Minnesota Golden Gophers Basketball

With recent devastating news in the life of Arizona State's junior guard Trent Lockett, his career in Tempe may be coming to a close.

Recent word from Lockett showed his possible intent to transfer. Unfortunate news has struck the core of home as his mother has been diagnosed with cancer. Since learning of the situation, Lockett currently is considering a move from the sunny state of Arizona. 

If he plans to transfer, Lockett wishes to return closer to his home in Minnesota, although an official confirmation of transfer or not has not yet been made.

If Lockett were to transfer back to Minnesota, the University of Minnesota would happily await his leadership. After three seasons at Arizona State, each season as a team continues to head south, though the rise of Lockett’s play continues to rise. 

This past season he led the team in scoring (13.0) and rebounding (5.8). His talent continues to excel as his potential explodes in the Sun Devils jersey.

With his leadership, how deadly would the Golden Gophers be in the talented Big Ten? Signs point to being one of the top five teams in strong power conference. 

With recent news of Trevor Mbakwe garnering a sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA, the recent emergence of Gopher guard Andre Hollins and Rodney Williams stepping up, the Gophers could certainly be a contender with Lockett in the lineup.

In typical situations, a transfer would have to sit out one season before he can participate in a game. Although with his family situation, the NCAA could very well grant him immediate eligibility. The terms of the eligibility will only be determined if he decides to transfer from Arizona State.

As Lockett decides his fate, best wishes go out to him and his mother as they figure out these trying times.  

The NIT Final Four has four teams with different seeds and all of them have at least 22 wins.

But the team with the fewest amount of wins is going to end up hoisting the trophy.

The No. 6 seeded Minnesota Golden Gophers suffered a brutal six-game losing streak in the middle of Big 10 play to seal their fate, but this team is talented.

After struggling for the vast majority of the season, Rodney Williams has scored at least 20 points a game in all three NIT wins and is doing so at a remarkably efficient rate. He has shot 26 of 38 from the floor for a whopping 68-percent clip.  He has become the “man” for the team and has been by far the best player in the tournament. Credit coach Tubby Smith for sticking with him and allowing his incredible talent to be utilized.  

He’s not the only star on this team.

Point guard Andre Hollins has displayed outstanding maturity for a sophomore in the tournament. He’s handling the ball with ease while staying very aggressive, Hollins is making smart decisions with the ball and is playing defense at a very high level. His 24 points against Middle Tennessee St. were the big difference in the six-point win.

While the status of Ralph Sampson III is very much in the air, this Gopher team is peaking at the perfect time and can survive his absence.

First up is No. 1 seeded Washington.

While they certainly are a better team on offense and on the boards, the Gophers can limit the effectiveness of the trio of Terrence Ross, Tony Wroten and C.J. Wilcox. Minnesota is playing incredibly effective defense of late and is fresh off holding the fourth best shooting team in the nation to 30 percent from the three-point line. This happened a game after holding the Miami Hurricanes to 18 percent from behind the arc.

Once they skate past the Huskies, then only No. 3 Stanford and No. 5 UMass stand in the way.

Both teams are weak on the perimeter and would really struggle against the suffocating Golden Gophers' defense. Besides, they needed OT to beat Mississippi State and snuck by Drexel by two. Stanford has point guard issues that are going to ultimately doom them offensively. Defensively they are mediocre at best.

The Gophers are the team to beat, and expect them to be taking chunks out of the Madison Square Garden nets on Thursday night.  

Click here for the updated NIT bracket. 

Follow Eric Ball on Twitter.

According to WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota Golden Gophers forward Trevor Mbakwe has been granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA.

This is huge news for a Golden Gophers team who struggled without Mbakwe during the Big Ten season. At times this year, it was almost maddening to think of what the Gophers could have been with the double-double machine patrolling the paint.

In the 2010-11 season, Mbakwe averaged 13.9 points per game and 10.5 rebounds per game as the Gophers got off to a similar hot start only to fall apart during the Big Ten season. He was performing very well at the beginning of this season (14.0 PPG, 9.1 RPG) before tearing his ACL against Dayton.

The addition of Mbakwe should do nothing but help a young Gophers team who has started to find their way during the NIT. The Gophers have advanced to the semifinals and will play Washington next week, but this story revolves around what the Gophers are bringing back.

Andre Hollins and Joe Coleman have both emerged for Minnesota during the postseason. Although the NIT is commonly referred to as the "Not Important Tournament," the experience should help them as they get their senior leader back.

Mbakwe won't be alone in the paint, either; sophomore center Mo Walker should return after being redshirted this season as he recovered from his own torn ACL.

If Tubby Smith can figure out how to use all of his weapons effectively, the Gophers could shockingly be competing in the Big Ten next season after back-to-back disappointments. 

After Washington and UMass advanced on Tuesday, there are two more matchups to decide who will battle in the semifinals of the NIT tournament.

Middle Tennessee and Minnesota kick off the action on Wednesday night, while Stanford and Nevada follow.

Here's a look at how I see the games shaking out.

Middle Tennessee (No. 4 Seed, Region 2) vs. Minnesota (No. 6 Seed)

Middle Tennessee has been very efficient shooting the basketball this season. The Blue Raiders shot 49.6 percent in the regular season, fourth in the nation.

Led by LaRon Dendy, Marcos Knight and JT Sulton, the Blue Raiders have the firepower to create havoc, as they did against No. 1 seed Tennessee in the second round.

Minnesota has a big body in Rodney Williams to slow the Middle Tennessee offense down, as well as a good supporting cast on offense. The Golden Gophers have 10 players averaging 14 minutes per game or more.

In the end, I see Middle Tennessee coming away with the victory. The Blue Raiders have a good player in Dendy and I think the offense will be too efficient for the Golden Gophers down the stretch.

Stanford (No. 3 Seed, Region 4) vs. Nevada (No. 5 Seed)

Every time I look at the Stanford Cardinal, I wonder how they keep winning games. Their biggest strength is their rebounding (50th in the nation during the regular season), but they were outrebounded by Cleveland State and Illinois State in the NIT tournament and still came away with victories.

The reason for Stanford's recent success has been its shooting. The Cardinal shot 49 percent against Cleveland State and 52 percent against Illinois State. That impressive shooting percentage is a marked contrast from the regular season when Stanford shot only 44 percent from the field, good for 147th in the nation.

I tend to have more faith in Nevada. The Wolf Pack can outrebound the Cardinal (45th in the nation during the regular season), and they are a better shooting team overall. Nevada shot 50 percent against Bucknell in the second round and attacked the rim, getting to the free-throw line 32 times.

Multiple players have also been stepping up for the Wolf Pack. Dario Hunt has been a rebounding and blocking machine all season long, Olek Czyz and Malik Story just dropped 24 points and 18 points, respectively, on Bucknell, and leading scorer Deonte Burton has been known to hit some timely shots.

The only concern for the Wolf Pack is that they aren't very deep beyond these players, so if they get into foul trouble, momentum could shift to Stanford.

But if the Wolf Pack stay out of foul trouble, I see them upsetting Stanford.

Follow me on Twitter. We can talk about the NIT tournament.

Minnesota might not have been good enough to get into the NCAA tournament, but unfortunately for Middle Tennessee, it's playing better right now than it has since December.

The No. 6 seed Gophers have had a couple of high points this season. One was starting off the year 12-1. The other was beating Northwestern in the first round of the Big Ten tournament.

However, in between those two things was everything that kept them from dancing in the NCAA tournament this year.

Minnesota struggled mightily in conference play this year, losing its first four matchups and then dropping six of seven in February. The Gophers finished 6-12 in the Big Ten and couldn't make a run in the tournament after taking care of Northwestern in the first round.

Now, they seem to have found their footing to some degree, starting off the NIT with wins over La Salle and Miami. Their offense seems to be improving along the way too. In 12 regulation games, Minnesota failed to score 70 points, but in four of their last five games, they've done exactly that.

The Blue Raiders, on the other hand, have far more wins than Minnesota, but their strength of schedule (.4882) is far weaker than Minnesota's (.5604). The Gophers went 1-8 against teams in the top 25, but looking at the other teams in their conference shows the stiff competition. The Blue Raiders didn't even face one ranked opponent this season.

The No. 4 seed Blue Raiders finished on top of the Sun Belt Conference and took down Marshall and top-seeded Tennessee en route to the NIT quarterfinals, closing out that game with a 15-0 run. In the process, they became the first Sun Belt team to advance to the NIT quarterfinals since UAB in 1989.

Still, the Gophers are playing like they did early in the season, when they were still fighting to win. Their offense is clicking with center Elliott Eliason in the lineup, and they're playing with more speed and athleticism than they've shown all year. 

Facing Middle Tennessee, it will be their turn to pull off the upset.

The NIT is all about which team is playing its best basketball at the moment, and few teams are as hot as the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Tubby Smith’s squad has won two NIT games by a combined 27 points. In their second-round game against Miami (one of the strongest teams in the tourney), the Gophers jumped out to a 12-0 lead and never looked back. The team ended up hitting a blistering 58 percent of their field goals (28-of-48) as it has now shot over 50 percent for the second straight game.

Leading the charge is Rodney Williams. He has scored 21 points in both games and hit a ridiculous 9-of-10 shots against Miami. After struggling for the majority of the regular season, scoring 11.2 a game, the junior looks as if he finally “gets it” and is now one of the hottest players in the entire tournament.

The other big reason for the Golden Gophers' success has been on the glass.

Minnesota has held an eye-popping 67-to-39 advantage in the rebounding department in NIT play that has led to a plethora of second-chance points.

So what’s ahead for the hottest team in the tournament?

On Wednesday it’ll face No. 4 Middle Tennessee, a team that relies on its quick guards to create high-percentage shots (it's fourth in the nation in field-goal percentage), but the Blue Raiders don’t have a player to match Williams. Their rebounding issues will also come to fruition.

Minnesota, in its potential semifinal, would meet No. 1 Washington, a team that resides in the laughably overrated Pac-12. As long as Minnesota can control the tempo and limit the possessions of the Huskies' high-powered offense, its physicality inside will prevail. The Gophers defense will be a major factor as well.

The other side of the bracket features teams that the Golden Gophers will all be favored against…lower seeds with flaws much more glaring than the Gophers.

Nobody would have ever guessed that a team with a 6-12 conference record would be in position to win the NIT. It’s a real testament to how strong the Big Ten has been in the 2011-12 season.

Watch out for the Golden Gophers.

Click here for updated NIT bracket

Follow Eric Ball on Twitter.

The NIT is one of the more underrated tournaments of the college basketball postseason, mostly because we see teams that missed out on the NCAA tournament trying to prove themselves to the selection committee.

One of those teams is Drexel University, one of the first four teams held out of the Big Dance. Also, Seton Hall was trying to prove themselves until they fell to UMass on Saturday.

There are still several deserving and determined teams left in the NIT that just missed out on the NCAA tournament, but we can still find Cinderellas in a second-tier tournament like this. We should see several of them this weekend.

No. 8 Bucknell over No. 4 Nevada

Bucknell just missed out on getting to the NCAA Championship, after getting upset by Lehigh in the Patriot League tournament championship.  

Of course, Lehigh went on to upset No. 2 Duke in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Bucknell was just that close to possibly becoming one of those Cinderella teams.

Against Nevada, Bucknell should be able to match up well with them. Nevada has been playing terrible in the last part of their regular season, and we should see that continue against a bitter Bucknell team looking to make their impact felt in the NIT.

No. 6 Minnesota over No. 2 Miami

Minnesota had a rough end to their regular season, losing seven of their last nine games. But they defeated Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship, then took Michigan to overtime before losing.

The Golden Gophers are playing good basketball right now, and they should be in for a good matchup against an equally good Miami team on Monday.

Minnesota's Rodney Williams should be the difference in this game, as he is a clear mismatch for Miami. Look for Minnesota to roll on and continue their season.

No. 7 North Iowa over No. 3 Drexel

Drexel is a good team that just missed out on making the NCAA tournament, but Northern Iowa just seems to be on a tear as of late.

After faltering heavily in conference play this season, the Panthers knocked off No. 2 St. Joseph's by two points, showing that they are playing some of their best basketball of the season in the NIT.

They will have their sights set on taking down one of the favorites to win the NIT in Drexel on Sunday, but look for Northern Iowa to continue riding their momentum past the No. 3 seed.

There was hope for Minnesota after Thursday's big win against Northwestern, but all of that went out the window when the Gophers blew Friday's quarterfinal game against Michigan, effectively ending its postseason hopes.

The Gophers were only looking for a bid to the NIT, but Friday's 73-69 overtime loss to the Wolverines seemingly shattered those aspirations. At 19-14 overall and an abysmal 6-12 in conference play, Minnesota still had a shot at a postseason tournament, but it needed to make a run after taking down Northwestern in the first round of the conference tournament—and for a little while against Michigan, it looked like that could happen, which is why the loss stings so much.

"The thing was in our hands," Gophers coach Tubby Smith told TwinCities.com's Marcus R. Fuller, "and we just didn't get it done. We'll have to wait and see what happens."

The nail in the coffin for the Gophers could be the fact that they started off the season well but struggled mightily down the stretch. Through December 22, Minnesota went 12-1, but then embarked on a four-game losing streak against Illinois, Michigan, Iowa and Purdue. The Gophers endured another (longer) tough stretch in February, when they registered just one win and suffered losses to Wisconsin, Ohio State, Northwestern, Michigan State and Wisconsin, among others.

Still, Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi told TwinCities.com he'd be surprised if the team got snubbed from the postseason altogether.

"I would be disappointed if we weren't an NIT team, quite frankly, because we're a pretty good basketball team right now," he said.

The truth is, it will be hard to justify giving a team a postseason bid that could barely win in the month it mattered most. A first-round win in the conference tournament was nice, especially since it came against an NCAA bubble team, but it's not enough.

Minnesota simply needed to do more.

With Thursday morning's announcement that Joel Maturi will step down as athletic director for the University of Minnesota effective June 30th, you could seemingly hear a sigh of relief from Gopher Nation.

Maturi's run as Gopher AD was certainly not a smooth one. In his decade at the helm, the high points were few while the low points were numerous and sustained.

When Maturi took over the program, Glen Mason was leading the Gopher football team to the middle of the Big Ten. Mason's teams would continually start the season hot and work their way into the Top 25 but could never get over the hump to earn a spot in a major bowl game. After the historic collapse against Texas Tech in the 2006 Insight Bowl, Mason was fired.

The search then started for a new football coach. Boosters and former Gopher football players clamored not to have Maturi leading the search, but Maturi took the lead anyway. After completing his search, Maturi decided to hand the reins to a tight ends coach from the Denver Broncos, Tim Brewster.

Brewster had never been the head coach or even a coordinator at any program other than a short stint at a high school. Brewster subsequently showed why, leading the team from mediocre to downright horrible, losing multiple times to DI-AA schools. Brewster was finally fired in 2010 after a 1-6 start to the season.

Under Maturi's tenure, the Gopher football program did not reach a major bowl game and has not won a bowl game since the 2004 Music City Bowl.

The basketball program has also underacheived under Maturi's tenure. After the rightful firing of Don Monson during the 2006-07 season, Maturi scored a coup in the hiring of legendary coach Tubby Smith.

However, Maturi has been unable to secure funding for a practice facility for the basketball team, and this is seen as part of the reason that Smith has been unable to recruit top high schoolers, hurting the development of the program at large. The basketball program hasn't won an NCAA tournament game under Maturi's regime.

The baseball team still does not have a home field on campus after years of trying. The women's basketball and hockey teams have gone downhill. The lack of any semblance of success with the top three sports (football, basketball, hockey) has put the University of Minnesota into one of the jokes of the Big Ten. While the overall success of the smaller sports has put the program into the top 20 in Director's Cup standings (out of over 300 schools), that means little if there is no success in the major sports.

Even the successes that Maturi has had are marked by disappointment. Getting TCF Bank Stadium built was a major event for the football program, but in its second year the Gophers failed to sell out most games, even with one of the smallest seating capacities of the Big Ten football stadiums.

The smaller, non-revenue sports have had success, but few notice this because they are overshadowed by the failures of the major revenue-producing sports.

Maturi was able to take a program reeling in the wake of the Clem Haskins basketball scandal, a program that was bleeding money, and turn it into a clean and slightly profitable entity. But when you're a program competing in the Big Ten, it takes more than that to be termed a success. Maturi had the reins for 10 years and was unable to elevate the program. It is time to make a change.

Now, I’m not normally one to live in the past or play the “what if” game. All it does is bring me down. I don't need any more Sports Tears In My Beer. But with the way this Gopher season has gone, I couldn’t help it. Although the team isn’t horrible now by any means, it could be, or least had the potential to be, amazing.

Let’s look at what most likely would have been the Gophers starting line-up this year if these kids never left. WARNING: This is a big “what if” write up, so take it with a grain of salt.

The “What If” Team:

Devoe Joseph (14.6 PPG/2.6 APG)

Austin Hollins (8.4 PPG/2.0 APG)

Royce White (13.4 PPG/9.6 RPG)

Rodney Williams (10.9 PPG/5.8 RPG)

Trevor Mbakwe (14.0 PPG/9.1 RPG)

That is a 61.3 points scored a game on average team.

Compare that to:

The “Current” Team.

Julian Welch (10.6 PPG/2.6 APG)

Austin Hollins (8.4 PPG/2.0 APG)

Joe Coleman (6.1 PPG/2.1 PPG)

Rodney Williams (10.9 PPG/5.8 RPG)

Ralph Sampson (8.4 PPG/4.9 RPG)

This team only averages 44.4 points a game. A -16.9 point differential.

I don’t know about you, but scoring almost 17 points more a game on average sounds pretty damn good to me.

Now, I know a lot of people say that Tubby can’t recruit, but I’m not buying it. He has had some big name kids here. Granted, they haven’t all stayed, but he did bring them here. Is that his fault? Maybe, but we will never know for sure why some left.

Also, I don’t want people to think I’m down on the team that is currently here, I’m not at all. I’m as big a Gopher Homer as there comes, so I will stick behind the kids that are here 100 percent. It just breaks this Gopher fan’s heart to think of the team we could have had.

Not only would you have that starting five from the “what if” team on the court; you would also have an amazing bench that consisted of Justin Cobbs, Andre Hollins, Joe Coleman, Mo Walker, Colten Iverson and Ralph Sampson III.

And seeing how Tubby likes to “hockey sub,” that’s not a bad second line.

Andre Ingram, Maverick Ahanmisi and Oto Osenieks would most likely be the odd men out. But I don’t think any of us would be all that upset if that were the case. Not that they are bad players, the other guys are just that much better.

Would the “what if” team win more games? No one knows, but I would bet my hard earned money on it.

Again, I know Trevor is hurt so it is hard to really make the comparison, but I’m just going off what I think would have been the starting five at the beginning of the season if all those guys were here.

On paper, if guys wouldn’t have left, they had everything needed to make a run at a B1G championship and go dancing on a yearly basis.

I’m getting fired up just thinking about how great this team could have been if everyone would have stayed. It’s really a slap in the face of Tubby to see these kids, who he really wanted to help out, go off and blow up.

Also, writing this makes me think about how mature Trevor really is. He could have left and I don’t think we would have blamed him, but he stayed. He stayed and played great. Hell, the kid, sorry, man, is thinking about coming back next year if allowed.

Why couldn’t he have slapped some sense into the others?

So there it is. My “what if” take on the season that could have been. Was it fun reading it? Yeah? Well that’s good, but try writing about it and living it. It was hell.

With that being said, want to be a Gopher Fan? It’s a blast! Well, it might be anyway...if you stick around.