Gophers Rout Wisconsin; Host New Mexico Sunday

For the 3rd game in a row, the Gophers held a Big 10 opponent to less than 50 points. Wisconsin entered Thursday’s game averaging 74.1 points per game, but they shot only 26.6 percent (17 of 64) from the field against a Gopher defense that contested just about every shot.

Janel McCarville returned to her home state with another stellar performance: 15 points, 17 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 blocks, and 2 steals. McCarville scored all 15 of her points in the 1st half, as the Gophers held a 40-27 lead. Early in the 2nd half, McCarville became only the 10th Big 10 women’s player to record 1000 points and 1000 rebounds in her career. She now has 1523 points and 1008 rebounds.

Besides great team defense, the Gophers used balanced scoring to move their Big 10-leading record to 3-0. Besides McCarville’s 15 points, the Gophers had 3 other players in double figures: Shannon Bolden and Shannon Schonrock each scored 11; Jamie Broback contributed 10.

No. 23 New Mexico Next. The 11th-ranked Gophers will host the 23rd-ranked New Mexico Lobos 2 p.m. Sunday at Williams Arena in their final regular season non-conference game. The Lobos come into the game with a 10-1 record, including most recently, a 101-22 thrashing of Morgan State. New Mexico’s only loss this season was a home loss in Albuquerque to highly-ranked Texas, 73-56.

New Mexico will be playing only its 3rd road game of the season. Like the Gophers, the Lobos play a lot of their non-conference games at home, where they are currently 4th in the nation in attendance with an average of 9939 fans per game.

The Gophers are 5th in the nation in women’s basketball attendance with an average of 7797 fans per game, including 9283 for the Nortwestern game and 10,331 for the Indiana game.

This game should be a good test for the Gophers, who should be a slight favorite at home.

Notes and Observations:

• The game against New Mexico is the 1st of 3 games in a row against ranked teams for the Gophers. The team travels to Purdue and then Michigan State following the New Mexico game.
• After LSU’s loss to Rutgers earlier in the week, Iowa was the only remaining undefeated Division I team, but the Hawkeyes then lost to Penn State at home on Thursday, 77-71. Penn State and Minnesota are now the only 2 remaining undefeated Big 10 teams.
• Kohl Center, the site for last night’s Gopher game against Wisconsin, was also the setting for a game in January, 2002, which might have sent the Gophers and Badgers programs in opposite directions. The Badgers went into the game as the No. 5 team in the country, 16-2 with a 15-game winning streak, 7-0 in the Big 10. Before a record Big 10 women’s crowd of 17,142, the upstart Gophers beat the Badgers, 92-85, in a regionally-televised game. This was a signature win for the Gophers, a program that has since risen to national prominence. Followers of the Wisconsin program would probably acknowledge that this was the start of a downhill journey for the Badger program, which has now struggled for the past 3 years, replacing a coach, etc.

  It was ironic that at the same time the Gophers were winning in Wisconsin, the pipes were freezing and then flooding their Sports Pavilion home court. When the Gophers returned home for their next game, they were forced to play in Williams Arena. A huge crowd showed up at Williams, a crowd that the Pavilion could not have accommodated. Most of these fans had not seen Lindsay Whalen, Janel McCarville & Company play before. From that time on, the crowds kept coming, the team continued to entertain, and the days at the Pavilion were in the rear-view mirror.

Talk about the game on our Gopher Basketball message board.