***OFFICIAL MINNESOTA AT PENN ST IN-GAME THREAD!!!***

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Just watched the 2nd half. Almost didn't after the poor first half combined with those announcers. Fox is the man!
 


JZABR said:
Happy we won, hit our free throws and won without Payne and Hawkins with foul trouble. Outscoring a team 52-28 in the 2nd half is evidence of making good half time adjustments. Penn St isn't a good team but a conference road win is still a conference road win.
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Penn State probably has better players but they are not disciplined at all.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
No one is expected to win all games. Not a single coach in any sport. What the hell are you talking about?

Johnson is equal to blame for losses as he is credited for wins. You can’t just pick and choose a “oh, he made adjustments!” But then ignore when he doesn’t “make adjustments”
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To say he doesn’t make adjustments is stupid. It’s more of the adjustments that he makes sometimes don’t work.
Those who complain that he doesn’t draw up good plays out of time outs should watch this game again. Two instances stood out. First half with 2 seconds left on shot clock they run a nice inbound play to get JOJ the lob. He missed it but got fouled and made the FT’s. The other, when leading by one in second half. He calls a play to get the ball in Garcia hands from a sideline out of bounds at top of key with left side of floor open. It allows Garcia to go left and take it to the hole for the and 1
 

MNVCGUY said:
This team has now put up 2 - 52 point second halves in Big Ten play. The first half struggles have been frustrating but holy crap this team can kick it into gear. Just have to figure out how to do it for the whole game instead of just one half.
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Basketball can be a funny game with how runs can happen by either team. They don't need to win it in the first 20 minutes. Figure out how to hold their own and limit the big runs so they aren't digging such big holes for themselves.

Encouraged with their ability to battle back. They came out in the 2nd half like a team possessed.
 



DarthGopher said:
Basketball can be a funny game with how runs can happen by either team. They don't need to win it in the first 20 minutes. Figure out how to hold their own and limit the big runs so they aren't digging such big holes for themselves.

Encouraged with their ability to battle back. They came out in the 2nd half like a team possessed.
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Funny thing in this game was the first half was shaping up to be close and then Hawkins got that second foul and the wheels came off leading into halftime. Most of the time the first half deficits are due to a really slow start or ridiculously cold shooting. That wasn't the case in this one.

I have been impressed all year by how this team battles back from those big deficits. The shocking part is how quickly they do it in a lot of the games.
 

mplarson7 said:
It wasn't a call, genius. When a team is down 45-31 at halftime, they are on pace to lose 90-62. Simple arithmetic would do you some wonders.
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But the score after the first minute of play had Minnesota ahead 2-0.Therefore, by using your simple arithmetic scenario, Minnesota was on pace to make 80 free throws and miss none, make no field goals, hold PSU scoreless, and win by a score of 80-0.
 
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MNVCGUY said:
Funny thing in this game was the first half was shaping up to be close and then Hawkins got that second foul and the wheels came off leading into halftime. Most of the time the first half deficits are due to a really slow start or ridiculously cold shooting. That wasn't the case in this one.

I have been impressed all year by how this team battles back from those big deficits. The shocking part is how quickly they do it in a lot of the games.
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I’ll suggest the comebacks are directly related to significantly improved offensive skill. Guys who can shoot can engineer comebacks. We have a lot more guys who can score this year than we have had in more than a decade.
 



UpAndUnder43 said:
No one is expected to win all games.
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Thank you. Now we are getting somewhere
UpAndUnder43 said:
What the hell are you talking about?
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????
UpAndUnder43 said:
Johnson is equal to blame for losses as he is credited for wins.
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Now you return to ridiculous. When an underdog team loses a game by 2 points to a top 20 team because the players make some mistakes on the court, to lay blame for that loss on the coach is not reasonable. He deserves credit for putting them in a position to win rather than blame for the loss.

Similarly, when a more relatively evenly matched team, down by 16 at halftime, makes adjustments, and comes back and wins the game, the players should get loads of credit, but also the coach.
UpAndUnder43 said:
You can’t just pick and choose a “oh, he made adjustments!” But then ignore when he doesn’t “make adjustments”
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I have never, ever said that Ben was a perfect coach. I have only said that he deserves a chance and that I think he is, in fact, doing a good job and deserves to be retained. Of course he is not perfect. You and others choose to distort many of my comments.
 
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Gopherbbdude said:
Play of the game!!

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Tough call on what was play of game. There were many great moments in the comeback! On what was biggest, but this was definitely HUGE!There were several. Any of Fox’s blocks, JOJ’s monster fast break dunk of the Hawkins dime, Garcia taking the ball to the hoop in the final minute, to get that foul leading to JOJ’s OR, Mitchell’s steal off the inbound….

Thanks for posting this! A delight to see again!
 

GFBfan said:
It’s coming.
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Exactly, it’s a process to become a good team without a plethora of great players. It requires patience which is on short supply, especially in these days of instant gratification.

The announcers made a salient point, when they talked about how Ben said he was trying to convince these guys they are a tournament team.

There will be some on here, who will scoff, but of course, but they miss the point. Unless you believe it, deep in your core, you’ll never achieve it. To get to that belief requires failure first; as Jordan said, you gotta lose, before you can win. In the real world, ask any salesman who has to make cold calls about the process in becoming confident when calling on prospects.

If one never participated/played in athletics past the jr. high level and contributed to a team and its growth, it’s hard to grasp that type of coalescence, as they haven’t experienced it. It needs to be experienced, just like other sensory activities vs. learned via observation. The team has learned to walk and I expect to see some running during the rest of the season and an NIT bid.

You can have knowledge about sports/analytics, but that’s vastly different than knowing you’re gonna spin that pitcher’s 🧢 because his 🧀 is weak when digging into the box.
 
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Go4POV said:
Thank you. Now we are getting somewhere

????

Now you return to ridiculous. When an underdog team loses a game by 2 points to a top 20 team because the players make some mistakes on the court, to lay blame for that loss on the coach is not reasonable. He deserves credit for putting them in a position to win rather than blame for the loss.

Similarly, when a evenly matched team, down by 16 at halftime, makes adjustments, and comes back and wins the game, the players should get loads of credit, but also the coach.

I have never, ever said that Ben was a perfect coach. I have only said that he deserves a chance and that I think he is, in fact, doing a good job and deserves to be retained. Of course he is not perfect. You and others choose to distort many of my comments.
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See my comments In the post above yours (#312), as that may be the crux of the problem.
 

golfing18now said:
Dumb post here but nice win for the Gophers!
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Sure better than a loss. Still hard to know who the Gophers are and, for that matter, who anyone is in this conference, but this confirms that at least they have a big talent advantage over Penn State and played like it for enough minutes that they got a W out of the deal.
 


Tully55 said:
But the score after the first minute of play had Minnesota ahead 2-0.Therefore, by using your simple arithmetic scenario, Minnesota was on pace to make 80 free throws and miss none, make no field goals, hold PSU scoreless, and win by a score of 80-0.
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So you are equating a sample size of less than a minute vs half the game?
 

Johnson still has a chance to save the season now after this win but honestly we shouldn’t have been down to Penn State in the first place. Continued slow starts and long bad stretches will make it impossible to come back against any but the bottom of the Big Ten.
 

CentralGopher said:
Johnson still has a chance to save the season now after this win but honestly we shouldn’t have been down to Penn State in the first place. Continued slow starts and long bad stretches will make it impossible to come back against any but the bottom of the Big Ten.
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We were down 15 to the Badgers too.....and probably should have won that game.
 


mplarson7 said:
So you are equating a sample size of less than a minute vs half the game?
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No...I, just like you, used your "simple arithmetic"logic to come to a totally irrelevant conclusion used to admonish another poster, just the way you did.
"What's good for the goose..."
 
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CBJ had to find out what matchups were going to work going into the sec half. Dump the zone which got shredded—wasn't a bad strategy bec PSU hasn't been able to shoot 3's, but sadly MN zone is no Syracuse-Boeheim zone. This team is a man-to-man team. Ihnen wasn’t going to get to the rim—get defender Carrington his minutes. Hawkins, Carrington and Christie dribbling through pressure wasn’t going to work—bring more guys into back court help/screens vs diamond pressure. (Fox's back court screen was epic). Up the tempo when the numbers were there--led to some easy baskets and fouls. Get the ball into the paint and don’t fall in love w/3’s—inside out game worked. I think this was a prime example of defense leading to offense, and once MN manned up with the determined rotations, PSU didn't have an answer. The Lions fatigued, injured and were too shallow off the bench.
 

GFBfan said:
To say he doesn’t make adjustments is stupid. It’s more of the adjustments that he makes sometimes don’t work.
Those who complain that he doesn’t draw up good plays out of time outs should watch this game again. Two instances stood out. First half with 2 seconds left on shot clock they run a nice inbound play to get JOJ the lob. He missed it but got fouled and made the FT’s. The other, when leading by one in second half. He calls a play to get the ball in Garcia hands from a sideline out of bounds at top of key with left side of floor open. It allows Garcia to go left and take it to the hole for the and 1
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I wish they'd do another one of those games where the coaches are mic'd up the entire game, because although last year was a terrible season, the win against OSU on the road showed that CBJ knows how to coach. All he needed was depth. Not saying this years team is a juggernaut, but he's got more tools at his disposal and more experience to be able to make those plays. That lob play to JOJ was drawn up very nice because not even the broadcasters thought it was gonna go to him.
 

CentralGopher said:
Like I said, there’s a chance now but moral victories still don’t count for anything.
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I get that. I was just responding to the part where you said "Continued slow starts and long bad stretches will make it impossible to come back against any but the bottom of the Big Ten."
 

JZABR said:
I wish they'd do another one of those games where the coaches are mic'd up the entire game, because although last year was a terrible season, the win against OSU on the road showed that CBJ knows how to coach. All he needed was depth. Not saying this years team is a juggernaut, but he's got more tools at his disposal and more experience to be able to make those plays. That lob play to JOJ was drawn up very nice because not even the broadcasters thought it was gonna go to him.
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It was a sweet play run off a double screen IIRC, with a perfect pass.

The best one I heard on here about the OSU game you referenced, was that Ben coached more vociferously than normal due to the telecast, by a poster who presents themselves as knowledgeable. You literally cannot make this shtick up, I’m laughing now, as I recount this tale.
 


I was ready to go full "lose every game so this coach gets fired" mode when we were down 14 at half yesterday.

Ben and the gang with a nice comeback W.

Hard to figure this team out. We have 6 home games left that are all extremely winnable. Hard to say what will actually happen though.

I think it's fair to hope for an NIT berth at this point. I'd be OK with that.

NCAA seems like a stretch but always makes the Big Ten Tournament fun (Depending on my mood at how pissed / happy I am in current Winning or Losing streak) haha

What can I say, I'm just a fan.
 

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