Minnesota defeated Belmont 75-63
The Minnesota Golden Gophers women’s basketball team won the first postseason championship in program history on Wednesday night defeating Belmont 75-63 to win the Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament. The Big Ten has dominated the tournament over its to year history with Illinois winning in 2024 to join the Gophers this season. Minnesota now hopes to springboard their championship just like the Illini did into an NCAA Tournament berth next season.
Minnesota jumped out early on the Bruins and never trailed in the game. Minnesota took an 18-8 lead after the opening quarter as freshman Tori McKinney would score nine of her career high 26 points in the opening ten minutes to push the Gophers ahead. She would add eight more in the second quarter to help Minnesota take a 37-23 lead into the halftime break.
Minnesota continued to push further ahead in the third quarter extending their lead to 24 with less than a minute left in the third quarter. But, Belmont would make things interesting in the fourth. Minnesota seemed to take their foot off the gas a bit, and the Bruins made a valiant comeback cutting the Minnesota lead to at little as eight points down the stretch. But the Gophers did enough to hang onto the lead, and played good enough defense to keep Belmont firing bricks from beyond the arc ending their comeback attempt. The final horn blew and the Gophers celebrated their title on the court.
McKinney earned MVP honors with her 26 points. Mallory Heyer had another huge game for the Gophers recording her 7th double-double on the season with 18 points and 16 rebounds. Amaya Battle added 17 as well. The Gophers defense was key as they held the Belmont shooters to only 33.3 percent from the field, including 26.3 percent from three-point range. Minnesota dominated the boards 40-29 as well.
The hope is that the Gophers can now use this as a springboard to a NCAA Tournament appearance next season. Minnesota should be a better team in 2025-26 with the return of both Mara Braun and Taylor Woodson from injury. They return all five starters including McKinney, Heyer, Battle, Sophie Hart and Grace Grocholski. As it stands right now without any portal departures the Gophers have room to add two players from the portal, and hopefully with their recent success they can lure a bigger fish to try and help this team leap up the Big Ten next season.
All those players can return and look up in the Barn and see a banner from this season hanging in the rafters. Yeah it’s not the NCAA Tournament but as McKinney said postgame on ESPN2 “We are the second best champions out there!” They are right to be proud of their achievements, and strive to add another banner next season, but this one with even loftier goals.