I watched the game late, late at night. I knew the Gophers had won but no other details. I was very very confused when they were down 7 with like 43 seconds left how they actually won to the point that I wondered if I somehow had bad information. We've been on the wrong side of that type of thing a ton during both the Pitino and Tubby years but I can't recall such an unlikely victory in the waning seconds.
First half I thought the Gophers played really, really well. I though they might win going away. If I was watching live, the sequence at the end of the half where Gabe missed the wide open 3 and then Iowa nailed a 3 would have seemed huge. That was a potential 11 point lead at half that all of a sudden was just 5. Even beyond that sequence the Gophers could have been up by much more going in to the half. They got good shots on almost every possession offensively and could have hit a higher percentage and they also played without Robbins due to foul trouble. I (mistakenly) thought the rebouding would improve with Robbins back in the second half.
I believe it was a 17-2 run for Iowa that took them from down 8 to up 7 that spanned the end of the first half through the start of the second. I don't feel like the Gophers played bad during this stretch. They missed a comical number of open shots during this period including Gach losing the handle on the ball on a wide open dunk. The defense was weak in transition, but strong in the half court, but the rebounding was still atrocious. From that point on though, I thought the Gophers played really, really bad for the majority of the 2nd half. They didn't handle the zone well despite playing offense next to their bench. The offensive rebounding by Iowa became almost comical and the first shot defense started to wane as well. At one point the stat was Iowa had 18 offensive rebounds to Minnesota's 19 defensive rebounds, which is crazy. The first 3 by Marcus Carr to cut it to 3 was an unreal invidual effort, the second was a great shot but also a special shout out to Brandon Johnson for the screen then the re-screen which freed Carr and gave him a great look.
Overtime was the Brandon Johnson show as the top of the key 3 opened up the scoring and his baseline 3 was basically the dagger. I still think the Gophers own defense could have been better in the overtime period, but it was at least closer to what we saw in the first half. It was interesting to me that we saw much more of Mashburn Jr. in crunch time (late in regulation and OT) than we saw of Both Gach. I would guess that Gach was deemed responsible for some of the defensive breakdowns but haven't seen an explanation.
I mentioned numerous times that I thought Minnesota matched up well here, so the result wasn't a big surprise to me. Iowa simply cannot defend and the Gophers can (and did) score against them. I was very surprised that they won without getting Garza in any sort of foul trouble and even more surprised that they won while getting dominated on the boards something I didn't think had any chance of happening. I am not sure I recall a Gopher team ever giving up 27 offensive boards in a game. To do it against a team that is not athletic nor particularly physical is a major warning sign going forward. They won't win many games the rest of the season if they can't control their defensive boards significantly better than that. I'd have to go back and watch the game a second time to see who the major offenders were, but it seemed like an entire team issue.
Regardless of what happens the rest of the year, Brandon Johnson has a memory to last a lifetime. As a grad transfer from a MAC school, you can't ask for many bigger moments than he had last night. Hopefully, this is just a jumping off point for Brandon and he becomes a ~15 ppg player and threat from the arc going forward.
More concerned about Gabe offensively after this game than any of the previous ones. He was getting practice jumpers and missing them. You simply cannot get better looks with more time to get it off than Gabe did and he simply couldn't knock them down. I believe the one 3 he did make was actually his toughest attempt. He did do a very nice job on Weiskamp and was aggressive getting to the free thrown line, but the shot might be broken right now. That's a bad sign when Mashburn Jr went 2-10 from the field (lots of wide open looks as well) and Tre Williams didn't get on the floor (and has a full year of shooting very poorly on his resume) .
What can you say about Marcus Carr? This program has been decidedly anti-clutch for as long as I can remember. Carr has two game winners and now a shot that sent a game to OT in less than 40 games as a Gopher. Really refreshing to see someone come up big in crunch time.