Gophers Come Back to Beat Siena 76-69
November 15, 2010

Minnesota overcame an 11-point first-half deficit to beat Siena 76-69 at Williams Arena in the first-ever regular-season game between the Gophers and Saints. The only other meeting came in the second round of the 1989 NCAA tournament with 11th-seeded Minnesota, having beaten Kansas State, winning 80-67 over 14th-seeded Siena, which had upset Stanford in the first round.

In the 1989 matchup, the Saints kept themselves in the game with 3-point shooting, making 10 shots from beyond the arc. And so it was 21½ years later. The Gophers and Saints combined for 8 points in the first 30 seconds of the game; four minutes in, Siena held a 15-13 lead. The Saints extended the gap to double-digits three minutes later as senior guard Clarence Jackson hit a three-pointer for a 25-15 lead. At this point, Jackson had connected on 3 of Siena’s 5 three-point baskets and had 14 points; he would go on to lead all scorers with 29.

As well as the Saints shot from the field, however, they were just as poor from the line, missing their first 5 free-throw attempts and finishing only 1 from 7 at the line. After giving up 25 points in the first 7 minutes, the Gophers held Siena to 9 points over the final 13, including a late field goal by Jackson that gave him 18 points and sent the Saints into the locker room with a 34-33 lead. “We just had no answer for him,” said Minnesota coach Tubby Smith of Jackson.

The teams sparred in the second half, Minnesota taking a one-point lead with 15 minutes left as Colton Iverson took a bounce pass in the lane from Al Nolen and made a layup. The Saints got the lead back a few minutes later as Jackson hit his third three-pointer of the half.

The Gophers pulled away in the second part of the half and had a couple of plays from Rodney Williams that excited the crowd. His put-back dunk made the score 55-48 for the Gophers. Soon after he twisted to take an alley-oop pass from Blake Hoffarber, making a backward stuff over Siena center Ryan Rossiter.

Freshman point guard Rakeem Brookins made all 12 of his points down the stretch and pulled the Saints close, but the Gophers maintained control of the game and the lead.

Siena shot 51 percent for the field for the game, even better (making 9 of 17, 52.9 percent) on three-pointers; however, the Saints made only 53.3 percent of their free throws. The Gophers weren’t much better although they got to the line twice as often as Siena.

The other difference was in turnovers, Siena committing 24, many of them unforced. The Saints had trouble with their point guards. Brookins, coming off the bench, had 6 turnovers and no assists; the starter, Kyle Griffin, committed 4 turnovers in 23 minutes although he did produce 5 assists.

Siena head coach Mitch Buanaguro acknowledged the problem the team had at point guard. “You’re trying to run plays when the game’s close and we can’t make an entry pass. It really came down to us turning the ball over. I thought we outplayed Minnesota in a lot of areas, but the turnover battle was 24-15. You can’t win with 24 turnovers on the road. It’s impossible. There were turnovers on entry passes. It wasn’t anything Minnesota did. We just couldn’t pass the ball. I was calling plays where all you had to do was throw the ball to the post, and we had four or five turnovers throwing the ball to the post. And they kill you, because they go down and score.”

For the Gophers, Trevor Mbakwe had a double-double, scoring 10 points and getting 11 rebounds, 5 of them offensively. Hoffarber, in addition to a team-high 16 points, had 7 assists. Al Nolen scored 7 points and had 6 assists and 6 steals.

The Gophers, about to leave for San Juan for the Puerto Rico Tipoff, improved their regular-season record to 2-0 while the Saints dropped to 0-2.