Dawson Garcia and other Gophers seniors came back. Could it happen again next season?

The list of Minnesota natives who’ve scored at least 1,500 points for the Gophers men’s basketball team is fairly short: Kevin McHale, Randy Breuer, Sam Jacobson and, most recently, Dawson Garcia.

And if Garcia had played his entire career with the Gophers, he could be the program’s all-time leading scorer.

Mychal Thompson holds that record with 1,992 points. Garcia has 1,997 career points, including his time with Marquette and North Carolina, and the 1,502 he’s scored over three seasons with the Gophers.

“Any time you get to step on the floor and wear the Minnesota uniform, it’s a pleasure, it’s an honor,” Garcia said recently. “After my career is over, whenever that may be, I’ll look back at it and think about it more.”

Garcia’s career would’ve been over last season if not for the NCAA allowing athletes to get a fifth season of eligibility to make up for the 2020 COVID shutdown.

You can bet the Gophers would love to find some kind of waiver or rule for him to come back again, but that’s a long shot.

The Gophers (15-14, 7-11 Big Ten) will honor Garcia and the rest of their 10-member senior class before Wednesday night’s home finale against Wisconsin.

Garcia tweaked an ankle late in the Nebraska game, but he’s expected to play against the No. 12 Badgers.

It will also be the Williams Arena farewell for Parker Fox, Lu’Cye Patterson and Femi Odukale, who’ve all played at least five seasons. Fox has famously been around for eight seasons, including his redshirt years.

And now there’s another group of Gophers seniors whose future eligibility could hinge on rule changes. Starter Mike Mitchell Jr., reserves Brennan Rigsby, Trey Edmonds and Caleb Williams have played only four seasons. Injured transfer Tyler Cochran has played just three full seasons in six years and has missed this entire season recovering from foot surgery.

“I think these guys would do another year if it was granted,” Fox guessed. “Especially with NIL — that makes it even easier an answer. Coming back for this eighth year, counting as my fifth year playing, was just a no-brainer once I sat down and thought about it.”

With two regular season games left, the Gophers are more concerned with extending this current run. The 18-team Big Ten has a 15-team conference tournament, and the Gophers were 11th through Monday’s games.

Rigsby scored a career-high 20 points off the bench at Nebraska, including the go-ahead three-pointer in the waning seconds.

Last month after his 14-point performance in a win at Penn State, Rigsby was asked if he’d consider coming back for a fifth year using the junior college rule. Before joining the Gophers, he played his freshman year at Northwest Florida State College before transferring to Oregon and then Minnesota.

“It’s one of those things you have to figure out the technicalities of it all,” Rigsby said. “I’ve definitely been looking at it more and more. I feel like everybody’s just getting fifth years out of nowhere now.”

Rigsby joked that “it’s like Oprah” Winfrey announcing, “You get a fifth year! You get a fifth year! You get a fifth year!”

Imagine a Gophers backcourt with current freshman Isaac Asuma, Cochran and Rigsby next year? In the frontcourt, Kadyn Betts is a sophomore and Frank Mitchell is a junior. They both could return.

“We’ll have those discussions [about next season] when we need to,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day, I just want what’s best for those guys. Whether that’s here or somewhere else. Whatever that could be.”

7:30 p.m., Wednesday at Williams Arena

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