A Pair of Victories
December 2 and 7, 2013
The week ended for the University of Minnesota’s men’s basketball team tuning in an impressive win plus a victory that was something of a clunker.
The Gophers impressed with a convincing 71-61 home win over Florida State in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge series, then fumbled along through an unfortunate second half before putting away an inept University of New Orleans team, 80-65.
To be fair, the messy New Orleans affair was played with only the highly limited participation of center Elliot Eliason and the complete absence of Malik Smith. Both had suffered ankle injuries in practice after the Florida State game.
Against the Seminoles, the Gophers were able to outplay their taller rivals and actually out-rebound them, 36-32. Andre Hollins played a superior game and wound up with 21 points, including three 3-point baskets. Hollins has shown the ability to play up to the level of competition (Florida State), while showing less interest in lower-rung teams (New Orleans). In fact, coach Richard Pitino yanked Hollins for failure to execute a play with less than a minute gone in the New Orleans game, replacing him with Maverick Ahanmisi.
Florida State was forced into committing 17 turnovers by the aggressive Gopher defense. The game turned into a foul fest with veteran referee Ed Hightower and subordinates Terry Wymer, and Gene Sheratore making questionable calls in bunches. Eliason and his replacement, Mo Walker, fouled out as did Florida State’s Okaro White and Aaron Thomas. The trio of refs called a total of 52 fouls in the game.
Minnesota got to the foul line eight times in the final 73 seconds to salt away the victory. Minnesota led at the half, 33-27. In the second half, a slam dunk by Austin Hollins awoke what had been an unruffled Williams Arena crowd.
Against New Orleans, again, it was an Austin Hollins dunk shot at 14:26 of the second half that brought life to a crowd announced at 11,228 but appeared to be much smaller. Fans who previously complained about the lack of Saturday Afternoon games on past Gopher schedules apparently failed to show up to back their claims. Maybe it was the opponent. The University of New Orleans (UNO) has been fielding a basketball team since 1969. The Privateers are picked to finish 11th in the 14-team Southland Conference. Even if they were to win the conference championship, the Privateers would be ineligible to participate in the NCAA Tournament due to academic issues.
New Orleans, led by substitute Cory Dixon’s 16 points, fell behind early, 21-6, to Minnesota and trailed at halftime 41-23. The Gophers then sleep-walked through the second half.
All five starters for the Gophers finished in double figures and played in the majority of the game, an indication of the team’s inability to convincingly put UNO away in the second half.