Rachel Banham's Gophers are paying the price right now for a cream-puff nonconference schedule and a severely back-loaded Big Ten schedule.
What that means is despite their 18-7 overall record and 10-4 conference mark -- good for third place alone -- they are not even a bubble team yet to get an at-large NCAA bid.
Why? Their RPI is No. 76.
What is RPI?
RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule and how a team does against that schedule. It does not consider things like margin of victory, only whether or not a team won and where the game was played. It is used by the NCAA as one of their factors in deciding which teams to invite to the NCAA tournament and where to seed them.
Here is the Gophers problem, they played 11 nonconference games, going 8-3.
They lost to Auburn (No. 49 in RPI), Duke (51) and New Mexico (187).
Their best nonconference win was over Maine (77). Their next best was over Memphis (109) ... and it gets worse from there: North Dakota (128), Stetson (182), Towson (284), Wofford (307), Kent State (317) and NJIT (342).