Eric the Blue

Wasn’t expecting to become so invested in the Gopher women’s basketball team this March, but hey, they have advanced into the Sweet Sixteen and are easy to like for a lot of other reasons, too:

–Local kids. Of the five starters, four are from Twin Cities suburbs–Hopkins, Minnetonka, Wayzata, and Farmington (I think Farmington now counts as a suburb?)–and the fifth is from a small town in Wisconsin.

–Very little “portal travel.” Those five starters are, by class year, a sophomore, two juniors, and two seniors, and I think four of them have only been Gophers as collegians. The fifth, one of the seniors, started out at North Carolina State and has now played three seasons at Minnesota.

–They’re over-achievers. The phrase is sometimes deployed as a kind of backhanded compliment, but there’s nothing wrong with being determined and hard-working.

–No star. Here are the points per game averaged by the five starters:

Tori McKinney (soph from Minnetonka) 12.9
Grace Grocholski (jr from North Prairie, WI) 12.1
Mara Braun (jr from Wayzata) 11.8
Amaya Battle (sr from Hopkins) 11.3
Sophie Hart (sr from Farmington) 11.1

They exhibited their balanced strength in the game they won against Mississippi to advance to the regional semifinals.  After getting beat up to the tune of 25-14 in the third quarter, Minnesota still trailed by 8 points with around 4 minutes to play. Mississippi's best player then fouled out of the game on a charging call. (Taking a charge is something the Gophers are more apt to do than their opponents.) Without their star, Mississippi appeared lost on offense, and the Gophers just kept plugging away. Right before the above clip starts, Braun had made a 3-pointer to tie the score. After Hart scores the go-ahead bucket in traffic with her off hand, we allow a rare easy basket to re-tie the game with 3.5 seconds to play. Then Battle, playing her last game at Williams Arena, buries the winning shot a second before the buzzer. Check out the lift on her little base line jumper off the set inbound play. 

The game clock was set to 0.8 second after Battle's basket, and Mississippi got a good look from 3-point land--which would have won the game--mainly because Battle, who is number 3, runs into two picks. She watches helplessly as the shot is launched just before the clock goes to 0:00, and it's fun to see her hands go to the top of her head in, I think, exhausted relief as the ball bounces off the front rim. In the game she had 14 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 assists. 

Better enjoy it now. Unless there is a huge upset this evening, the regional semifinal will be against #1 seed UCLA. When the teams played earlier this year, in Minneapolis, the Bruins won by 18 points. But maybe that's good. If we're going to upset them once this season, better this coming Friday than back in January.