Minnesota defeated Ohio State 88-79 at Williams Arena. With the win, the Gophers improve to 17-9 on the season and 8-7 in conference play. The Gophers are above .500 in late February. Elijah Hawkins led all scorers with 24 points.
The magic number is 5.
At a high level, the game was never in doubt. The Gophers led from the first basket and never trailed over 40 minutes. Minnesota jumped out early on hot shooting and stifling defense, and while there were a fair number of lapses on defense throughout, the Gophers looked like a solid Big Ten team.
In lieu of a play by play recap (seriously just go watch the highlights), I’m doing an observation for each win I think the team still needs to have a chance for the tournament.
Isn’t it great to have a PG?
Elijah Hawkins played 39 minutes, had a career scoring night with 24 points (4-5 from three point range and 8-11 from the charity stripe) and added 7 assists and just 2 turnovers. He also had two of the most fun moves I have seen in a college game in a long while. The first was a step back three that sent his defender to Iowa before Hawkins nailed the three pointer. The second was with less than a minute remaining where Hawkins crossed over a defender while floating backwards to avoid the Buckeyes fouling.
He is not the best player on the team (that is Garcia) or the most dominant (Payne) but he is in my view unquestionably the team’s most important player.
Interior Domination
Pharrel Payne and Dawson Garcia combined for 37 points on 13-22 shooting and 10-13 from the foul line, 13 rebounds, and just two turnovers. Hard to ask for more from a front court. As a team, the Gophers outrebounded the Buckeyes 32-26 overall and 13-9 on the offensive boards. Those offensive rebounds went on to be 19 second chance points.
Special shout out to Pharrel Payne shooting 71% from the foul line tonight, almost twice his season average.
Driving the basketball gets results
Most explicitly this applied to Braeden Carrington, who correctly passed up several three point attempts in favor of driving into the lane and drawing fouls on Ohio State’s bigs. The Gophers shoot 40% from distance in part because the vast majority of their three point shots were good shots and instead of settling for mediocre three point attempts.
Will the bench be this short for the rest of the season?
Minnesota only went two deep tonight, playing just seven guys. Parker Fox played a strong 18 minutes and Carrington functionally was a starter tonight. I suspect some of that was the nature of the opponent, but I do wonder whether or not the team is going to look substantially different the rest of the season. If that turns out to be the case, I also wonder how much longer some of those players on the bench wear a Minnesota uniform.
The Throwbacks should be the home jersey forever
No more needs to be said. They look fantastic.
If you’re a person who wants to support NIL opportunities, I would recommend the replicas that Dinkytown Athletics is selling.
Minnesota next travels to Nebraska on Sunday February 25th for another opportunity to pick up a Q1 win.