Before Iowa’s Caitlin Clark takes the Target Center floor in front of a sellout crowd in the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament, before Ohio State and Indiana — among others — begin fighting for NCAA tournament seeding, the Gophers will try to recapture their competitive spirit that appears to have waned down the stretch.
“That means play hard, be efficient, take care of the basketball, get good shots,” said Gophers coach Dawn Plitzuweit, whose team lost by 56 points at Penn State on Sunday. “That’s not something that we’ve done at the level we want to do.”
The tournament begins Wednesday, when the bottom four teams in the 14-team league battle for the right to play on Thursday. Purdue faces Northwesternat 5:30 p.m. The 11th-seeded Gophers will play 14th-seeded Rutgers 25 minutes after the first game ends.
The Gophers (15-14 overall, 5-13 Big Ten), having lost four consecutive and 10 of their past 11, enter the tournament with modest goals.
When they beat Michigan State 69-50 on Jan. 20, the Gophers had won three of four games, were 14-4 overall, 4-3 in Big Ten play and comfortably in the NCAA tournament field according to ESPN.
There has been only one win since.
Still without guard and leading scorer Mara Braun (foot injury) and starting center Sophie Hart (hip), the team has struggled on both ends of the floor, having been outscored by an average score of 83.8-50.3 over the past four games.