Turnaround has Gophers men’s basketball aiming higher than just making the Big Ten tournament

This isn’t the same Gophers men’s basketball team picked 18th in the Big Ten preseason poll, or the one that started 0-6 in the conference in January.

With six wins in the last nine games, the Gophers recently joined conference title contender Michigan as the only teams to sweep UCLA and USC on the road this season.

If the Gophers win back-to-back home games against Penn State and Northwestern on Saturday and Tuesday, respectively, their goals will be much higher than just qualifying for the Big Ten tournament. Only the top 15 teams make it now.

It’s not farfetched to see the Gophers (14-12, 6-9 Big Ten) playing themselves into an upper-half league finish and first-round bye in the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis next month.

“I feel like we can get in the top seven and then who knows what could happen,” senior guard Lu’Cye Patterson said. “Everybody’s starting to realize that we can really do something special here right now.”

The Gophers are in a three-way tie with USC and Indiana for 11th place in the conference, at 6-9.

Johnson wants his players to keep a sense of urgency and not fall into a trap like the Gophers did losing Feb. 1 at home to a struggling Washington squad.

“Very few people probably thought we would win this many games in league play,” Johnson said. “But for this group, we don’t have a lot of room for error. We can’t overlook and will not overlook anybody or any game or any situation. We’ve got to have that urgency and almost desperation.”

There were 12 Big Ten teams with at least eight losses in conference play through Friday — and most of them are separated by 1-3 games in the standings with five regular season games remaining.

Four of the last five games for the Gophers are against teams in that muddled bottom 10 in the standings. That stretch for Minnesota includes games March 1 at Nebraska and March 9 at Rutgers in the regular season finale.

Securing tiebreakers against Penn State, Northwestern, Nebraska and Rutgers would help the Gophers even more. They already own key head-to-head tiebreakers over USC and Iowa that might be pretty meaningful in the end.

The only ranked opponent left on the Gopher schedule is the rematch vs. rival Wisconsin, on March 5 at Williams Arena.

Best-case scenario: The Gophers win out to finish 11-9 in the Big Ten. That could put them as high as sixth place depending on others. But the Gophers haven’t finished with a winning Big Ten record since Richard Pitino went 11-7 in 2017.

Finishing .500 in the Big Ten might also allow the Gophers to have at least a first-round bye in the conference tournament, which goes to the top nine seeds. The top four teams get a double-bye.

Worst-case scenario would be losing out to finish the regular season. That might put the Gophers in danger of falling out of the top 15, but they’ve been on a roll lately.

In Tuesday’s 64-61 win at UCLA, Dawson Garcia had arguably his best game of the season with 27 of his season-high 32 points in the second half. But it was far from a one-man show during the West Coast trip.

Patterson, who had 25 points in the 69-66 win at USC, made clutch free throws to help beat the Trojans and two layups late to provide the go-ahead points vs. UCLA.

Off the bench, Frank Mitchell and Isaac Asuma also combined for 27 points to help make up for Garcia scoring under double figures against the Trojans.

Patterson’s starting backcourt teammate Mike Mitchell Jr. broke out of a slump Tuesday to hit four three-pointers against the Bruins.

“That’s the great thing about our team,” Garcia said. “We can have guys step up at any point and any time. It could be a different guy each game.”

That type of balance will be essential for the Gophers to not only secure their spot but get a higher seed in the Big Ten tournament.

“I want our guys to feel like we control our own destiny,” Johnson said. “Any team that’s trying to make the NCAA tournament, the best thing you can do is to keep winning. The other stuff you can’t control.”

1 p.m., Saturday at Williams Arena

TV; radio: BTN; 1130-AM

The Nittany Lions (14-13, 4-12 Big Ten) dropped 11 of 12 games in January and February to sink to the bottom of the Big Ten standings, which included a 69-61 loss at home to the Gophers on Feb. 4. They halted a seven-game losing streak Wednesday in an 89-72 win at home vs. Nebraska. Yanic Konan Niederhauser and Zach Hicks combined for 38 points against the Cornhuskers. The 7-foot Konan Niederhauser missed the first Gophers meeting this season with an ankle injury.