Gophers Journey to the Tourney: Updated Through Michigan

Donate To GopherHole
Saturday is time to get on the board in the "must win" category. Expect a dogfight.

4-2 with 3 road wins 1/3 of the way through the B1G season would be sweet, wouldn't it?
 

SelectionSunday said:
Saturday is time to get on the board in the "must win" category. Expect a dogfight.

4-2 with 3 road wins 1/3 of the way through the B1G season would be sweet, wouldn't it?
Click to expand...

Sure would. Before the B1G started most would have considered that a best case scenario.
 


SelectionSunday said:
Gophers drop the first of 5 in the "must win" category.
Click to expand...

Yeah but now through 6 you could pretty easily justify moving the home Ohio state game to a must win and move the road Ohio state game to replace it
 



Gophers journey to the National Invitational Tourney....

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
 


SelectionSunday said:
Good one. That's original. Pat yourself on the back for that one. ��
Click to expand...
If it stings then it did it's job.

Moral victories are still marked in the loss column.

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
 

Ewert86PC said:
If it stings then it did it's job.

Moral victories are still marked in the loss column.

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


I highly doubt it stung..he was referring to how lame it was.. lazy humor.
 



Just a quick update:

Must wins: 0-1
Splits- 2-1
Steals- 1-3

A big one for the steal category on Wednesday and its VERY doable!
 

BJack4Life said:
Just a quick update:

Must wins: 0-1
Splits- 2-1
Steals- 1-3

A big one for the steal category on Wednesday and its VERY doable!
Click to expand...

Yep. Hoping OSU's dobber is down after losing to Northwestern, + that's a dead arena and I doubt fans get too jacked up for Minnesota.
 

Georgia Southern and UT-Arlington are doing their best to make those 2 wins more valuable. Arkansas has made a late surge too.
 




I'm now listing the categories in order of least problematic to most problematic. Just eye-balling it it appears the Gophers really need to make hay in the "either way" category.

Indiana game at home looks pretty important for the "steal a couple" genre.
 

Updated through Maryland. Now things are getting dicey. Pretty much can't afford to lose another home game.
 


Still think this team gets to 10 as the schedule gets much lighter in a very weak big 10. Like this team a great deal and only see 4 teams with a better variety of talent in the conference.
 

builtbadgers said:
Still think this team gets to 10 as the schedule gets much lighter in a very weak big 10. Like this team a great deal and only see 4 teams with a better variety of talent in the conference.
Click to expand...

I like their potential to be a "Round of 32" type team, too, but still not sold they have the make-up to to dig out enough tough wins to make the tournament, which is what they'll have to do down the stretch. I'd put the over-under for final number of B1G wins at 8.5.
 

builtbadgers said:
Still think this team gets to 10 as the schedule gets much lighter in a very weak big 10. Like this team a great deal and only see 4 teams with a better variety of talent in the conference.
Click to expand...

They have games AT Wisconsin and Maryland, while I would not be shocked to see them win, it would appear unlikely as they have already lost to both teams in Minneapolis. If they lost those games, they would have to run the table on all the others to get to 10 Ws.
 

Ope3 said:
They have games AT Wisconsin and Maryland, while I would not be shocked to see them win, it would appear unlikely as they have already lost to both teams in Minneapolis. If they lost those games, they would have to run the table on all the others to get to 10 Ws.
Click to expand...

Yes, I noticed that, too. I think the Gophers can win at Maryland (can Terps hit over 60% on 3s again?), Wisconsin not so much,

Good thing is Gophers might be catching a couple huge breaks, if they choose to take advantage (unlike when Bridges was out for MSU). Jok is currently injured for Iowa, and OG & perhaps Blackmon might not play vs. the Gophers.
 


Gophers earn a "must win"

Gophers survive and advance vs. Iowa. Rutgers on the road looming. Let's see if Gophers have matured, handle improved Scarlet Knights in Piscataway.
 

The Michigan and Indiana games will be the determining factors in whether we go dancing or not. Those are absolute must wins. And I'm typing this with the assumption we don't lay a turd @Rutgers which is totally possible. If that happens we're probably done.
 

MadtownGopher said:
The Michigan and Indiana games will be the determining factors in whether we go dancing or not. Those are absolute must wins. And I'm typing this with the assumption we don't lay a turd @Rutgers which is totally possible. If that happens we're probably done.
Click to expand...

They're not must wins unless we lose to Rutgers. If we beat Rutgers, we'll be 6-6. Splitting IU/Michigan will make us 7-7 with home games against Nebraska and Penn State left. 9-9 and we are in.
 

MadtownGopher said:
The Michigan and Indiana games will be the determining factors in whether we go dancing or not. Those are absolute must wins. And I'm typing this with the assumption we don't lay a turd @Rutgers which is totally possible. If that happens we're probably done.
Click to expand...

SS is the authority on this but I look at it this way: If we beat Rutgers we have one mulligan available (assuming we don't beat Maryland or Wisky). We could lose a game to Mich or Indiana and still get to 9-9. With our RPI and overall resume- I'd have to think we'd still be in.

Edit- Howie beat me to it.
 

howeda7 said:
They're not must wins unless we lose to Rutgers. If we beat Rutgers, we'll be 6-6. Splitting IU/Michigan will make us 7-7 with home games against Nebraska and Penn State left. 9-9 and we are in.
Click to expand...

I guess you could just add Nebraska and Penn State to the group and say we need to win 3 of 4. I picked out Michigan and Indiana because they are in the thick of it with us at 5-6 and we play them before Penn State and Nebraska. I think those first two games will say a lot about where we are going.
 

MadtownGopher said:
The Michigan and Indiana games will be the determining factors in whether we go dancing or not. Those are absolute must wins. And I'm typing this with the assumption we don't lay a turd @Rutgers which is totally possible. If that happens we're probably done.
Click to expand...

Actually, we can easily split the games between Indiana and Michigan and still make the tourney. Win against Rutgers, PSU and Nebraska gets us to an at-worst B1G record of 8-10. Splitting gets us to 9-9, which would easily get us in with our RPI. Winning both would just be for seeding, we'd be 22-9, be favored in our first B1G tourney game and probably be 23-10 going into the tourney with a seed in the 6-9 range.

If we win the next 3 and get to 8-6 we most likely move to the top 2 or 3 in the B1G ESPN Bubble watch.
 

bga1 said:
SS is the authority on this but I look at it this way: If we beat Rutgers we have one mulligan available (assuming we don't beat Maryland or Wisky). We could lose a game to Mich or Indiana and still get to 9-9. With our RPI and overall resume- I'd have to think we'd still be in.

Edit- Howie beat me to it.
Click to expand...

I would tend to agree with this.

Would put it this way. The simplest path, which assumes losses to Maryland & Bucky (though I think we can beat Terps)?

Win your 4 home games. Do that and the resume is plenty good enough to survive a bad loss to Rutgers. Gophers to this date do not have a single bad loss. In my estimation the Gophers have the 4th best resume in the B1G right now, behind only Maryland, Purdue, and Wisconsin.

Beating Indiana & Michigan is so important because it could be the death knell to their at-large chances (minus a run to BTT semifinals), eliminating some of our direct competition.
 

MadtownGopher said:
I guess you could just add Nebraska and Penn State to the group and say we need to win 3 of 4. I picked out Michigan and Indiana because they are in the thick of it with us at 5-6 and we play them before Penn State and Nebraska. I think those first two games will say a lot about where we are going.
Click to expand...

And that's true. The thing about this team is we have lost 1 game all year by more than 10 points - the road loss at MSU. So it is also possible that we beat Maryland or Wisconsin. This remains a team that can beat anybody in the Big Ten or be beaten by anybody in the Big Ten. Right now I really like the fact that we have Murphy's head back in the game. Another strong performance by him at Rutgers (and a win) and we are looking very good.
 

bga1 said:
Right now I really like the fact that we have Murphy's head back in the game. Another strong performance by him at Rutgers (and a win) and we are looking very good.
Click to expand...

Moving forward Murph was far & away most encouraging thing about last night. But I want to see it 2 games in a row. Then 3 games in a row. He needs to be engaged like that from here on out, not just sporadically.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom