some important progressions from last season—notably still struggling on the road.

It’s starting to feel like Gopher fans are stuck in a Bruce Springsteen song.  We are downtrodden, unlucky, and desperately searching for some glimmer of hope.  That Indiana loss and Al’s suspension have, at least temporarily, removed any wind from our sails.  It’s just not a good time for Gopher basketball.

Not that we don’t have some reasons to believe.  We’re still .500 in conference, having already played and lost our two toughest conference games.  We’re still undefeated at home and are about to host two crucial home games against Michigan State and Northwestern.  We still have Lawrence and Blake and DJ.  Ralph has looked outstanding in the last two games, dominating stretches of the Indiana game like he never has in his career.  Devoe showed signs of life for the first time in Big Ten play.

By no means are we off the bubble.  We’re just, for the first time this year, on the wrong side of it.  But we still control our own tournament destiny.  It’s not like we have to rely on teams losing around us.  We can vault ourselves back into tournament play.

Right now, though, it’s hard to be too optimistic.  I think the last week has easily been the low point of our season.  It just seems like we’re falling victim to Murphy’s Law.  (Which, by the way, I don’t believe in.  But this season is starting to convince me.)  You know you can’t catch a break when Andy Katz unintentionally marginalizes our signature win by claiming that we beat a Turner-less Ohio State (Turner-less in the sense that he played 38 minutes, scored 19 and filled the stat sheet).  It’s just been the way things have gone for the Maroon and Gold.

Pictured: Evan Turner, not playing.

There’s one question that looms in the backs of all Gopher fans minds right now.  We’re thinking about the Michigan State game.  We’re playing out the season and seeing if there is a way we can go dancing.  Some of us are trying to look at the (admittedly dim) bright side.  But this season we have to wonder: What’s next?

I’m not pointing fingers.  It’s just been a long, bizarre train of misfortune.  And in the middle of me writing this, the 12-year investigation into Royce White’s possible laptop threat has culminated in three misdemeanors for trespassing.  Hey, as long as University Police can save face, nothing else really matters, right?

To save myself more anger and frustration, let’s move on.  (There’s a phrase you apparently never hear in University Police headquarters.)

To borrow a poker term, I’m still on tilt from the Indiana game.  The game was last Sunday, and today is the first time I found myself ready to write about it.  By no means am I inclined to write about it, and any following analysis will be uncharacteristically brief.

Obviously, a lot of things went wrong for the Gophers.  And on a majority of those things, the blame lies with us.  We gave up too many offensive rebounds.  We struggled from the line.  We played some pretty bad defense.  At times we looked disinterested and lazy.

And, once again, luck conspired against us.  Indiana made a lot of crappy shots.  A lot.  I couldn’t believe some of the stuff that was going in for them.  They got almost every bounce.  The refs sent Verdell Jones to the line 95 times, including 64 in overtime.

But those things happen.  Sometimes teams just get everything to fall.  Good and bad bounces have a tendency to discriminate.  And, unsurprisingly, the Gophers once again fell victim to some bad breaks.

(By the way, it is never good to use the phrase “these things happen” to describe anything.)

That’s about all I want to say about that game.  We played poorly.  Indiana played well.  We caught no breaks.  Indiana caught quite a few.  We lost.  Indiana won.  And that’s the end of it.

Instead, I’d rather look forward.  We have Michigan State coming in on Saturday.  The Spartans have used the start of Big Ten play to exert the fact that they are the best team in the conference.  I was very high on Purdue, but the first half-dozen conference games have proven that the Spartans will almost certainly retain their traditional perch atop the Big Ten.

It might be now or never for the Gophers.  This is it.  Win and we’re back on track.  We have a true signature win.  We’d have some confidence.  We’d have some momentum that we could hopefully carry to the end of the season.  Lose and the door inches closer to sealing shut.  We could afford one slip-up in conference play.  It came against Indiana.  We can’t afford another.  A loss to Michigan State would not be a slip-up, but we have to respond to the Indiana loss.  We have to make up for it.  And that chance will come on Saturday.

In the long run, I still think the Gophers will need 11 wins to go dancing.  That’s an 8-4 finish.  This is probably our toughest remaining game.  A loss wouldn’t sink us.  But with the way we have struggled on the road, this game certainly has a sense of urgency.  A lot is riding on this game for the Gophers.  Our season will almost certainly swing one way or the other this Saturday.

We’re down to ten men.  Our best chance from here to the end of the year is if those guys create a real “us against the world” attitude.  If they form a core, start to play well together, and develop that attitude, they can get on a roll.  This team isn’t left for dead.  The ten guys left have to join together and prove it.

Saturday's game against the Spartans is huge for LW and the Gophers.

And if these ten guys are going to get on a roll, Saturday’s the time to do it.  We have Top Ten, first-place Michigan State coming into a sold-out Barn.  It’s on national television.  If those ten are going to prove their mettle, this is the game.  It’s as simple as that.  Now’s the time.

I’m not going to make a prediction.  I don’t know if these guys will have the right attitude and dynamic.  I hope they do.  But we won’t know until Saturday afternoon.  For that same reason, I’m not going to reflect on our potential tournament aspirations.

I just hope we’ve run out of bad luck.  If we’re going to be stuck in a Bruce Springsteen song, let’s make it “Better Days.”  That song has a lyric: “Carving lucky charms out of these hard luck bones.”  I hope that line will reflect the rest of our season.  We’ve had more than our share of hard luck.  Let’s hope we can cut something good from it.

A Look at the Buckeyes

I know what you’re thinking: What type of sorcery am I into after I perfectly predicted a 73-62 Gopher win on Saturday against Ohio State?  Go ahead, scroll down.  Look at that predicted score.  Right on the money.  Boom goes the dynamite.  And, no I’m not the type of sorcerer who hits the “Edit Post” button and changes the prediction ex post facto.  I assure you.  Just look at my pretty embarrassing Miami prediction.

Really, it was just a pretty easy game to predict.  We had just hounded Purdue with solid pressure defense.  Ohio State doesn’t have a good ball-handler and a majority of its starting line-up has turnover issues.  Put two and two together.  I nailed it, Gophers win, and we get back on track after the rough night in West Lafayette.

(And another hint in predicting Big Ten scores: If you don’t have a strong feeling about an outcome, predict that the home team will score in the 70s and the road team in the 60s.  Start Home 7- and Road 6- and go from there.  Even match-up?  Home 71, Road 68.  Less even?  Home 78, Road 61.  It’s a pretty reliable system.  Try it out and impress some friends.)

Beyond my soothsaying, Saturday’s performance was just what the Gophers needed.  Rebounded from a tough offensive night against Purdue by shooting 45 percent from the field, 48 from three, and 75 from the line.  That was huge.  We needed a nice offensive performance to prevent another awful dry spell like we saw in the 76 Classic.  We got it.  Wait, I called that, too!  Amazing.

(Alright, I’m done gloating.)

We also had solid individual performances.  Blake scored a career-high 27, including a 7-9 performance from deep.  Blake has had his doubters.  Some people saw his non-conference performances and said it would only be a matter of time until Big Ten defenses brought him down to earth.  They nodded after Kramer shut him down.  And then he exploded for a career night against the Buckeyes, silencing, at least temporarily, his doubters.

In all fairness, it’s easy to see why a lot of people doubted Blake.  He doesn’t exactly have LW’s ability to create his own shot.  And after a disappointing sophomore slump, some uncertainty is more than understandable.  But Blake is clearly a different player this year.  His all-around game has improved: He’s doing better on the boards; he’s taking better care of the ball; and his perimeter defense has gotten better.  He still can’t beat guys off the dribble and create his own shot.  That’s just not part of his game.  But he is an intelligent player and gets to the right spots to get open looks.  He won’t go off like he did against the Buckeyes every game.  But he’s consistently posting good numbers—only scoring in single-digits once since joining the starting line-up in early December—and he will continue to be a huge offensive asset.  And, I have a feeling that more games like Saturday’s are in the future, too.

Al Nolen was one of many Gophers who played well against Ohio State.

Al Nolen also rebounded from a bad Purdue game (1-10 from the field) by posting 11 points, seven assists, five rebounds, and four steals.  If he plays like that, we are a tough team to beat.  Damian produced another full stat sheet, and Lawrence posted 15, including a couple of big shots when Ohio State was threatening to capture momentum.  Volume III returned from his injury with a nice performance, while Colton recovered from a shaky start by making a few really important hustle plays down the stretch.

It was a great performance in a critical game.  We really needed to win that game, sandwiched between our two toughest games of the year (at Purdue and at Michigan State).  We got it, and in pretty convincing fashion.  We didn’t squeak by at home.  We pretty well handled the Buckeyes, especially in the second half.

I continue to get more excited about the press, and it looked fantastic for a third consecutive game.  It certainly looks like we will run it for the rest of the year, and I couldn’t be more pumped.  It could really be the difference-maker in a couple of close games.  I wrote about 3,000 words on the press earlier this year—perhaps the highlight thus far for my penchant for longwinded-ness—and somehow I’m more excited about it now, after seeing it in full force for three games.

I’ll stop there, just to make sure that another thousand words don’t gush out of my furiously typing, press-loving fingers.

Besides seeing a Gopher win, there was one thing that excited me about Saturday’s game: the chance to watch Evan Turner and the Buckeyes.  The Buckeyes need Turner.  Obviously.  They were pretty bad without him, and Saturday’s game was their first true test with Turner back in the line-up.  The Buckeyes have potential to be one of the top two or three teams in the conference with Turner, and, as a Big Ten basketball fan, I was excited to see them in person.

My one-word reaction to their performance in the Barn: underwhelming.  It’s hard to win on the road in the Big Ten.  Period.  No team can be fully confident on the road against any Big Ten team that doesn’t play at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.  So you can’t criticize a road loss, especially to a quality team like the Gophers.  Rather, I was unimpressed with their demeanor as a team.

I remember when Michigan State came into the Barn last year.  They had this swagger.  They knew they were the best team in the conference, and you could see it in their attitude.  They weren’t over-confident or cocky, but they were obviously self-assured.  Izzo was in control, and the team just had the appearance of a winner.  Partly based just on the team’s demeanor in Williams, I picked them to go to the NCAA finals.  And they did.

Man, am I just amazing or what?  Oh, and I also picked Davidson to the Elite Eight two years ago.  And Kansas to win it that year.

Who called it? This guy.

Sorry.  That’s it.  Seriously.

Anyways, Ohio State didn’t have any sort of swagger.  Nothing.  Obviously, they are not as good as Michigan State was last year.  But you’d expect at least some sort of attitude.  Some sort of healthy confidence.  And I got nothing.  I sit about 50 feet away from the opponent’s bench.  I really think you can tell a lot about a team when you’re that close to them.  You can sense a great team.  And Ohio State did not leave any sort of impression on me.  At all.

Then on Tuesday, in the middle of me writing this, they beat Purdue in West Lafayette.  Talk about killing my flow.  I formed what I felt to be a pretty solid opinion of the Buckeyes, and it was just waiting to be word-processed.  But they went ahead and won, and now I have to retrace my steps and give you a new analysis of the Buckeyes.

Sort of.  Obviously, the win at Purdue was a game changer.  First and foremost, let’s give credit where it is due: Ohio State played well and stunned Purdue at Mackey.  Many people, myself included, thought the Boilers would go undefeated at home.  Tourniquet Turner was amazing, and the Buckeyes shifted the 70s/60s Home/Road formula.  Great win for the scarlet and gray.

But really, Purdue pretty much handed them the game, didn’t they?  The Boilers simply dropped the ball on Tuesday.  Credit Ohio State for the win, but I didn’t really see an indication that they were a ton better than they were at the Barn.

This is coming from a neutral viewer: It was much more a Purdue loss than an Ohio State win.  The Boilermakers shot 34 percent from the field in the second half, including a stellar zero percent from three.  Thanks for the salt in the wound after your 65 percent second half shooting performance against the Gophers last week, Purdue.  They missed a lot of open looks (including the most open of looks, free throws) and seemed to have a general disinterest in running a coherent offense.

I saw that Ohio State defense last Saturday, and it was nothing special.  It was just man-to-man, but it shut Purdue down in the second.  I was starting to wonder if Matt Painter had ever heard of a screen to get Hummel open.  Eight 3-pointers for Hummel in the first half; an offense that can’t find him an open look in the second.  Blake certainly got a lot of looks against that defense on Saturday, so I have no idea how Purdue couldn’t get Hummel any after the break on Tuesday.

Beyond that, Purdue just couldn’t execute.  Ohio State had something to do with that, but you got the impression that Purdue just got lazy and opened the door.  Turner got hot, and the Buckeyes surged through the open door to get the big road win.

Have you ever seen the tenth round of that Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo fight?  Thirty seconds into the round, Castillo knocks down Corrales.  Castillo stays after him, and puts him down for a second time 25 seconds later.  And Corrales loses a point for excessively spitting out his mouthpiece.  It looks like Castillo’s got it.  Corrales is all beat up, it looks like he could barely see out of his swollen eyes, and he is behind the eight ball if he can even survive the tenth.  The fight restarts after Corrales gets his mouthpiece in, and Castillo goes in for the seemingly eminent knockout.

But then Castillo gets lazy, leaves himself open, and Corrales unexpectedly catches and hurts him.  At that point, Castillo has to back off.  It’s that simple.  He’s got a 10-6 round that pretty much wins him the fight.  Just back off, recover, and dance around for the second half of the round.  There’s no reason for him to keep going after Corrales.  He’s got the huge round already, and he just has to avoid a knockout for the win.  Just evade Corrales and take the points.  But he keeps going after Diego, looking for the knockout.  Corrales catches him again, and Castillo has another opportunity to escape the ropes, circle the ring, and kill the round.  But he passes it up again and continues to exchange punches.  Ten seconds later, he’s pinned against the ropes as Corrales finishes him with a final flurry.

That’s what the Purdue-Ohio State game was like.  Hummel’s first half performance knocked down the Buckeyes.  Had them dead to rights.  It seemed that there was no way the Boilers could lose.  Then Purdue got lazy, left the door open, and Ohio State popped them a little bit.  The Boilermakers were reeling, and they should have just taken a step back, regrouped during a timeout, slowed down, and carefully finished the fight.  They should have made it a half-court game and fed JuJuan Johnson, ran some pick-and-rolls, and have smart possessions that worked the clock.  Instead they tried to keep running with the Buckeyes, searching for the knockout punch, and soon they got hit again.  Purdue had another chance to take control and slow down, but sat on their timeouts and kept going.  And before you knew it, they were pinned against the ropes as Ohio State delivered the shocking finishing flurry.

It was an avoidable loss for Purdue, just as it was for Castillo.  Castillo had his big round and he would have easily out-pointed Corrales, but he decided to unnecessarily continue to trade shots, let Corrales back into it, and eventually exposed himself for the knockout.  Purdue had the Buckeyes reeling, but got lazy and allowed the Buckeyes to hit them.  And instead of slowing it down and regrouping, the Boilers kept going and lost the game.

You have to give Corrales and Ohio State the credit for actually delivering the blows that eventually won their respective contests.  But that was a fight Corrales should never have lost, and a game Purdue should never have lost.  They just got careless and left themselves open for the knockout.

I guess my point is that I didn’t see a lot of difference in Ohio State from Saturday to Tuesday.  I saw a lot that makes me question Purdue, but that’s for another day.  There was a difference in results for the Buckeyes, but a huge difference in the team?  I’m not sure.

Thad Matta struck me as the main source for Ohio State’s lack-of-swagger in the Barn.  I just didn’t get a lot of his coaching decisions.  He continued to allow Turner to get killed by the press.  Turner isn’t a natural point guard, and at 6-7 it’s expected that he have trouble against smaller, pesky defenders like Al Nolen.  But Matta left him at the point, and Turner had three consecutive turnovers that helped cement a Gopher lead.  All the while, he left senior point guard P.J. Hill sitting on the bench.  I didn’t get it at the time, and I still have no clue why Thad didn’t make any sort of change.

I was not impressed by Thad Matta's coaching at the Barn. Besides his yelling at the refs. That was impressive.

Probably because, frankly, Matta looked more interested in complaining about calls and working the officials that he did about actually drawing up plays or anything like that.  A lot of great coaches work the refs, but it really seemed like that was Thad’s number one priority.  Not surprisingly, a lot of Buckeye players seemed to take after their coach and also had a penchant for arguing calls, most notably the Tourniquet.  Again, it’s part of the game, and it’s something good players and coaches do.  But something about Thad’s leadership on the bench was kind of off-putting.

And I saw some of that in the Purdue game.  In the first half, you could see Matta working the officials, but for some reason he decided not to address his ineffective zone until Robbie Hummel buried his eighth three of the half against it.  By the time he switched to man-to-man, it seemed like a lost cause.  But then Purdue pulled a Castillo and gave Ohio State the win.

I think the Buckeyes have a few more problems.  In addition to having the world’s worst optometrist, Turner seems like his name would better suit him if an “ov” were selectively added to the middle of it.  If there’s one problem with his game, it’s his carelessness with the ball.  And he’s not the only one.  The Buckeyes have a nasty penchant for turnovers that can bite you in Big Ten play.  In addition, Dallas Lauderdale has had a disappointing start to his conference season, and he will need to play better if the Buckeyes are going to move towards the top of the standings.  And what happens when Turner has an off night and doesn’t score 32?  Can they still win?

Look, it was a great win at Purdue, but I’m still not completely sold on the Buckeyes.  I don’t think Matta is a great coach.  Let’s say he’s not the kind of guy that could win without elite talent.  But he recruits elite talent, so that balances out.  And I see the lack of a ball-handler and a reliable big man hurting the Buckeyes in some games.

Maybe they will be an enigma this year.  Lose to Penn State but beat Purdue.  Or maybe they are not that good, and just got lucky in West Lafayette.  (Is it just me, or does “Lucky in West Lafayette” sound like some prosaic “big city model unexpectedly falls for small town farmhand” movie?)  When all is settled, I think the Buckeyes will nestle towards the middle of the Big Ten standings.  They will make the tournament as a six- or seven-seed, but get bounced in the first round by a team like Tulsa, with Turner scoring 25 but getting no help.

As far as the Gophers are concerned, we go to East Lansing on Wednesday.  Again, it’s hard to win on the road in the Big Ten, especially if the home team is Michigan State.  I can come up with two things to give Gophers fans hope.  One, Ohio State showed that top-ranked home teams aren’t infallible.  And two, around this time last year, Michigan State fell asleep at home and lost to Northwestern.  Two years ago, they laid a 36-point egg at Iowa.  Hopefully we can catch them during a mid-January nap and come away with a huge road win.

Unfortunately, I’m not expecting that.  I’ll put my Home 70s-Road 60s theory on display while deeply hoping the Gophers can reverse it.

Gophers 64

Michigan State 74

Purdue Reaction and OSU Prediction

I always find that it is a good idea to sit and ponder a loss for a while before really dissecting it.  There’s a lot of frustrating moments in just about every loss, and a lot of what-ifs can run through your head.  So I just like to sit and let them run through my head for a while before I can pound out any sort of analysis that even has the potential of being even-handed.

Also, I don’t want to embarrass myself with some sort of unnecessary diatribe.  I’ve unfortunately delivered my share of those before.

Now that the grace period is up, I think I’m ready to run down the Purdue loss.

And, really, I wasn’t too upset with the loss.  In fact, I find plenty of reasons to be encouraged after that loss.

Look, we were playing Purdue at Mackey Arena.  Fourth in the nation, undefeated Purdue.  On the road.  I don’t think many Gopher fans, myself included, were truly expecting a win.  And we shouldn’t have been.  The Boilermakers are the best team in the conference, and they have always been tough to beat at home.

The only thing I was hoping for was a competitive loss.  Maybe about an 8-point defeat.  That certainly could have been enough to prove that we can play with the best in the conference.

Obviously, we didn’t lose by eight.  And while a 19-point loss at Purdue isn’t necessarily embarrassing, it would certainly have been nice to escape with a smaller deficit.

That said, it was a much more competitive game than the 19-point margin of defeat suggested.  Watching that game, it seemed a lot more like an 8- or 10-point win for Purdue than a 20-point one.  But a combination of factors helped expand the Boiler’s margin of victory.

Perhaps the largest of these was, unfortunately, the officiating.  Surprisingly (wait, I mean completely predictably), an Ed Hightower crew called a game with a fair share of questionable calls favoring the home team.  In good news, though, the refs did help me rearrange some furniture in my living room.

I don’t want to dig too deep into individual calls or specific plays, but, if you watched the game, it was plainly obvious that the refs certainly helped out Purdue.  It wasn’t intentional, but the officiating decidedly assisted the Boilermakers.  And that sucks.  Officiating should be the one thing you can definitely count on during a game.  Officials should be transparent, and you should never leave a game feeling like you got jobbed by the refs.

Unfortunately, I had that feeling Tuesday night.  And, judging by message board chatter, a lot of fans did.  Again, it would be fruitless to point out individual calls, and Big Ten officiating (especially Hightower) has a terrible reputation for home cooking.  But that game seemed a lot worse than normal.

On the surface, there was an obvious and embarrassing lack of consistency from play to play.  Both teams played a very physical game, and there was a lot of contact all over the court.  But such contact was never called steadily.  What was a foul on one play went uncalled the next.  It was beyond frustrating.  By the end of the game the horrible inconsistency bordered on being darkly humorous.  And these inconsistencies almost always favored Purdue.  I think that even ardent Boiler Uppers could admit this.

The stat sheet also suggests some hometown officiating.  Purdue’s main contributors—Hummel, Johnson, Kramer, and Moore—each played 34 minutes.  And they had a combined seven (SEVEN?!) fouls.  Give me a break.  They played 70 percent of Purdue’s minutes and accounted for 33 percent of their personal fouls.  It really seemed like the refs went out of their way to swallow the whistles when one of Purdue’s stars may have committed a foul.  The Purdue bench, though, only played 20 percent of the minutes but got whistled for 50 percent of the fouls.  Could it have been a “don’t-whistle-the-stars-but-even-it-up-by-calling-the-role-players-tight” game?  It certainly felt like it.

Besides Nolen, any Gopher who logged significant minutes had 3-plus fouls.  And Blake sat most of the first half after being whistled on a phantom call (and on a play that Chris Kramer got away with literally the entire game).  Purdue went to the line 11 more times than the Gophs.  Strange (read: bad) calls directly caused the Gophers about four turnovers.  The refs seemed to get whistle happy just as the Gophers started to build momentum.

By no means am I suggesting that the referees cost us the game.  Because they didn’t.  But their calls undoubtedly had an effect on the game.  And these effects undoubtedly favored the Boilermakers.  They turned what could have been a much, much more competitive game into a fairly easy win for the Boilers.  We didn’t lose because of the refs, but they helped guarantee that we wouldn’t leave West Lafayette with a win.

(Seriously, I just spent about an hour and 500 words writing a fairly subdued analysis of the officiating of the game.  I can’t imagine what I would have pounded out right after the game, but it certainly would have had to been broken up into chapters and faced some FCC regulations.  I still want to write more, but I’ll stop there.  If you watched the game, you almost certainly share my frustration with the officiating.)

Eddie Hightower photoshops are always fun. You should Google them sometime.

A lot more than questionable officiating led to the Gopher loss.  Most notable was our poor shooting performance.  We shot 30 percent from the field, 20 percent from distance, and 64 percent from the line.  That’s not good enough, and you can’t expect to win posting those types of numbers.

To be honest, though, I’m not too disappointed about the offensive performance, and I’m not too worried about an equally anemic offense in games to come.  Purdue plays fantastic defense.  It’s the foundation of their team.  It’s what they’re known for.  And we did seem to fall victim to a lot of in-and-outs.  We got a lot of good shots off that just wouldn’t drop.  Our offense was far from good.  But I think at least some of our offensive woes were the result of Purdue’s great defense and some bad luck on some good shots.  I don’t think they are indicative of an eminent slump.  It also didn’t help that JuJuan Johnson and Robbie Hummel could do just about anything in the lane to stop a shot or drive and never get called for a foul.

Purdue, on the other hand, shot 53 percent from the field (including an absurd 65 percent in the second half), 75 percent from the stripe, and 35 percent from three.  You have to give credit where credit is due: Purdue made their shots.  And that was enough to propel them to victory.

I’m actually more encouraged than discouraged after this loss.  Entering the game, if you told me that we would shoot 30 percent while Purdue shot 53 percent, I would have expected, at best, a 30-point loss.  But we kept the game competitive for 37 minutes, until a bizarre technical on DJ cemented a pretty healthy margin for Purdue.  They shot 65 percent in the second (I can’t get over that), while we couldn’t buy a bucket, and we still kept it within ten or 12.  I was actually pretty impressed by that.

The best part of the night was easily the press.  I have supported and begged for the press for the whole season, and it looked great (as it did against Iowa in the previous game).  I would never have thought we could give Purdue that much trouble with our press, but they were visibly uncomfortable with it and struggled to break it.  It was a lot better than I expected, and I hope that we see it more as we progress through conference play.  If it can give Purdue fits, it should be able to work against most of the Big Ten.

We also out-rebounded Purdue, the first time in the conference season we won the rebounding battle.  And that was with Purdue shooting the lights out, limiting our potential for defensive boards.  I was impressed with our effort on the glass, especially the 15-5 OREB advantage.

And PC had his best game as a Gopher.  He has had his struggles this year—especially, seemingly, with his confidence—but that game should earn him some extra minutes.  Hopefully he will keep playing well and take advantage of them.  I like Paul, and I’d love to see him earn some additional minutes.

Obviously, there are only so many positives you can take out of a 19-point loss.  But let me summarize Tuesday’s game like this: We played undefeated Number Four in the nation; on the road; without our starting center; shot 30 percent from the field while they shot over 50; suffered through some pretty horrendous officiating all night; couldn’t get a good bounce or a call; were without our hottest offensive player for most of the first half.  That has all the makings for an absolute blowout.  I’m talking a 40-point, embarrassing, where-do-we-go-from-here loss.  And we kept the game competitive.  We hung with them until the last couple of toss-away minutes.  We found a way to hang around.  And that has to give you some hope.

Matt Painter told reporters after the game, “I thought they played better than us.  We just made a lot of shots.”  And while there is a lot of coach-talk in that statement, I think it has something to it.  I never thought I could use the words “encouraged” and “19-point loss” in the same sentence, but somehow I can after that game.

Looking ahead, Saturday’s game against Ohio State is huge for the Gophers.  Ohio State is a solid team, and this will be the type of game we need to win to help earn a tournament berth.

Evan Turner, originally slated to be out for eight weeks after injuring his back in early December, returned after four against Indiana on Wednesday.  They Buckeyes were obviously nowhere near full-strength sans Turner, and went 3-3 without him.  He was fairly productive in his 20 minutes against Indiana, but it’s hard to believe he is close to 100 percent yet.

(My reaction to Turner’s early return: It strikes me as a panic move by Ohio State.  They dropped their first two conference games in a couple of bad losses at Wisconsin and Michigan.  They did not look good in those contests.  I can’t shake the feeling that Turner was hurried back prematurely to try and stop the bleeding.  I don’t really have anything concrete to back that up—it’s just a feeling.  But I am a little skeptical about him healing in half the expected time.  He could absolutely be fully healed and ready to play, but I have a feeling that if they don’t start 0-2 in conference Turner still isn’t playing.  For his sake, I really hope he is truly healthy enough to play.  It would be terrible to see him re-injure his back because he was hustled back too quickly.  Again, this is just a knee-jerk reaction.  And also, I am thinking about referring to him, from this point forward, as Evan “Tourniquet” Turner.)

DJ's defense will be huge for the Gophers against Turner and the Buckeyes.

Obviously, Turner’s return makes a win on Saturday much more difficult.  I don’t see him logging above 20 or 25 minutes yet, but he can have a huge impact even if his minutes are limited.  The Gophers do have a solid lock-down defender in DJ, and he will hopefully be able to limit Turner’s impact.  He can’t take Turner out of the game—no defender can.  But if Damian can slow Tourniquet down, we should have a good shot at victory.

The key to this game for the Gophers will be pressure defense.  We have to get after the Buckeyes like we got after Purdue.  Press after made baskets.  Pressure their bigs after they get rebounds.  Hound their ball-handlers the entire length of the floor.

Ohio State doesn’t really have a true ball-handler that could consistently dribble past the press.  Buford, Lighty, and Turner are all turnover-prone (each averaging over two turnovers a game, including four a game for Tourniquet), and strong pressure defense like we played against Purdue should force the Buckeyes into some turnovers.  In addition, P.J. Hill would likely have to be on the floor more, reducing the minutes for some of Ohio State’s scorers.  Toss in what is sure to be a raucous Williams Arena crowd and it could get very tough for the Buckeyes.

Offensively, the Gophers just have to avoid another 30 percent shooting performance.  It’s hard to win any game with shooting like that.  Again, I don’t our offensive struggles from Tuesday will follow us back home.  Ohio State plays nowhere near as strong of defense as does Purdue, and I can’t picture another game with such bad luck with the rims.  We don’t need to be electric on offense.  We just need to avoid another anemic performance.

I think the Gophers win on Saturday.  We’re back home, and Williams should be packed and ready to go for a Saturday afternoon Big Ten contest.  Maybe we can get a little of our own home cooking working in our favor.  We should continue to employ the press and solid pressure defense, making things uncomfortable Ohio State and forcing some Buckeye turnovers.  If we can get shots to fall—and I believe we will—we should add a nice win to our tournament resume on Saturday.

Gophers 73

Buckeyes 62

Let Big Ten Play Begin

Do you watch Survivor?  To me, watching Survivor is like growing a flower.  You have to nurture it, care for it, and wait for it to bloom.  You know there’s not going to be a lot of thrills in the early episodes of a season.  Not too many blindsides or anything like that—just a lot of predictable votes eliminating forgettable castaways.  But you still watch; you get to know the players and their styles; you get to know alliances; you figure out strengths and weaknesses; you find out who’s trustworthy and who’s deceitful; you choose your favorite and least favorite contestants.

Basically, you’re waiting for the season to blossom into something great.  You’re investing into the season because you know it will inevitably get better.  And then the merger hits, the game really starts, and the season blooms into something great.  Watching all those tedious early episodes pays off, and you strap in and enjoy the ride for the rest of the season.

Well, that’s kind of what the non-conference schedule is like.  There are simply not a lot of good games.  When the Gophers’ schedule came out, nobody circled the date Morgan State came to town, or when any of our non-conference opponents came around.  It’s hard to get really excited for those games.  And it’s like that for almost every major conference team.  A lot of tune-up games with a few good ones tossed in.

At times, it feels like those games are investments for fans.  It’s our time to get to know the team and the players, to watch some (hopefully) predictable wins, and to study conference competition.  But paying attention to these early games makes the rest of the season so much better.  As a fan, you’ve already cultivated an invested interest before you can really enjoy the benefits of those huge conference games.  Everybody can enjoy the flower after it blooms, Survivor after the merger, and the conference season.  But that early investment makes them much more rewarding.

And the basketball season’s merger is here, as Big Ten conference play starts Tuesday.  It’s time for the season to really start.  Time to enjoy the games that are circled on schedules.  Time to reap the benefits of that early investment.  It’s Big Ten time.

So, before conference play starts Tuesday, I’ll recap what we’ve learned so far about every team in the Big Ten and make some predictions for the rest of the season.

Gophers

The Gophers have one huge question going into conference play: How should those three consecutive losses be interpreted?  Do they indicate that our non-conference blow out wins were mere products of weak opponents?  Was it simply the low point of our season, not signaling any sort of major weaknesses when we play major conference opponents?  Was it just a three-game slump?  Or are the Gophers going to be unable to win consistently over quality teams?

I lean towards the “three-game slump” explanation.  Following the consecutive losses to Portland, Texas A&M, and Miami, I wrote that we had three awful games against teams just good enough to beat us on our off nights.  I still believe that.

To me, those losses are much more indicative of a good team on a cold streak than of an average team struggling to compete with decent competition.  We lost by a combined 11 points to three pretty good opponents.  The Portland loss has begun to look worse as the Pilots have since dropped four games.  But at the time they were hot, coming of nice wins over Oregon and UCLA.  They beat us by five.  A&M is 9-3, with all three losses coming to quality opponents.  They beat us by one.  Miami is 12-1.  They beat us by five.

We could have easily won all of those games, but we couldn’t quite cut out enough chances to win.  And we lost them because of an absolutely brutal offensive stretch.  I could recount the struggles and bring up some stats, but I think I would end up pulling out some hair if I did.  Suffice it to say, our offense in those three games was very poor.

And despite going through such an awful offensive stretch, we barely lost those three games to decent competition.  At no point did you get the impression that we were overmatched.  And we have not looked that bad again all year.  Granted, we have been playing weaker opponents.  But we have been blowing them out.  And, oftentimes lost in the mire of those three losses is a very good win over Butler.

The addition of Blake has provided a spark to the starting five.

There’s only so much banter that can be tossed around about rolling mid-majors at home.  You have to find other metrics by which to evaluate those performances.  And, to me, that’s the eye test.  And the Gophers, since those three losses, have passed the eye test.  They look much more confident on offense.  They look more comfortable with the system. They look like they are melding together.  They look like they are settling into stronger line-ups and rotations.  They don’t look like an average team.  They look like a good team.

That’s not to say we’ve solved all our troubles since then.  Although it was a three-game slump, it wasn’t a three-game anomaly.  We will struggle on offense again at times this season.  Definitely.  And we’ll probably lose a couple of conference games based only on offensive struggles.  But I don’t see another three game stretch like we had.

I can say one thing confidently about the Gophers in their home stand following the three losses: We made the corrections we needed to.  Our top rotation looks a lot stronger with Blake rather than Rodney.  We are hitting shots more consistently.  And our defense has remained strong.  We had to win our last five non-conference games in convincing fashion.  And we did.  We are where we needed to be.

A few weeks ago, I predicted 12 conference wins for the Gophers.  I see no reason to change that prediction, so I’m sticking to my guns.  Expect a 12-6 conference showing for the Gophers, and a trip to the dance.

Purdue

Entering the season, I thought the Boilermakers would win the Big Ten, and fairly easily at that.  Their perfect non-conference performance thus far has done nothing to change that expectation.  They are 10-0, including good wins against Tennessee, Wake, and at Alabama.

I haven’t seen any major weakness yet from Purdue.  I’ll point out two minor problems, though, mostly to convince myself that they have a couple.  Despite winning, at times they looked vulnerable in their only road game at Alabama.  They were down for most of that game before surging late for the win, with Alabama scoring one point in the final five minutes.  And they lack a solid offensive point guard with Lewis Jackson on the shelf.  Chris Kramer is strong defensively, but I don’t think he has the offensive game to replace Jackson’s in the Big Ten.

Again, these are minor problems, and Purdue is a great team.  I think they go undefeated in Mackey Arena in the Big Ten this year, and will only drop a few road games.  Barring injuries or an unforeseeable slump, the Boilers are primed to walk to a Big Ten title.

Which sucks, because I’m already sick of hearing “Boiler up.”

Michigan State

Depending on how you measure success in East Lansing, it could be a disappointing year for the Spartans.  They will walk into the tournament once again, and should definitely finish near the top of the Big Ten standings again (most likely second).  They return player-of-the-year Kalin Lucas and a solid supporting cast—although they are a little weak up front.  The Spartans are a very good team.

But I don’t think they are anywhere near as good as their Number Two pre-season rating suggests.  And if Spartans fans were expecting to be one of the top teams in the nation this year, they will be disappointed.  They are not at that level this season.

You can’t point fingers about competitive losses on the road to North Carolina and Texas.  That loss to Florida carries a little weight, though, as the Gators have since dropped three straight—including losses to perennial powers Richmond and South Alabama.

At the end of the day, though, it’s Michigan State.  It’s a great program, and this is another solid team.  But it’s not a defining Izzo Spartans team.  I see them struggling on the road during conference play, and finishing with around 13 conference wins.  Ten teams in the conference would be thrilled with that season.  Michigan State is the one that would not be.

(And, if you’re wondering, I’m sticking to my pre-season prediction that Michigan State will lose to Indiana in Bloomington on February 16.)

Ohio State

Obviously, the story of the year so far for the Buckeyes is the loss of Evan Turner.  Turner fractured bones in his back during the team’s December 5^th game against Eastern Michigan.  He is expected to be out until early February, although there have been some indications that an earlier return (mid-January) is possible.  Regardless, Ohio State will have to play a decent chunk of it’s Big Ten schedule without a 100 percent healthy Turner.

The last thing Buckeyes fans wanted to see.

Turner did everything for the Buckeyes, and the impact of his loss is immeasurable.  Ohio State is a shell of its true team without Turner.  He led the team in scoring, rebounding, and assists, and there is no way the Buckeyes can come close to replacing him during his absence.

The question is, can the Buckeyes win without him (or with a weakened, less-than-100-percent Turner)?  In their only true test without Turner, the Buckeyes dropped a road game to Butler.  They have three home wins without him, all against weak mid-majors.  Their offense has notably declined in those three wins, and they have posted noticeably lower scores (highlighted by a 60-point performance over Delaware State).  With Turner, the Buckeyes average 88 points per game; without him, they are averaging 69.  And the games without him are against generally weaker opponents.

To make matters worse for the Buckeyes, they have a brutal January schedule.  They visit Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue, West Virginia, and Iowa; their home games are against Indiana, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Minnesota.  That’s a very rough schedule, especially sans Turner.  How many of those games can Ohio State reasonably expect to win without their Mr. Everything?  I’d say the Buckeyes go 4-6 or 5-5 in that stretch.

Even without Turner for the start of Big Ten play, though, the Buckeyes should definitely be a tournament team.  But his injury will certainly result in a few additional losses for the Buckeyes.  They are arguably the second best team in the conference with Turner.  Without him, they are about the fifth.

For now, Buckeye fans have to count down the days until Turner’s return, and hope that the rest of the team can be strong enough to hold serve until he’s back.

Wisconsin

I’m never inclined too much to talk at length about the Badgers, but they’ve looked solid so far.  They have a great win over Duke and a couple of other nice victories.

The question for me is how they will fare on the road.  They lost their only road game to 10-4 Horizon foe Green Bay, who have exactly zero other quality wins.  That’s at least a little concerning, although you can’t judge too much based on one road loss.  But I do think that the Badgers could struggle away from the Kohl Center in Big Ten play, and this could keep them closer towards fifth or sixth in the conference.

In the end, Sconnie should make the tournament.  Bo Ryan will find a way to win some close games, and the Badgers should settle in with about 11 conference wins, enough to easily vault them into the dance.  Just another good year for Bo and the Badgers.

Northwestern

The Wildcats, at Number 25, are ranked for the first time in four decades.  You have to feel good for the Wildcats.  It’s a basketball program whose only claim to fame—or, more accurately, infamy—is never making an NCAA tournament appearance.  After losing star Kevin Coble to injury for the year, it looked like it would be another blank year for Northwestern.

John Shurna has helped lead the Wildcats to a surprising 10-1 start.

But this team has been surprisingly good, and the duo of Shurna and Thompson has led the Wildcats to a 10-1 record.  Impartially, Northwestern is the feel good story in the Big Ten this season, and the team will have a lot of objective support this season.  Coble’s injury has increased this underdog appeal.

I haven’t hopped on the Northwestern bandwagon yet.  In the preseason, I picked them to finish tenth in the conference, and I remain relatively low on them.  Obviously, they are not the second worst team in the conference as I previously predicted.  But I still don’t see them any higher than a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team.

You have to give them credit for the 10-1 start.  They have a few good wins over major conference teams in Notre Dame, Iowa State, and North Carolina State.  But I don’t think any of those will be tournament teams this year.  Those are nice wins, but I don’t see them as huge resume builders come Selection Sunday.  That said, they are still winning their games, and that’s all you can really do.  Their ranking is fully deserved.

But I think that will be the high point for the Wildcats this season.  Their first month of conference play: at Illinois; Michigan State; at Michigan; Wisconsin; Purdue; at Ohio State; Illinois; at Minnesota; and at Michigan State.  That’s a brutal draw.  And right now, I honestly can’t see them winning more than two or three of those games.

Admittedly, I could be stubbornly underrating the Wildcats this year.  I don’t think they are truly in the Top 25 in the nation (or a Top 50 team, for that matter), but maybe they are.  Maybe I’m completely wrong about them.  But right now, I only see two consistent, reliable performers on that roster.  I don’t see a legitimate big man.  I don’t see near enough depth.  I don’t think their 1-3-1 defense will be as effective against Big Ten teams that have had past exposure against it.  I see a lot of shortcomings for the Wildcats.  They can certainly prove me wrong with their early performance in the Big Ten.  But I think they are much more likely to prove me right.

At the moment, I can’t figure out exactly where to rank the Wildcats.  I can picture them going as bad as 6-12 in the Big Ten; I can also picture them going 11-7 in conference.  I just think the former is much, much more likely.  I expect Northwestern to be watching another dance from the sidelines.

Michigan

Michigan’s struggles continue to befuddle me.  They are 6-5.  I thought Sims and Harris alone were good enough to lead the team to a much better non-conference performance.  But something is wrong in Ann Arbor.  They have yet to beat a decent team, with their best win coming against 9-4 Detroit.  As surprisingly good as Northwestern has been, Michigan has been that shockingly bad.

I don’t get it.  Yes, it is a two-man team.  And normally that bothers me a lot.  But it was the same two-man team last season, when they won 21 games and made it to the second round of the dance.  And both Sims and Harris are both posting better numbers than they did last year.

It seems like they should be at least as good as they were last year.  But the only glimmer of such potential was in a somewhat competitive loss at Kansas.  It’s been an absolutely bizarre struggle for the Wolverines this far.

They look like a long shot for a repeat tournament appearance.  Five non-conference losses will just be too much to overcome for the Wolverines.  But I think they sort of right the ship in conference play.  I can’t see the Wolverines struggling this much in conference.  It may be just a hunch, but I expect the Wolverines to post a respectable conference record.  The Sims-Harris duo could be enough to win several conference games alone, and I think they finish around the middle of the pack in Big Ten play.  It won’t be near enough for a tournament berth—maybe not even an NIT invite—but don’t expect Michigan to be a doormat this season.

Illinois

The Illini are kind of like a cheap steak: Yeah, it’s pretty good, but there’s a lot of gristle.  Illinois is a solid team.  They have a strong starting five, all averaging in double figures.  They are well balanced with the big Mikes up front and a strong backcourt with McCamey, Paul, and Richardson.  To me, they look like one of the best teams in the Big Ten on paper.

But something’s undoubtedly missing.  Not enough depth.  No real go-to scorer.  Weak defense.  A lot of gristle.  That’s why they have four losses, including a couple of bad ones to Bradley and Utah.

Illinois will continue to struggle with inconsistency during the Big Ten season.  But I expect them to win enough games to make the tournament.

Penn State

In Penn State’s game against Virginia Tech, Talor Battle scored 32, grabbed nine boards, and dropped three assists.  And they lost, 66-64.  Expect a lot of similar performances during conference play.  Talor Battle is good, but his supporting cast is nowhere near strong enough to make Penn State into a legitimate conference contender.  I don’t expect Penn State to have any large impact on the Big Ten this season.

Indiana

I earmarked Indiana to make some large improvements this year while still toiling towards the bottom of the standings.  I still think that will be the case.  They have played a couple of decent games so far, but have also played a few brutal ones.  At the moment, Tom Crean’s squad just doesn’t have the talent to win consistently.

To make matters worse, leading scorer Maurice Creek is likely out for the year with a knee injury.  It will be another long year for Hoosier faithful, but I think Crean turns this team around in a few years.  The Hoosiers will rise again.  For know, though, they will have to settle towards the bottom of the standings while pulling a couple of wins out here and there.  (Assembly Hall is still a tough place to play, and Indiana should pull an upset or two in Bloomington.)

Iowa

I see no reason to talk about them, other than that they are humorously bad.  And now that Anthony Tucker is suspended indefinitely after being arrested for public intoxication, things are only looking worse.  I’d feel kind of bad for them, if they weren’t Iowa.  But since they are Iowa, it’s really funny.

Can they go a perfect 0-18 in Conference?  Boy, I hope so.  Will they have a home game with an attendance more than 267?  They could come close.  Either way, I think they will scrape together a couple of conference wins, but that’s it.

So, here’s my revised prediction for standings at the end of the season:

1. Purdue

2. Michigan State

3. Minnesota

4. Wisconsin

5. Ohio State

6. Illinois

7. Michigan

8. Northwestern

9. Indiana

10. Penn State

11. Iowa

And I think the top six will be tournament bound.

Let the real fun begin.

Unexpected Bonuses

You know one of my favorite things about basketball?  You can never know what a game will hold.  When you walk into an arena, there’s no telling how that game will play out.  You never can tell what game might turn into a classic.

Like the Gopher’s game last Tuesday.  A game against abysmal one-win Northern Illinois, on a random Tuesday night, during finals week, with crappy weather: Doesn’t sound like it would make for a great night of Gopher’s basketball.  And, understandably, it wasn’t exactly the definitive Barn environment for that game.  Fans shuffled in right before tip-off, a lot of students stayed home to study, and a lot of empty spots dotted the arena.

It wasn’t exactly a game that was circled on every fan’s calendar.  Or any fan’s calendar, for that matter.

And, then, Blake Hoffarber absolutely lit the place on fire.  He was electric.  Buried four 3-pointers in the span of two minutes early in the first half.  Ended up breaking the school record with eight threes in one game.  And added six boards and four dimes in 22 minutes in a fantastic individual performance.

He made that game.  He took a boring Tuesday night game that had every indication of being a walk-through for the Gophers and made it historic.  It’s a game and a performance I’ll never forget—out of a game that looked eminently forgettable on paper.

All those folks that didn’t show because it was Northern Illinois and all those students that decided to stay home missed something that no Gopher has ever done.  In the 20-plus years since the three-point line was adopted by college basketball, no Gopher had ever made eight in a game.  Until Blake did it last Tuesday.

It wasn’t the best individual performance I’ve ever seen from a Gopher.  But it was one of the most unbelievable games I’ve seen.  Northern Illinois stuffed two guys into Blake’s pocket and hounded him most of the game.  But Blake couldn’t miss.  He was pouring them in.  Hand in his face, double covered, anywhere on the floor: didn’t matter.  He kept making shots.  Amazing.

But the funny thing about that game is what, exactly, I will remember.  To be honest, I don’t actually really remember too many of his shots.  I remember the eighth from the top of the key to break the record.  I remember his fourth that forced Northern Illinois to take a time out and made it clear that the Gophers would, as expected, walk over the Huskies.  But that’s about it.

It’s strange what I do remember.  I remember one guy across the arena from me.  Every time Blake rose to shoot a three, the guy would stand up and spread his arms, and every time a three fell he would swing his right arm forcefully down like a hammer.  Then he’d spread his arms again and look around the arena, with a combination of amazement and some sort of vicarious determination in his face.  If Freddie Mercury were to celebrate a three, I’d assume he’d look a lot like this guy did.

Count it!

I’ll also remember a woman sitting a few rows above the scorer’s table who would stand and wave a big gold pom-pom every time Hoff buried a three.  I’ll remember band director Skeeter Burroughs frantically waving his hand to start up the Rouser during timeouts after Blake’s big threes.

I’ll remember sitting and watching Blake warm up an hour and a half before the game, shooting countless three pointers.  After Blake missed a few from the baseline (a pretty rare event during his warm-ups), I told the guy next to me that he looked kind of cold.  Then Hoff stepped to the top of the key and buried ten or 15 in a row.  “See,” I said, “told you.”

Those are the things I’ll remember, perhaps as much as watching Blake himself.  When I look back at Blake’s historic night, I won’t necessarily see Hoff.  I’ll see Freddie Mercury just about chop the head off of the guy in front of him.  I’ll see the entire arena come to its feet after his eighth to salute him as he came back to the bench.

And that’s why I love walking into Williams Arena.  You could have watched that game on television and have been equally amazed with Blake’s performance.  But you wouldn’t be able to remember Freddie Mercury, pom-poms, and Skeeter firing up the Rouser as everyone in the arena rose to their feet.  You have to be there for those things.  That’s why I love the Barn.

And there will be more special Williams nights this season.  Hoff already made one night amazing.  Rodney Williams ignited the place earlier this year, and his dunks will do it again.

You just never know when that night will be.

Wednesday night against South Dakota State seems to be another snoozer on paper.  The Jackrabbits are 5-7—a weak 5-7 at that, with two wins over DII opponents—and the game is right before the holidays and at the start of an expected blizzard.  A lot of students will be home for the holidays.  This one doesn’t exactly have the makings to be an instant classic.

But you never know.  Rodney Williams could fly again.  Devoe Joseph could catch fire and fill the basket.  Lawrence Westbrook could, as he has done in the past, strap the team on his back and carry it.  Maybe Hoffarber will stay on fire and continue his three parade.  Maybe Justin Cobbs randomly has a huge night.  Maybe Royce White tearfully rejoins the team pre-game and posts 40 as J-Strings sits proudly courtside hammering out some acoustic riffs.  Okay, maybe that last one won’t happen.

And Freddie Mercury and pom-poms might be there and catch my eye again.  Or maybe somebody new will forge more random memories.

But the game could be as incredibly pedestrian as the paper match-up suggests.  And that’s alright, too.  I’ll watch some pretty boring games with the knowledge that one will eventually be the next Hoffarber game.

The key is to be there for that game, and you never know what game it will be.  There was no way to tell that Blake would go for eight 3-pointers last Tuesday, and you can’t tell when something like that may happen again.

It could be against South Dakota State tonight.  That’s why I’m driving back to campus tonight, through all the possible snow.  Because tonight may be another unexpected historic night for one of the Gophers.  Or the Kid could throw down some incredible dunk.  Or any number of things.  All I know is that whatever happens, I’ll be there to see it.

I do have one prediction for the South Dakota State game.  I think Ralph will absolutely decimate the Jackrabbits.  He will have a career night.  Volume III has had a nice set of four games to close out non-conference play, highlighted by a 16-point, 10-rebound performance in 15 minutes against Saint Joe’s.

And South Dakota State’s front line is 6-6 and 6-7.  It’s a really small team, almost to the point of being humorous.  A 6-7 center?  Good night.  Ralph will eat him up.  All night.  RSIII will wipe the floor with this guy.

Volume III could have a career day against SDSU

I’ve never seen Volume III play with as much confidence as he has in the last two games.  He’s commanding the ball more.  He looks more confident with his moves on the block.  You can sense that he is becoming more relaxed within the offense, and he is starting to get more touches.

This trend will continue against the undersized Jackrabbits.  Look for a huge night from Ralph.  I’m honestly expecting 23-12 with three assists and four or five blocks.  He will have his best night as a Gopher.

Hell, he might even smile.  And there’s no way I’m missing that.

Eyes towards March

So it’s been about a week since the Gophers lost at Miami in a game that handed us our third consecutive loss.  What a frustrating and discouraging trio of games.  There’s no doubt about that.  It wasn’t a very happy week to be a Gopher basketball fan.

But I wrote last time that I thought the Gophers were fine, that those losses didn’t expose a deep-seated weakness in the Gophers, that we’d be fine in the long run.  The Miami loss dampened that enthusiasm, but it didn’t fundamentally change my thoughts.  I’m still convinced that we’ll be fine.

Our offense simply went cold for three games, and we played three teams good enough to beat us on our off-nights.  Teams go through stretches like that.  Unfortunately, ours came during three straight games against tough teams.  If we played like that during any other stretch of non-conference play, we wouldn’t be saddled with three losses.  But hypothetical situations don’t change losses to wins.

Here’s how I see those three losses: We played terribly against three teams good enough to beat us.  We’re good enough to beat them, too.  We just didn’t play anywhere remotely near our best in those three games.  And now we have three losses.

But I am still optimistic about this season.  And I’m not a man who’s known for his optimism.

I still think we are a better offensive team than we were last season.  Our offense, at times last season, was brutal.  I don’t see our offense struggling to that degree this year.  We will have times where we struggle on offense, as we did in our three loses, but these instances will be more isolated than last season.

And I still think we make the tournament.

Three non-conference losses have made that a much more formidable task.  (Thankfully, none of them came to a team that looks like it would be a resume killer.)  We just have a lot less room for error in conference play.  Our 9-9 Big Ten record from last season?  Not going to cut it this year.

I project for the Gophers to make the tournament, independent of our performance in the Big Ten Tournament would require eleven conference wins (assuming we win the rest of our non-conference games).  That’s an 11-7 conference record—the same as second-place Illinois and Purdue last season.

That’s an admittedly tall order, and one that not a lot of people would have been willing to make following the Miami loss.  But it’s far from impossible, and, looking at our schedule, something that is most certainly attainable.

Assembly Hall could prove to be a tough venue for any Big Ten team this season.

Out of 18 conference games, we have six against Penn State, Indiana, and Iowa.  I think we are undoubtedly better than those three teams—none of them has looked particularly impressive.  In fact, there is only one of those six games that I worry about us losing: at Indiana in mid-January.  The Hoosiers have looked inconsistent, losing at home to Boston, but beating Pitt.  Catch them on a hot night in Bloomington and they could beat any team in the conference.  That said, I see the Gophers sweeping the Nittany Lions, Hawkeyes, and Hoosiers this season.

Then we have four games against Michigan and Northwestern.  Those two teams are the early enigmas in the Big Ten.  Michigan started the season with high hopes—ranked 15^th nationally—but has sputtered to a 4-4 start.  Northwestern, on the other hand, appeared to have had its season derailed by Coble’s injury, but have surged to a 7-1 start, including wins over Notre Dame, Iowa State, and North Carolina State.

I honestly don’t know what to make of either the Wolverines or Wildcats.  Is Michigan really that bad?  The Sims-Harrises had an embarrassing loss to Utah in their last game, but their other three losses weren’t to bad teams.  But those teams (Marquette, Alabama, and Boston College) aren’t particularly good, either.  It seems odd to me that Michigan could be that mediocre after returning their entire two-man roster.  But maybe the Sims-Harris-nobody approach simply isn’t going to get the job done this year.  I just don’t know.  I do know that Michigan will almost certainly enter conference play with five losses—they still have a game at Kansas—and it will be an uphill climb to go make another tournament appearance.

After losing Coble, I wrote the Wildcats off.  But Thompson and Shurna have stepped up and shouldered the load.  Is Northwestern for real?  At the moment, I have to say . . . kind of.  They are certainly better than I expected.  Outside of Purdue, they probably have the best resume of any Big Ten team so far.  But I don’t see them keeping this up all year.

Without Coble, they don’t really have a legitimate big man.  Shurna is too small to command the middle, and he plays more of a perimeter game.  Other than him, they have Luka Mirkovic and Kyle Rowley, neither of whom are starting caliber.  It’s hard to win in the Big Ten without an inside presence, and Northwestern’s lack of big men will catch up to them.  In addition, Shurna, Nash, and Thompson all average 34 minutes per game or more, with Thompson playing an even 39 per.  They’ll wear down as the season progresses.  And outside of that trio, the Wildcats don’t have much.  It’s been a surprising start for the Wildcats, but I don’t see them sustaining it.

Bill Carmody had asked for a lot from Michael Thompson this year, but he may be wearing down his players.

In the four games against the Sims-Harrises and Wildcats, I think the Gophers win three.  We should beat both of those teams in the Barn, and I see us splitting our road games against them.

So, collectively, in ten games against Michigan, Northwestern, Indiana, Iowa, and Penn State, I see the Gophers with nine wins.  That by no means is guaranteed.  You can’t take any Big Ten win for granted—unless you are playing Iowa.  But the Gophers are certainly capable of winning nine of those games.  And I don’t think it’s unnecessarily optimistic to expect them to.

That leaves our eight toughest conference games: Two with Michigan State, Purdue, and Ohio State, and one with both Illinois (away) and Wisconsin (home).  Those eight games could very well define the Gophers’ season, and our performance in them could either make or break our tournament resume.

Of those eight, we need to win at least two.  2-6 is a pretty pedestrian goal, and one that we should be able to achieve against that competition.  At the same time, those are all games that we could easily drop.

I see three games of those eight that are, honestly, very likely to be losses.  I don’t think we can beat Purdue this season.  The Boilermakers are really, really good.  Every time I watch them, I become more convinced that they will walk to the Big Ten title this season.  And we don’t match up well against them.  They have too many explosive players that create too many match-up problems for our man defense.  I expect to be swept by the Boilermakers this season—just as I expect them to sweep most Big Ten teams.  I also don’t think we can go into the Breslin Center and beat Michigan State.

Of the rest of those games, I believe the Gophers will win three.  I think we will beat Sconnie in the Barn.  The Badgers are a good team—although not as good as their win over Duke suggests—but they won’t come into Williams in mid-February, in the heart of conference play, with tournament implications, in the only game between us this year, and beat us.  It won’t happen.  It’s that simple.  Wisconsin will not beat us in the Barn.

We couldn’t beat the Buckeyes if they had Turner.  But without him, the Buckeyes are eminently beatable.  Turner makes that much of a difference.  His back injury has altered the Big Ten landscape.  And while you hate to see anybody of that caliber going down with an injury for an extended period of time, it is fortunate for the Gophers.  Turner isn’t expected to return until early February, and we play the Buckeyes twice in January.  Turner may be back for the second game, but he’ll definitely be out for the first.  We should beat the Turner-less Buckeyes at home in mid-January.  And if Turner is out for the second game, I think it is a toss-up in Columbus.

Turner has done everything for the Buckeyes this year and will not be easily replaced.

(It would be difficult to understate the impact of Evan Turner’s loss will have on the Buckeyes.  They have other quality players—Turner is one of five averaging double figures this season—but Turner did everything for them.  He was averaging 21-13-7 in the first seven games.  Who will replace those rebounds?  Those assists?  It will be a drastically different Buckeyes team, despite still retaining a solid core.  Turner brought everybody’s numbers up, and they simply won’t have anywhere near the same dynamic without him.  He was arguably the best player in the country this year.  You can’t replace that.)

I see the games at Illinois and hosting Michigan State as potential swing games.  Can we beat Michigan State at home?  Possibly.  Can we beat Illinois in Champaign?  Possibly.  Illinois has looked inconsistent, to say the least.  Back-to-back losses to Utah and Bradley.  A win over Clemson, followed by a plodding victory over Boise State.  They had a similar problem last year.  If they have a bad night, they are certainly beatable.  And I think the Spartans will struggle on the road this year, and I don’t see our home game against them as a definite loss.

In effect, I think we have three potential swing games—at Ohio State and Illinois, and home against Michigan State.  I think we pull one of those three out.  And with wins over Wisconsin and Ohio State at home, that would leave us with a 3-5 mark against the upper tiers of the Big Ten.

Those three wins, with the nine from the games against lesser Big Ten teams, would put us at 12-6 in the conference, and that performance would easily earn us a tournament berth.

Admittedly, this assessment is at least partly idealistic.  I’m quick to write off three consecutive losses, which is a foolish thing to do.  We lost those games for a reason.  And to marginalize those reasons in favor of blind optimism could easily lead to disappointment.  But I don’t think my optimism is blind.  I just don’t see us playing as poorly as we did in our three losses for the rest of the year.  Call it a feeling, call it irrational hope, call it whatever.  But I think the Gophers will still live up to their NCAA tournament expectations.

You get the sense that we’re starting to sort things out in these tune-up games before conference play.  Obviously, they are against inferior competition.  But the starting lineup is starting to click better with Hoff.  (And I’m still adamant that Blake will return to form this season).  It looks like players are starting to relax more and settle into their roles.  These are large assumptions to make after two games against weak opponents, but if we continue these trends over our next five games (home against St. Joe’s, Northern Illinois, South Dakota State, and Penn State, and at Iowa), I think we would be well suited as we enter the heart of the Big Ten season.

And twelve conference wins may seem like an unrealistic aspiration following the logjam in the standings last year.  But I see the Big Ten playing out more closely to 07-08 rather than 08-09 this season.  Purdue has clearly defined themselves as the class of the Big Ten, followed closely by Michigan State.  Then I see Illinois, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and us all settling in with around 10-12 conference wins.  I think the conference will be divided into a distinctive upper tier of six and a lower tier of five.  And the Gophers should be, at least hopefully, in that upper tier.

Am I being too optimistic?  Perhaps.  But I’ve been a lifelong Minnesota sports fan.  That entails a lifetime of disappointment that works to dissuade any optimism about local sports teams.  But I think there’s something about this Gophers team.  I’m rarely this optimistic about anything Minnesota sports-related.  And I have to tell you, I like the feeling.  I’m strapping in for the long haul.

76 Headaches

I want to be careful to select the correct word to describe the Gopher’s performance in the 76 Classic.  Disappointing?  Doesn’t really seem right.  Eye-opening?  No.  Worrisome?  Not quite.

The word that seems right?  Frustrating.  It was just a frustrating weekend.

We lost two games that we could have won.  You can’t overlook that.  We should beat both Texas A&M and Portland.  I really believe that.  I don’t think those two losses are indicative of the quality of team we are.  But they are in the books, and there’s no changing that.

Frustrating.

Entering the 76 Classic, I was expecting a second place finish from the Gophers, winning the first two before dropping to Bob Huggins’ talented West Virginia squad.  I would have been more than happy with 2-1, and after beating Butler that looked assured.  But the next two games, something was off, and we lost two close ones to finish 1-2.

That’s not a catastrophic weekend, by any means.  A nice victory over Butler and two close losses to quality teams in Portland and Texas A&M.  All three of those teams will be in the tournament.  And our two losses were games we could have easily won.  At no point did you get the impression that the Gophers were outplayed in either of those losses.

In all honestly, those two losses didn’t really affect my outlook for the rest of the season.  I still think we are a tournament team.  I still think we will compete with the top teams in the Big Ten.  I was expecting one non-conference loss.  We now have two.  Not a huge deal.

(Although those two losses make Wednesday’s game at Miami a crucial game. Miami is looking like a tournament team, and a road win over them would provide a resume builder to replace the missed ones in the 76 Classic.  And I don’t know if we could afford three non-conference losses heading into the Big Ten season.  The Miami game could be a defining game this season—either good or bad.)

The fact that we lost—or even that we lost twice—doesn’t bother me too much.  The Gophers were not going to go undefeated.  We were going to lose some games this year, and we are going to lose some more.

That we lost to Portland doesn’t bother me, either.  Portland is a solid team; they are 5-1 for a reason.  Mid-major teams are starting to compete at the national level, and losing to a good one like Portland isn’t some sort of eye-opening or embarrassing loss.

What bothers me is how we lost.  We could have won both of those games.  Those are both teams we should beat.  But we couldn’t put it all together in either of the games.

That’s why it was frustrating.

We played well against Butler.  We beat them and the officials they had in their back pockets by nine.  That’s a great win over a Top Ten team.  That can’t be lost in analyzing this weekend.

"Now let's go out there and ruin a perfectly good basketball game."

(That was, quite seriously, one of the most poorly officiated games I have ever seen.  Butler’s offense was drive-and-go-to-the-foul-line-on-a-terrible-bailout-call.  Nearly every possession.  And the refs kept letting them get away with it.  Just plain awful officiating.  You know when a color commentator goes out of his way to say that officials are “having an off night” that it is a poorly called game.  If we had even semi-competent refs, I think we beat Butler by 20.)

But, obviously, the second and third games are the story of the 76 Classic for the Gophers.  A five point loss to Portland and a one point loss to Texas A&M.  And both games had me pulling out my hair.

Let’s start with Portland; and first off, let’s give credit where credit is due: Portland played a good game.  They stifled us with strong defense and made enough offensive plays to win.  And every time we started on a run, they answered.  The Pilots played their game, and they won.

Not only did Portland play their game, but we did too.  And that’s why we lost.  We played a style that allowed Portland to win.

Portland is a good team, but we are undoubtedly better.  We should beat them.  That’s not to say a loss to Portland raises serious questions about the Gophers this season; but it is a game we should win.

So what went wrong?

The biggest problem was our shooting.  We shot the ball terribly.  20-60 from the field, 3-19 from three, and 13-22 from the free throw line.  That’s indefensibly poor.  Sure, Portland played good defense, but those types of numbers are inexcusable.  We missed a lot of open jump shots and a lot of bunnies.  If we even managed to shoot kind-of-bad in that game, we walk to a victory.

But those games happen—especially is you’re Illinois.  There are nights where nothing drops.  It’s part of any basketball season.  You have to deal with them.

Even shooting like that, though, we still should have won that game.  But we allowed Portland to dictate the pace of the game.

We played Portland’s game.  They made the decisions and forced us to adjust.  The Pilots deftly switched from man-to-man to 2-3 zone to half-court trap, and we never got comfortable on offense.  We had to continuously adjust and react, and if you have to spend 40 minutes reacting, you’re probably going to lose.

Having to continuously watch the Gophers struggle to establish any sort of offensive rhythm was frustrating.  Having any rhythm we could establish be broken by a change in defensive scheme was incredibly frustrating.

The most frustrating thing, though, was watching us fail to cause Portland the same issues.  We sat back in our man-to-man, and it was effective.  As it always is.  But it wasn’t enough.  We hardly pressed in that game.  I remember five times where we employed an all-out full court trap press.  And in those five instances, Portland had three sloppy turnovers and looked lost.

Why not press more?  Why not use our superior athleticism and force them into mistakes?  Why not force Portland to make offensive adjustments to deal with the press for an extended period of time?  They couldn’t break our press consistently.  But we didn’t press.  We took the pressure off and allowed them to dictate the pace.

We should force a team like Portland to play our game.  We are more athletic, top to bottom, than Portland, and by a wide margin.  We should have used our athleticism to pressure Portland.  To force them into mistakes.  To make them have to compete with our better athletes.  That’s a game that Portland could not have won.

Instead, we sat back.  We allowed them to make up for the athletic disparity.  And by the time we finally started to force the issue and put more pressure on them, it was too late.  Think if we started pestering them with ten minutes to go instead of three.

Obviously, hindsight is 20-20.  It’s easy to look back and see what we could have and should have done.  But these are trends that should have been noticed during the game.  The Gophers should have been able to make these adjustments in the course of the game.  But we didn’t.  And now it’s a game of missed opportunities.  A what-could-have-and-should-have-been game.  And, most importantly, a loss.

The Texas A&M game was less frustrating.  The Aggies are a good team.  I think the Gophers and A&M are pretty close in talent and quality this season.  So a one-point loss to them is not at all bad.

In fact, there is only one thing about that game that really frustrated me: that 2-3 zone.

That bizarre, random, completely ineffective 2-3 zone.  What was that?  Really?  I’ve thought about it for two solid days, and I’ve come up with nothing.  Still totally bewildered by it.

We are a man-to-man team, besides in the far-too-few instances when we actually press.  We play great man-to-man defense, and have since Tubby took over.  And our man-to-man was working against A&M; we built up a nice lead as they struggled offensively.

That 2-3 zone made it too easy for B.J. Holmes and crew.

And, then, that 2-3.  And A&M goes off, makes about 25 consecutive threes, and emphatically shakes off its early offensive woes.  During the time we spent in the zone, they went on something like a 21-4 run, took the lead and never gave it back.

What was that zone?  And why did we stay in it?  It was embarrassingly weak.  It took our biggest strength—defense—and turned it into a glaring hole.  It turned the basket into a three-point sieve.  But we stuck with it long enough to allow them to take a lead that proved to be insurmountable.

I didn’t get it, and the more I think about it, the more confused I get.  We play great man-to-man.  It’s our defining feature.  And then we just hop into a zone?  Why?  My head is spinning.  And the more I think about it, the worse it gets.  So I’m going to stop there.

But what was that 2-3 zone?  All I know is that if we stuck to man-to-man, we almost certainly would have won that game.  That chunk of time while we were in the zone was the only time A&M looked any good offensively.

And, once again, I thought we didn’t properly use the press.  And the press, once again, was effective in its limited scope.  And, once again, we didn’t start pressing until it was too late.  We essentially traded baskets with the Aggies for most of the second half, never really able to fully swing momentum our way.  I have to think the press would have at least swayed some momentum and a few points our way.

(And I think if we have our full complement of players for the full game we win that game.  But we didn’t.  We still should have won with the line-up we had—if it was just a full-time 2-3 zone-less line-up.)

Again, the two losses in the 76 Classic were more frustrating than anything.  Neither revealed any deep-seated weakness that will completely ruin our season.  Neither loss will kill our tournament resume.  Neither loss makes me truly question the base and the potential of the team I was so high on to start the season.

That’s why it was just a frustrating weekend.  It shouldn’t have any lasting effects.  A seismic rift shouldn’t cut through Williams Arena.  We just lost two games to a couple of quality non-conference opponents.  We absolutely missed opportunities in both, and we absolutely could have won both.  I think if we play Portland and Texas A&M again, we beat them both.  But we lost.  And by no means do two losses make any optimism for the rest of the season blind and misguided.

I am still expecting a great season from Gopher basketball.  Because, in all honesty, it will be a great season.  We lost two close games to two good teams.  The only thing that makes that look worrisome is that they were in back-to-back games.

And there were a lot of positives from the tournament.  We still beat Butler.  Colton had a great tournament.  Al looked good.  Devoe played well.  And, in all honesty, we played two dismally poor games against quality opponents are barely lost both games.  We were far from our best against Portland and A&M, and still competed and had chances to win.  That gives me some hope.  We probably won’t play that poorly again all year, especially as we get towards conference play.  If that’s close to our worst, I can’t wait to see our best.

Some things went well for Tubby and the Gophers. But we couldn't put it all together in the 76 Classic.

I think we rebound against Miami.  Tubby will have the team ready to go, and we will shake off some of the ills of the 76 Classic.  The missed bunnies and jumpers stayed out West, and we’ll recapture our early-season energy against the Hurricanes.

Gophers 83

Miami 68

76 Classic Predictions

It’s Thanksgiving week, and if you need one thing to be thankful for, be thankful that I will not put you through the mind-numbing and prosaic “Ten things I’m thankful for” post.  You’re welcome.

We will finally see the Gophers against some top-level competition over the course of the weekend, beginning with a Thanksgiving Day game against the tenth-ranked Butler Bulldogs.

And that is a game I fully expect to win.  Butler is overrated.  The Bulldogs are the mid-major darling du jour, and that’s the only reason I can see for such a high ranking.  It’s a solid team, but tenth in the nation?

 

Okay, so they returned all of their major producers from last season.  But they weren’t that impressive last year.  It was a 26-win Horizon League team that had one real quality victory (at Xavier) before being bounced by LSU in the first round of the dance.  Even if they return every player, how do the Bulldogs qualify as a top-ten team?  I don’t see it.

Butler is good. But tenth in the nation? Probably not.

And Butler hasn’t looked too impressive to start the season.  I watched them play against Northwestern, and at no point did they strike me as a top-ten team.  They didn’t have the kind of attitude and swagger that you see in bona-fide contenders; they just looked like a strong mid-major team that could beat low-level major conference squads like the Coble-less Wildcats.  Because that’s what they are: A strong mid-major—not the national contender they have been made out to be.  (Plus their other two wins, an eleven-point win over 0-4 Davidson and a four-point win at Evansville have not been indicative of a top-level team.

I think the Gophers expose Butler on Thursday.  Like the Bulldogs, we return every important player from a tournament team.  We have just done it without being nationally overrated.  And unlike Butler, we actually added some impact newcomers and have dismantled lower-quality opponents. 

I’ll take the Gophers 70-59. 

As for the rest of the tournament, I see the Gophers beating whichever team they run into in the second game—most likely UCLA.  That would likely lead to a title game against number eight West Virginia.  The Mountaineers are a very strong team and are actually deserving of such a high ranking.  Da’Sean Butler is a stud, but the Mountaineers, like the Gophers, are somewhat depleted.  Star Devin Ebanks isn’t playing because of unknown “personal issues,” and a few others are out.

The 76 Classic title is certainly a possibility this weekend.  But no matter what, I think the Gophers leave Anaheim with at least two wins.  Hopefully they will be against the top teams in the tournament. 

On to other Gopher news.

Rodney Williams is starting to get some national attention.  He made Andy Katz’ Weekly Watch as one of the players of the week, and cracked, for the first of what should be many times, Sportscenter’s top plays.  And he was the third overall pick in a mock NBA draft.  These things aren’t a huge deal, but I can’t remember this type of buzz surrounding a single Gophers player, both locally and nationally.

The Kid has certainly provided the flare and excitement that we were missing last year.  You can sense a change of attitude in Williams when Rodney is on the floor.  There’s a certain air about the arena—and the team—when he’s in the game.  Teammates look for him, fans focus on him, the student section freezes for a millisecond when he takes off for a dunk.  It’s really amazing.

And I don’t think I’m overreacting based on three games against some pretty lousy competition.  Sometimes you can just tell when a guy is special.  And the Kid is special.  It doesn’t matter who he’s playing—what he does is incredible.  He has created a certain energy that I can’t recall a single player creating for us in a long time.  And then he feeds off that energy.  You can tell he loves it.

And he’ll be doing this stuff all year long.  Trust me and settle in for the ride.

(I would like to go one post without gushing about Rodney, but, right now, I don’t think that is possible.  I’m just too excited.  There’s too much to look forward to.  Too much potential to ignore.  He’s starting to build his own legend, and we’re watching it from the start.  Maybe someday we’ll have a Rodney-less post.  Just don’t count on it anytime soon.)

Maybe someday I won't write about Rodney. Someday.

I’m also getting very excited about Al Nolen.  He’s getting a lot of assists, and he looked more willing to go to the basket against Utah Valley.  Al has an explosive first step and can get to the basket easily.  But towards the end of last season he looked hesitant to drive.  It was good to see him going hard towards the basket again.  If he can finish those looks more consistently, watch out.

Plus, Al’s assist numbers should also stay high this year.  He plays on a line with four solid scorers and he is a pass-first guy.  That makes for a lot of assists.  As I have said before, Nolen should lead the Big Ten is assists this season.

His defense is also looking spectacular, as it did last year.  He plays intense defense and has quick hands; he should continue to get plenty of steals this year.  Throw in DJ, Lawrence, and Rodney and you’re looking at a team that could easily lead the conference in steals.

 

Expect a good showing from Blake this weekend.

Well, the orchestra is playing a little early this post, so I guess I’ll wrap it up kind of quick.  But I’ll give you a final prediction for the 76 Classic.  I think Blake Hoffarber will have a big tournament.  I can see him going at about 15 points per during the tournament, with four threes a game.  It’s nothing more than a hunch, but I have a feeling Blake will be pouring in three this weekend.

He’s a streaky shooter, and I think he’s on the verge of a nice hot streak.  I think he’ll hit his stride on a larger national stage this weekend and find his stroke from outside.  And if he does that, the 76 Classic should be ours. 

And Andy Katz recently wrote an article about all of our suspensions.  Check it out if you haven’t already.