Gophers Bomb

The Minnesota  Gophers didn't show much down south yesterday, as both the men and the women got out-shot, basically.

But while Duke 89 Minnesota 71 sounds like a thrashing, take a closer look at the stat sheet. The Gophers out-rebounded #5 Duke, for example, 35-32. More than that, there were 38 rebounds taken off the Minnesota glass. 22 were taken by Duke, 16 by the Gophers (42 percent). Off the Duke glass, we took 19 boards, they took 10 (36 percent).

The fact that we missed somewhere in the neighborhood of 38 shots while they lost 29 is of course not insignificant. But look at the 2-pointers: We shot 46 percent, they shot 49. Duke out-scored Minnesota 21-19 from the FT line but, hey, we got to the line more than they did and we shot 76 percent.

But from 3-point-land: Minnesota 4-of-16 (25 percent), Duke 8-of-10 (80 percent). 12 of their 18 point margin is accounted for by 3s, and they shot 6 fewer than we did. I guess my point is, well, first, we played 'em to a standstill in every other facet of the game. And, two, while 4-of-16 is probably a realistic barometer of our 3-point shooting ability, 8-of-10 is nobody's barometer, not Duke, not anybody. The Gophers may get beat with the long ball all year long, but not by 80 percent, and not by the #5 team in the nation.

Turnovers, by the way, were 15-15.

The Gopher women, on the other hand, stunk. We shot 31 percent against a 1-3 team (they shot 40, you can and should win when the opponent shoots 40). We made 2-o-f-14 3s.

But it gets worse. 20 turnovers, 7 by Micaela Riche. Sure, Richmond had 23, but we had 14 steals, they had 8. Meaning that we had 12 unforced errors, they had 9. And, they out-scored us 21-16 off turnovers. We scored 16 off of 23, they converted 21 off of 20.

And they out-scored us 6-4 on 2nd chancers and why not. We got out-rebounded 43-34. Our bench got out-scored 24-7. They had 14 assists, we had 8.

Minnesota led 28-23 and 30-25 in the 2nd half, and after that made 6-of-26 shots with 12 turnovers.

Rachel Banham, Riche and Mikayla Bailey scored 32 points on 13-of-29 shooting, which is of course not great. But everybody else shot 4-for-26 or about 16 percent.