Paging the Gopher offense…are you out there?
THE FACTS: Dawson Garcia continues his hot start to the 2024-25 season, but the rest of the Gopher roster struggled to contribute on offense as the North Texas Mean Green came into The Barn and beat Minnesota 54-51.
QUOTABLE: “They force you to make perimeter jumpshots at some point, you have to be able to make them. I thought we had some good looks but what was disappointing was that our confidence wavered on every miss. It was like the misses were too deflating. You can’t always control that. Sometimes you get great looks and they don’t always fall. We have to work on still being a confident team.”
THE STAT: All of the shooting stats were as ugly as we have ever seen from a Gopher basketball team. Everyone, outside of Garcia, shoot very poorly and the offense was ugly. Minnesota’s average points per offensive possession was 0.894, and that feels much higher than one would have guessed if you watched this game.
TURNING POINT: From the opening tip, North Texas jumped to a 5-0 start and never looked back. The Gophers briefly led 43-42 with 7:27 remaining, but the Mean Green held off the Gophers and held on for their third win of the season.
HOT: As mentioned, Garcia has been red-hot to start the season and he led the team with 24 points and 8 rebounds last night. He was 6/9 from the field, 2/2 from three and a perfect 10/10 from the free throw line.
NOT: The rest of the team? They combined to shoot 9/39 (23.1%) from the field and 4/19 (21%) from three. The offense was stagnant and everyone outside of Garcia struggled to put the ball in the hole. The seven dudes not named Garcia combined for 27 points, led by Lu’Cye Patterson who had 9 points on 3/14 shooting (1/7 from three). It was collectively ugly.
NOTABLE: Frank Mitchell saw his first action for the Gophers. The transfer big man did not take a shot and grabbed 5 rebounds in 14 minutes of action.
UP NEXT: Yale comes to The Barn on Saturday afternoon. The Bulldogs are 2-2 with an 8-point loss at Purdue.