B1G Game 13: Gophers Host Northwestern (2-10-19)

Donate To GopherHole
I

Ignatius L Hoops

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 9, 2015
Messages
10,779
Reaction score
3,612
Points
113
Closing in on the Wildcats

Just over a week ago, Minnesota (5-7) left Evanston after defeating Northwestern (7-5), kicking off a three game Gopher winning streak and putting the Gophers in sight of the B1G’s muddle in the middle of the conference standings. Since that night, the Wildcats are 1-1 after defeating Ohio State at Welsh-Ryan and losing meekly at Maryland last night.

Unlike the last Gopher/Wildcat match-up, Northwestern enters Sunday’s game with their starting lineup healthy. Forward Abi Scheid has returned to the court and to the starting lineup after missing six consecutive games. Guard Jordan Hamilton, whom, returning from injury, came off the bench in the last game (17 minutes) is back in the starting lineup. These aren’t last week’s Wildcats.

That said, Hamilton’s last two starts played to mixed reviews. Versus Ohio State She posted 12 points (2-3 from three) with 4 assists in 20 minutes. Against Maryland, in 24 minutes Hamilton had 1 point and 2 turnovers. Abi Scheid went from 7 points in 28 minutes versus Ohio State to 16 points in 36 minutes at College Park. The remainder of the starters continue attracting attention: Lindsay Pulliam continues her solid season (23 points against Ohio State and 18 at Maryland). Pallas Kunaiyi-Akpanah, of course, continues to be troublesome with 17 points and 13 rebounds against Ohio State. Howver, Maryland held her in check limiting her to 5 points and 13 rebounds.

Last night, at Maryland, Abi Scheid scored Northwestern’s first bucket with 2:12 remaining in the first quarter making the score 15-5 Terps. It only got worse for the Wildcats. It was 22-8 at the end of one and 41-20 at the half. Maryland's press and man defense took Northwestern out of the game in the first half. During the same time, Northwestern’s 2-3 zone was nothing more than a speed bump to the Terps.

Against Ohio State earlier in the week, Northwestern forced 9 turnovers in the first quarter, took a 34-27 halftime lead despite some poor shooting and then pulled away with a 15-0 run in the fourth quarter. Ohio State committed 20 turnovers to Northwestern’s 9.

In the first match-up with the Wildcats, Taiye Bello’s four fouls limited her playing time to 19 minutes and increased my frustration exponentially. Pallas Kunaiyi-Akpana, who often faces foul trouble herself (she’s had one B1G DQ), only picked up three fouls and played 29 minutes. It will be a less stressful game for Minnesota and the rest of us if Taiye plays 29 and PKA 19.


B1G Wins: Illinois 68-45, Michigan State 70-62, @ Indiana 75-69, Wisconsin 72-46, @ Nebraska 58-54, @ Illinois 64-46, Ohio State 76-59

B1G Losses: @ Rutgers 41-45, @ Michigan 78-79 OT, Purdue 54-57, Minnesota 61-54, @ Maryland 57-72



Starters (B1G Stats):

5’10” G So Lindsay Pulliam (3rd in scoring 18.5/game; K Bell is 4th at 18.1) Pulliam is also 7th in FT% at 78.7%
6’2” F Sr Pallas Kunaiyi-Akpanah (3rd in rebounds per game at 12.1; T Bello is 2nd at 12.6)
6’2” F Jr Abi Scheid (11.0 points, 4.8 rebounds in 30.5 minutes)
5’8” G So Jordan Hamilton (7.1 points, (13-36 from three (.361 %) in 29.5 minutes)
5’9” G Fr Veronica Burton (3rd in steals/game 2.3 and 6th in assist/turnover % at 2.4)


Others:

6’4” F Jr Abbi Wolf (5.5 points, 4.3 rebounds in 16.3 minutes)
5’11” G Fr Sydney Wood (2.8 points in 16.4 minutes)
6’2” F Jr Bryana Hopkins (3.5 points, 3.0 rebounds in 19.9 minutes)
5’8” G Jr Byrdy Galernik (2.2 points in 8.8 minutes)

*I've just noticed that the B1G stats (3rd in the B1G for example) are updated through game 12; but that Northwestern's conference stats (2.6 points in 10 minutes for example) have not been updated.
 
Last edited:

Akpanah and T. Bello are similar players with similar numbers, both occasionally prone to foul trouble. Whoever can stay on the floor the longest in this game might well see their team come away with a W.
 


37-24 MIN at the half

Pitts 12 pts, 1 reb, 1 stl
Bell 10 pts, 7 reb, 4 ast, 1 stl


Scheid 10 pts, 4 reb, 1 reb
 



NW really struggling with the press. That foul call on Bello was a head scratcher. :eek:
 

Quite a few marginal calls today. Having our slump in the 3rd and now need to regroup. Only up by 3.
 

Execution down the stretch once again poor. They stop going with gets them the lead.
 




Scheid misses two FT's with about 5 sec left.

Tied 58-58
 

This is trending towards an OT loss. Hopefully the offense wakes up.
 


Finally some good things happening in OT.
 




Now we are moving into the log jam @ 6 wins in the conference. Nice W !
 

GringaGopher said:
Now we are moving into the log jam @ 6 wins in the conference. Nice W !
Click to expand...

Nice job regrouping for OT! Now ahead of Nebraska in the standings (assuming they keep losing to Purdue) trying to avoid a Wednesday game at the Big Ten Tournament.
 

Gophers 5 minute 15 point OT outscores 10 minute 8 point fourth quarter, 13 point third quarter, ties 15 point second quarter.

I wonder how many times that has happened. Must be a record.

Somebody show them the film of the OT, and say "That's the way we want you to play on the fourth quarter."
 

I had started to give up hope on this team, but they have turned things around with 4 big wins in a row! The lineup change appears to have made a big difference, and they might figure out how to keep things going through the 4th quarter one of these games �� Keep it rolling, Gophers!
 

What a nice comeback in regulation and dominance in overtime. It is great to see the women fight back from a rocky B1G start.
 

Love the Gophers full court pressure with the new lineup. Gophers did a good job of getting the ball to Pitts to shoot free throws in the OT. She's money at the line. NW did a good job of not giving Pitts open threes in the second half after she went off in the first half. Bell...too many turnovers again, but a great job of following her missed shots to get at least 3 rebounds she shouldn't have had. Brunson and Perez with solid games; Bello "held" to 9 boards. No points from Gopher bench...once again we are dealing with the Iron Five, except it's now Perez in the mix instead of Lamke. Gophers with a nice little winning streak now.
 

tripledouble said:
Love the Gophers full court pressure with the new lineup. Gophers did a good job of getting the ball to Pitts to shoot free throws in the OT. She's money at the line. NW did a good job of not giving Pitts open threes in the second half after she went off in the first half. Bell...too many turnovers again, but a great job of following her missed shots to get at least 3 rebounds she shouldn't have had. Brunson and Perez with solid games; Bello "held" to 9 boards. No points from Gopher bench...once again we are dealing with the Iron Five, except it's now Perez in the mix instead of Lamke. Gophers with a nice little winning streak now.
Click to expand...

The 1-2-1-1 press is great with Taiye at the top and jaz and keke punishing teams for bad passes.
Keke had a lot of TOs but those are the same drives that gets her 10 free throws.
Perez is the key. She adds that extra spacing. Now teams are closing out hard creating drives and dishes.
Taiye ended with 10r. I hope this is the last time we see PKA. she goes hard like taiye, but with a little extra beef.
 

Live by Bell, die by Bell. She better hope, if any scouts are still tracking her, that they skipped the fourth and tuned in for OT. She was headed for the dreaded points/rebounds/turnovers triple-double there for a while
 


A few quick notes before I head out to shovel.

It was physical; especially for Taiye and Destiny. NW focused on keeping the ball away from Bello and taking the ball away from her. Fortunately, Taiye caused her havoc at mid-court heading the press. It was enough and it was fun. After Destiny made her fourth three in the first half. McKeown had a spirited conversation with Jordan Hamilton who was slow to get out on Destiny. From then on when Hamiltion was on Pitts it was body up with more than a little grabbing. Hamilton got called for one foul; but Destiny got the last laugh at the foul line.

Inbound Plays...seriously, we need them. Bell inbounds to Pitts who passes back to Bell who dribbles and attempts to deliver the ball to T Bello for a layup in less than 5 seconds.

Lindsay got a warning from, I think referee Tim Daley. After a so-so foul against the Gophers Lindsay turned to the crowd waving her arms to encourage booing and for good measure pointed at the ref on the side line. I still think Whalen will pick up a technical this season; but this is the closest she come thus far.

I thought Whalen was more demonstrative in the second half huddles than normal. She appeared perturbed with our slow motion, dribble the ball around, then throw it away offense for some reason.

Thanks to Scheid for missing the two free throws and the Gopher defense for delivering good win.
 

I was really surprised that Scheid missed both FTs. She had a really solid game and like fellow Minnesotan Wittinger of Illinois, she would have looked good in a Gopher uniform. In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Gophers got no points off the bench today. Nebraska got 30 points from bench player Leigha Brown in their win over Purdue. That's more bench points than the Gophers might get in a half-dozen games. Iggy is right to point out that the game was very physical. I thought the refs missed some calls on both sides, but I also thought it was a game that was difficult to referee. Gophers remaining BIG schedule is difficult, but if they can win Thursday at Purdue, they'll have a 5-game winning streak and they'll have clawed their way back to .500 in the BIG. Gophers remaining schedule includes a rematch at Rutgers , a team that might now be headed in the wrong direction.
 

I am happy for the win, and it was a fun game to be at. Wish the Gophers could have recruited that post Scheid from Elk River. That kid shoots the rock well. Going to need more post players in the years to come. Hard to see one that good playing for another Big 10 team, bit Stollings seemed to have zero interest in local talent. Hopefully this new staff can keep some of the better MN players home.

Sent from my SM-J327P using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:

Kind-of a wild game. Although we had an extremely high 22 turnovers, which is 50% higher than our (already too high) average of 15, the saving grace was that we caused 26 Wildcat turnovers. That -4 turnover margin was a big factor in the win. According to the game notes, 33 out of our 73 points came off turnovers. Credit our season-high 14 steals.

The hot shooting from three was also a big factor (especially in the first half, but .368 for the game). As were Destiny's free throws in OT. And our +9 rebounding margin.

I don't know if anybody has noticed, but Bell has improved her rebounding significantly this year. I think a lot of it may come from being good about following up on her missed shots. Anyway, in a weird one for the record books, Bell (11 reb) nabs two more rebounds than Bello (9 Reb), who was dueling with one of the other top rebounders in the B1G.

Perez follows up last game's perfect shooting with 2 for 3 from deep, for a running 5 for 6 threes in the last two games.
 

CutDownTheNet said:
I don't know if anybody has noticed, but Bell has improved her rebounding significantly this year. I think a lot of it may come from being good about following up on her missed shots. Anyway, in a weird one for the record books, Bell (11 reb) nabs two more rebounds than Bello (9 Reb), who was dueling with one of the other top rebounders in the B1G.
Click to expand...

I also think it has improved; however, in three years of B1G play she's been remarkably consistent. This season she's averaging 5.5 rebounds/B1G game. Last season it was 5.6 and in her first season it was 5.2.
 

I expect the recruiting of Minnesota high school players to change substantially under Whalen. I certainly don't have a problem with going outside the state to land quality players like Pitts, Hubbard, Bello, and Brunson, but when we are stuck with a bench that is not able to contribute on a consistent basis, I would hope that we would be offering scholarships to players like Scheid, Wittinger, Haiby of Nebraska, Gilreath and Frederickson of Wisconsin, etc. Nothing against international players, but I don't see why the previous staff had to go halfway around the world to land some players who can't contribute. This "grass is greener on the other side" mentality didn't work.

Although it should be pointed out that Stollings was here during a bit of a down cycle for Minnesota girls basketball, the upcoming classes of Minnesota players are loaded with talent and I would hope that the new staff can make its mark and land their share of these talented players. We have already seen that this staff is committed to recruiting the state.
 

Due to travels, I was only able to watch the DVR version of the game. Glad we got the win. Same complaint. We get into the 4th quarter, and then our offensive bogs down trying to eat up clock, we force a shot with 2 or 3 seconds to go, miss, and NU is off to score. We need to do something else. I think there was an earlier post which made the point of we need to do what got us the lead. 8 points in the 4th. We were more than lucky to get out of the 4th with a tie. Great play in OT. I agree that we can't keep putting the minutes on our Iron 5. Once we get to the B1G tournament, it just won't work with such little rest between games. And if we don't win more than 1 in the tournament, we won't make the NCAA (but we are moving closer to an invite to the NIT). Nevertheless, let's enjoy the win today.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom