Minnesota Scene: Gophers women's basketball coach aims for milestone victory

It will be a busy week for the Gophers women's basketball team, one in which Marlene Stollings will hope to pick up her 100th victory as a head coach. She will have three chances to do so, in three cities.

She will take her first crack Tuesday night when the Gophers visit New Mexico. They return home Thursday to play Army at Williams Arena, and Sunday they face a top-10 opponent for the second week in a row when they visit No. 6 South Carolina.

Stollings is 99-67 as a college coach at Winthrop, Virginia Commonwealth and Minnesota, where she is 45-25 since arriving in 2014. The Gophers (5-3) ended a three-game losing streak Saturday by beating Detroit Mercy 111-91, their eighth game of at least 100 points under Stollings. Junior guard Carlie Wagner scored 31 points for the Gophers.

New Mexico (3-4) is coached by Mike Bradbury, who came to Albuquerque this year after six seasons at Wright State. His top player is center Richelle van der Keijl, who followed Bradbury from Wright State and is averaging 15.7 points and 10.9 rebounds per game. All-Mountain West guard Cherise Beynon averages 13.9 points and 9.1 rebounds; last season, she had 14 points, six assists and five rebounds as the Lobos beat the Gophers 72-53 at Williams Arena.

New Mexico has two Minnesotans on the roster: freshman center Hannah Sjerven of Rogers and senior guard Tesha Buck, the all-time leading scorer at Red Wing who is redshirting after transferring from Wisconsin-Green Bay.

• Gadiva Hubbard was named Big Ten women's basketball freshman of the week, a first for the 5-9 Gophers guard from Virginia Beach, Va. Hubbard is the top-scoring freshman in the Big Ten at 14.6 points per game this season. She scored a career-high 26 points against Detroit Mercy and also had nine points and four steals in Wednesday's loss to No. 8 Florida State.

• Northwestern senior Nia Coffey (Hopkins) was named Big Ten co-player of the week with Penn State's Teniya Page. Coffey averaged 21.5 points, 13.0 rebounds and 2.5 blocks in two victories. Sunday, she set the Wildcats record for career rebounds with 955.

Gophers defenseman and Minneapolis native Ryan Lindgren is one of six Minnesotans on the 27-player roster for the U.S. men's hockey national junior team, which will play in the world championships Dec. 26-Jan. 5 in Toronto and Montreal. The team, coached by St. Cloud State's Bob Motzko, will be pared to 23 players by Dec. 24.

The other Minnesotans are Boston University goalie Jake Oettinger (Lakeville); St. Cloud State defenseman Jack Ahcan (Savage) of St. Cloud State; and forwards Joey Anderson (Roseville) of UMD, Brock Boeser (Burnsville) of North Dakota and Kieffer Bellows (Edina) of Boston University.

The roster also includes Wisconsin's Luke Kunin and Boston University's Jordan Greenway, both Wild draft picks.

• The Big Ten suspended Lindgren one game for elbowing Ohio State's Sam McCormick in the closing minutes of the Gophers' 8-3 loss Saturday. Lindgren will have to sit out Friday night's game at Michigan State.

The Concordia (St. Paul) volleyball team received the No. 1 seed for the NCAA Division II championships, which will be held Thursday through Saturday in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Concordia (32-2) will play eighth-seeded American International in the final quarterfinal Thursday night.

The Golden Bears, who won seven consecutive national titles from 2007 to 2013, are making their 10th appearance in the Elite Eight. They did not reach the national tournament the past two years.

This is the first time the eight-team tournament field was seeded.

• Minnesota Duluth (10-2-2), which hasn't played since Nov. 19, remained No. 1 in the United States College Hockey Online men's poll released Monday. After two weeks off, the Bulldogs return with a series this weekend at No. 2 Denver (11-2-3). Penn State (13-1-1) moved up four spots to No. 3, the Nittany Lions' best ranking ever. The Gophers (7-5-2) stayed at No. 11 after their weekend series split with No. 10 Ohio State (9-2-4) at Mariucci Arena. … Wisconsin (15-2-1) remained at No. 1 in the USCHO.com women's poll and the Gophers (14-2-2) No. 2 after the teams split two games over the weekend in Madison.

• Minnesota Duluth senior linebacker Beau Bates (Minnetonka) is one of 52 nominees for the 2016 Cliff Harris Award, presented to the top small college defensive football player in the country. Bates, who last month was named NSIC Defensive Player of the Year, had a team-high 87 tackles this season and led all NCAA Division II linebackers with 13 sacks.

• Gophers senior swimmers Jakub Maly and Kierra Smith will head to Windsor, Ontario, to compete for their respective countries beginning Tuesday as part of the Short Course World Championships, which run through Sunday. Maly will compete for Austria, Smith for Canada.