Reusse: When Gophers women’s coach Dawn Plitzuweit talks basketball, it’s a serious conversation

The Gophers women’s basketball team was certain to improve its nonconference record to 10-0 as it played host to North Florida on Tuesday. The possibility existed to sit through this contest, then take in coach Dawn Plitzuweit’s postgame media session and actually meet the second-season coach.

This did not occur. The North Florida athletes were so terrible at basketball that they were a disgrace to their namesakes, Ospreys, as a unique variety of raptor — as well as threats to cause long-term blurry vision if viewed for too long.

Gophers 33-6 at the quarter, and we’ll see you later.

There remained a desire to offer something on Plitzuweit in advance of Sunday’s Big Ten opener at Nebraska. The coach operates on a tight schedule. An arrangement was made for a Friday interview by phone.

Check out the résumé again. Find the icebreaker. That would be the interview strategy.

And there it was: The coach played basketball at Michigan Tech in the early 1990s.

Guess what? The interviewer had experience watching basketball at Michigan Tech. OK, it was a men’s game several years before Title IX started taking effect; Red Severson’s outstanding St. Cloud State team beating Tech in a Northern Intercollegiate Conference matinee.

The date was Jan. 20, 1968, a fact known immediately because the entertainment for a portion of the long bus ride back to St. Cloud was listening to a scratchy radio broadcast: Elvin Hayes (39 points) and Houston ending UCLA’s 47-game winning streak with a 71-69 victory in the Astrodome.

That wasn’t the icebreaker, of course. This was it: “How did you end up at Tech as a player? You know what’s said about Houghton? ‘It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.’”

Pause. “Michigan Tech has had a tremendous women’s basketball program,” Plitzuweit said. “They had never won the conference. We won it the year I got there. You go to Tech today, there are rows of championship banners, conference, regionals, national finals …

“I was there as a freshman when Tech started winning.”

Dawn Zarling from Jackson, Wis., was a two-time All-American and twice the Great Lakes Conference Player of the Year. She was inducted into the Michigan Tech Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006, right there with Tony Esposito and all those great hockey players.

The winning she did as a player has continued as Coach Plitzuweit. She won a D-II championship with Grand Valley State in her fourth season as a head coach in 2005-06. She won at Northern Kentucky, which wasn’t easy, and, most notably, Plitzuweit took over South Dakota and went head-to-head with the powerhouse Aaron Johnston has created at South Dakota State.

“Absolutely, it was a great challenge to take on South Dakota State,” Plitzuweit said. “When I got there, if you were playing in a midmajor, it was a one-bid league for the NCAA tournament. You had to win your conference to be in the tournament.

“We studied top midmajors, we took some time, and we became a midmajor that earned an at-large bid.”

How was the relationship with Johnston and the State program?

“I have a lot of respect for them,” she said. “They always had a good team.”

South Dakota won three regular-season titles and three Summit League tournaments in her six seasons. She was the league’s Coach of the Year for three consecutive seasons from 2017-18 to 2019-20. The Coyotes were 30-2 and 15-0 in the conference in 2019-20, when the season was halted by COVID-19.

“We had Amy Williams here before Dawn, and she did a good job,” said Mark Wendt, a superfan from near Vermillion, S.D. “Amy won the WNIT, and then she was hired at Nebraska. But Dawn was the one who slayed the dragon, who started to win games against State.

“She set the bar high for the coaches that followed. She spoiled us.”

She was 158-36 (.814) in six seasons at South Dakota, then took a job at West Virginia and went 19-12 in 2022-23. She stayed only one season, accepting the job here after athletic director Mark Coyle fired Lindsay Whalen, an all-time great player with the Gophers.

It is early in her time to expect Plitzuweit to have spoiled basketball fans here. The Gophers were 5-13 in the Big Ten last season, then bought into a silly consolation event, the WNIT, and made it to the finals.

As for the 10-0 so far, it has come against a strength of schedule rated in the 330s out of 362 teams — compared to No. 1 for former rival South Dakota State.

Things can start changing Sunday, though: Gophers at Nebraska, Plitzuweit vs. Amy Williams, a coach she succeeded and then raised the bar significantly at South Dakota.

What are you facing at Nebraska, Coach?

“They are one of the most efficient teams you will play,” Plitzuweit said. “You can see that with their field-goal percentage. They score at a high level. They are balanced. And Britt Prince, a freshman guard, is an outstanding addition for them.”

Lesson learned: The icebreaker in interviewing Dawn Plitzuweit is a basketball question.

And skip the Houghton jokes.