Gophers Bottom Out against Northwestern
Saturday, January 20, 2007

Late in the game, with the scoreboard reading Northwestern 50, Minnesota 34, the Minnesota Gophers had to score on three of its final four possessions to escape the ignominy of going down in history as the first Gopher team to fail to reach the 40-point mark since the Ozzie Cowles-coached squad of 1951 lost to Indiana by the score of 32-26.

When Lawrence McKenzie scored to make it 55-40 with 1:09 seconds left in the game, Minnesota equaled the point total attained by the 1971 Gophers in another 55-40 game, this one a loss to Marquette. That game featured a dual of coaching giants Al McGuire and Bill Musselman. Musselman’s Gophers, however, avenged the loss with a 77-72 win over Marquette in the NCAA Mideast Regional. This season’s Gophers play Northwestern again on January 31 in Evanston, but the chances for revenge appear remote.

Northwestern has won its last six games with Minnesota, a feat many would have considered impossible. Simply stated, the Wildcats are not a basketball powerhouse. A few years ago, a discussion centered around which Big 10 teams haven’t reached the NCAA tournament’s Final Four. Northwestern, of course, was removed from the discussion because the Wildcats have never been to the NCAA tournament, let alone the Final Four. The words basketball and futility have been linked to Northwestern ever since the first NCAA tournament in 1939. In that span, there have been seasons in which the Wildcats failed to win a single Big 10 game.

Even so, losing to any Northwestern team in basketball can be accepted providing the losers demonstrate a reasonable show of determination, poise, and consistency. Unfortunately, none of those attributes was put on display by the Gophers at Williams Arena on January 20.

Prior to the game, it was announced that 6-7 junior college transfer Engen Nurumbi had left the team to pursue other interests. During the game, the Gophers played as if they wished to join Nurumbi. There have been times when it appeared as if Minnesota had hit rock bottom in men’s basketball. The Northwestern game was another of those times. The Gophers played as if they couldn’t get off the raised surface of Williams Arena fast enough and retreat to the safety of the locker room.

To be fair, Northwestern plays the type of patterned offense that once was the norm in the Big 10 in the days when team play took precedence over one-on-one free-wheeling. A bewildered gang of Minnesota defenders observed Northwestern’s dazzling array of set plays, backdoor cuts, and double screens and decided to take the day off.

As for the Gophers’ offensive effort, interim head coach Jim Molinari knew the team was in trouble four minutes into the contest. Northwestern employed a 1-3-1 zone defense and “we couldn’t get scoring from the outside.” Minnesota shot 34.8 percent from the field in the first half. “We got frustrated,” Molinari said, “because we couldn’t score and that influenced how we played defensively.”

Molinari acknowledged he was “concerned” about the team’s mindset, yet “we have to coach the players we have.” The coach started a lineup of Dan Coleman, Jamal Abu-Shamala, Jonathan Williams, McKenzie, and Kevin Payton. The Gophers were missing injured center 6-9 Spencer Tollackson, and Molinari felt he “needed a bigger lineup.” However, Molinari forgot to include a point guard in the lineup, and the results were immediately displayed. Minnesota was dazed and confused on offense, showing little ball movement and taking ill-advised shots. For long periods on offense, the Gopher players who didn’t have the ball were as immobile as Easter Island statues.

The announced Williams Arena crowd of 11,194 sat in silent horror, unable to react favorably to anything other than the halftime show, which featured an Asian woman teetering on a unicycle while attempting to balance bowls on her head. The crowd roared its approval, then went mute when the basketball resumed.

With 10 minutes left in the game, Northwestern suddenly abandoned its patterned offense and began firing three-point attempts. A pair of these shots (by Vince Scott and Kevin Coble) were successful, and the Wildcats led by 46-28. Northwestern coach Bill Carmody, however, was not happy and called a timeout. “We went away from our strength,” Carmody explained. The timeout had its desired effect, and the Wildcats resumed disciplined play. Minnesota’s play, on the other hand, could be best described by the words of the song “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”.

“We tried to go different ways to get scoring and couldn’t get scoring from other places,” Molinari observed. Only McKenzie (15 points) and Coleman (13) hit double figures. Others were either afraid to shoot or unable to convert.

At the current rate, Minnesota’s chances of winning another game this year have to be listed as doubtful. Molinari’s record would sink to that of another Gopher interim coach, Jimmy Williams, whose team won only two of 11 contests in 1986, and Williams never again held another head coaching post.

Lack of production on offense continues to plague Molinari’s best coaching instincts. “We couldn’t score and the team got frustrated,” he muttered. Minnesota trailed at the half by 29-20 to a team that previously was winless in the conference. “We’re having a tough time.”

The Gophers were lucky to match the 20 points the team scored in the first half with 20 more in the second. Veteran fans in the audience were left to reminisce about the days when one Gopher scored more than 40 points by himself. That happened twice. In 1962, Eric Magdanz scored 42 against Michigan, and, in 1971 Ollie Shannon hit for 42 in a game with Wisconsin. (George Kline scored 40 against Iowa in 1957.)