Four things learned: Cam Christie's flashy debut, Isaiah Ihnen's career night and more

Gophers coach Ben Johnson arguably had the least depth in the Big Ten at times when injuries plagued his basketball team last season, but the opposite is true so far this year.

Johnson knew his starting center Pharrel Payne would miss Friday's game with a foot injury, but his team didn't miss a beat in a 102-76 win against Texas-San Antonio.

Dawson Garcia had 22 points and six rebounds, but the Gophers had five players score in the double figures and got 37 points off the bench, including Cam Christie with 18 points in his debut.

"That's why you're starting to realize depth is so important," Johnson said. "The last two years we didn't have that. We started already with two guys out two years in a row. But now we're able to absorb that [injury]."

Here are four things learned from the Gophers' second win this season Friday:

It would have been easy to excuse Christie for coming out slow in his first college game after missing a month of practice because of illness, but he was ready to make an immediate impact Friday.

The 6-6 Christie scored the most points for a Gophers freshman in his debut since Dan Coleman had 21 points vs. Lipscomb in 2004. Coleman was a redshirt freshman, though.

The last true Gophers freshman to score more than Christie in his debut was Kris Humphries with 26 points and 15 rebounds vs. UMKC in 2003.

Johnson, a senior teammate of Humphries 20 years ago with the Gophers, has consistently raved about the potential of his top recruit in the 2023 class, but fans finally got to see what the hype was all about at the Barn.

Christie's 4-for-6 shooting from three-point range started with three straight threes to help the Gophers pull away with a 54-30 halftime lead. The Illinois native had a team-high 13 points, two of his four assists and two steals in the first half in 11 minutes.

You could argue that the Gophers' top low-post player is Payne, a 6-9, 255-pound sophomore from Cottage Grove. But he only played 16 minutes in Monday's season-opening 80-60 win vs. Bethune-Cookman before sitting out Friday.

Garcia is playing the best basketball of his career to start the season with 45 points and 20 rebounds combined in his first two games. Those are Big Ten player of the year candidate numbers.

But the Gophers surrounded him with more frontcourt help this season. The 6-9 Isaiah Ihnen had 20 points and six rebounds with the start at power forward. Parker Fox, who was out for two years with Ihnen recovering from knee injuries, had contagious energy and effort in the first half.

The Gophers won the rebounding battle 43-32 and recorded six blocks in the game. Rarely used reserves Jack Wilson, Kadyn Betts and Kris Keinys saw minutes in the second half on Friday after the score stretched to insurmountable territory. Wilson even scored his first basket for the Gophers.

The Gophers shot more three-pointers than anyone in the Big Ten at the end of the Richard Pitino era, but they didn't have the shooters to be very accurate. It was an awkward situation.

That is completely different in Johnson's third season with the program. Through two games, the Gophers rank second in the Big Ten behind defending champion Purdue in three-point shooting (41.3%). It certainly helps when Christie and Ihnen combined for 9-for-11 on three-pointers.

Five different players scored to give Minnesota 14-for-29 shooting from beyond the arc, which was the most threes in a game for the Gophers since the 2021-22 season.

Last season, the Gophers were last in Division I in free-throw percentage (61.9%), but they showed a significant improvement through two games this season. They're 79.7% on free throws this season on 55-for-69 shooting.

The 28 free throws made Friday were the most in a game for the Gophers since they made 34 free throws during the 2020-21 season against St. Louis and Kansas City, respectively.

Garcia, who went 14-for-16 at the charity stripe in the opener, made the most free throws by a Gophers player since Marcus Carr went 14-for-19 vs. St. Louis on Dec. 12, 2020. Garcia followed that up with 7-for-7 free-throw shooting against UTSA.

Garcia, Christie, Fox and Elijah Hawkins shot a combined 21-for-23 from the foul line Friday.