Better to be underdogs? The Gophers feel the pressure when they are favored to win

Instead of reminding his team about impressive road wins at USC and UCLA, Ben Johnson wrote a message on the whiteboard in the Gophers locker room Saturday.

It read “don’t wait until it’s too late” to play with urgency.

The fourth-year Gophers coach did not want his players feeling too comfortable, playing Penn State, the Big Ten’s last-place team, at Williams Arena. The previous time that happened, they lost at home to Washington on Feb. 1.

“When you’re playing well, sometimes you do get a little too comfortable,” Johnson said. “More worried about your offense and shots, and not continuing to get stops and play through your defense.”

To Johnson’s disappointment, his team fell into that same trap in Saturday’s 69-60 loss against the Nittany Lions — in a game that had postseason implications for seeding and even qualifying for the Big Ten tournament.

“We waited until it was too late. It was literally on the board,” Johnson said. “Because I felt it. I just knew it. That’s your worry as a coach going in.”

That same feeling looms for the Gophers (14-13, 6-10 Big Ten) again Tuesday as they host a desperate Northwestern squad at Williams Arena.

The Wildcats are below the Gophers in the standings and among the bottom three teams in the conference. Fifteen of the Big Ten’s 18 teams make the conference tournament, and as of now, Northwestern, Penn State and Washington wouldn’t make it.

“We had about six weeks where things weren’t going our way,” said Penn State coach Mike Rhoades, who lost seven in a row before beating Nebraska and the Gophers. “In this conference, nothing’s easy and it’s unforgiving.”

There seemed to be more pressure on the Gophers when they started 0-6 in the Big Ten, but being favored in games this season has been a kiss of death.

They are 1-9-1 this season as the favorite against the spread — meaning 1-9 with one push. Their only win in that situation was in an 80-57 home victory vs. Oral Roberts in the Nov. 6 season opener.

Last season, the Gophers ranked No. 2 nationally with a 25-9 record against the spread, including 12-3 when they were favored to win.

What caused the Gophers to not play as well this year in games they were favored? They could be tightening up when their offense struggles.

On Saturday, the Gophers led 24-15, then missed 13 consecutive shots and went without a field goal for the last nine minutes of the first half. They were outscored 38-15 by Penn State from that point to trail by 14 points in the second half.

“We can’t let ourselves get down like that and trying to fight back,” freshman guard Isaac Asuma said. “Have to have that energy from the get go.”

Johnson said getting back to a defensive identity is something “that’s easily correctable” for the Gophers, but they seem to be better in the bigger games.

The Gophers were one of 33 teams nationally as of Monday with at least five Quad 1 wins, the most important factor on an NCAA tournament résumé. They only had two Quad 1 wins last year.

But Johnson’s team has the worst NET ranking of any team in the country with at least five Quad 1 wins, at No. 92 through the weekend’s games. The two closest teams in NET with that many quality wins were Nebraska at 54th and Oklahoma at 52nd.

The simple reason for the Gophers' poor NET ranking is having too many losses, but they also have too many bad losses. They have two Quad 3 losses — to Washington at home and Wichita State at a neutral site in Orlando.

Among Minnesota’s four Quad 2 losses were winnable games vs. North Texas, Ohio State and Penn State. And Wake Forest was a close game as well in Florida.

Dwelling on the “what if” scenarios in the schedule this season can seem pointless now, but two particular Gophers losses loom in the final stretch of Big Ten play.

If the Gophers had beaten struggling Washington and Penn State teams at home this season, they’d be 8-8 in the Big Ten with four regular-season games left. A Minnesota team picked to finish last in the league hasn’t played at its best when expectations were higher after big wins this year.

“That’s something kind of new to us, in terms of being able to handle that, especially towards the end of the year,” Johnson said.

Finishing above .500 in league play for the first time since 2017 is no longer possible for the Gophers, but they can still earn a Big Ten tournament first-round bye if they win Tuesday and get on a late-season run.

“I don’t want them to put too much pressure on themselves to play well,” Johnson said. “I just want them to continue to do what we’ve done that’s always got us to these points. To feel the urgency of staying who we are because that’s proven to be good enough.”

6 p.m. Tuesday at Williams Arena

TV; radio: Peacock; KTLK 1130-AM

The Wildcats (14-13, 5-11 Big Ten) made back-to-back NCAA tournaments for the first time in 2023 and 2024, but they’re having a down year. The team lost two of their top three scorers, Brooks Barnhizer and Jalen Leach, to season-ending injuries this month. Northwestern lost six of seven games, including three in a row before a convincing 70-49 win at Ohio State last Thursday. Nick Martinelli, who had 18 points vs. the Buckeyes, is tied for the Big Ten scoring lead with Wisconsin’s John Tonje at 19.7 points per game.