Reserves take on lead role in Gophers' second-half surge

LINCOLN, NEB. - The dream lives, but reaching it won't be easy.

In notching a critical victory over Nebraska, the Gophers men's basketball team -- for the moment -- jumped back on track to move past a rough loss at Iowa and hope for an NCAA tournament bid, a boost for the tough road ahead.

The Gophers suffered some early-game lethargy Sunday, but they broke out of it halfway through the second half. With Chip Armelin leading a bench that proved to be the team's spark plug once again, the Gophers pushed past the Cornhuskers for a 69-61 victory.

"It means a lot," said Armelin, who ignited the team with 15 points, five rebounds and three assists. "It was a building kind of game, just to get us back on our feet."

The Gophers will need to plant a hard stance, as there don't figure to be any easy strides from here. They have seven conference games left, including five against teams currently ranked in the Top 25. The Gophers (17-7, 5-6 Big Ten) will have to play very well down the stretch if they even hope to clear .500 in the conference.

"It's crunch time in the season," coach Tubby Smith said. "And if you expect to compete for anything, you've got to be playing well this time of year."

And apparently get a massive outing from the reserves. With 11 minutes left Sunday and the score tied 39-39, Rodney Williams was able to come out of a scramble underneath the Nebraska basket with a steal and fed the ball to Maverick Ahanmisi, who took it down to the other end for a layup and a three-point play. After Andre Hollins hit a three-pointer to follow, the Gophers ran with the momentum. The 9-0, all-reserves run gave the Gophers a lead they held until the end.

The Gophers were fueled early and late by increasingly important bench play. Their starters combined for 29 points compared to 40 for their reserves. Among the starters, Ralph Sampson III and Williams each finished with eight points and three rebounds, and freshman Joe Coleman was held scoreless for the second game in a row.

With the bench-sparked run against the Huskers (11-11, 3-8), the Gophers' intensity noticeably picked up, and the entire team seemed more involved. The Gophers shot 66.7 percent from the field in the second half, with a majority of their attempts coming from inside the paint.

"That definitely fires us up," Williams said of the bench play. "We're the starters, and we're supposed to be the ones that come out the gates and get this thing rolling, but these last couple games, it's been our bench for us. So once we see how hard they're playing, we can't do anything else but go in there and work hard."

With a very tough schedule ahead -- including home games against Ohio State, Michigan State and Indiana, and two games against Wisconsin -- the Gophers need all the fire they can muster. They need to go 4-3 the rest of the way to reach .500, meaning they will have to beat some of the conference's top teams.