Rodney Williams still remembers the run his Gophers squad went on during his freshman season two years ago.
Minnesota entered that year's Big Ten tournament with a none-too-impressive 18-12 record overall and a 9-9 mark in conference play. But the Gophers caught fire in the conference tournament. After beating unranked Penn State in the first round, Minnesota knocked off No. 11 Michigan State in overtime and No. 5 Purdue in a convincing, 69-42, win to advance to the tournament championship game.
While the Gophers lost to No. 7 Ohio State in the championship that year, their run in the Big Ten Tournament was enough to earn them a bid in the NCAA Tournament.
This year, the 18-13 Gophers will need another deep run in the conference playoffs to even have a chance of getting an invite to the Big Dance.
Like they did in the 2009-10 season, the Gophers won their final regular-season game to provide at least a slight bit of momentum heading into the postseason. Minnesota defeated visiting Nebraska on Saturday and now opens the tournament on a positive note following an 81-69 win that snapped a six-game losing streak.
"If you can go in there with confidence, anything can happen, just like my freshman year," Williams said of the conference tournament. "We kind of went on a losing streak, won our last one and then we made it to the championship in the Big Ten Tournament. That's the kind of run we're looking to make again this year."
Minnesota's postseason begins Thursday against Northwestern. The tenth-seeded Gophers and seventh-seeded Wildcats have already met twice this season, with the two teams splitting the season series. Each team won at home, with Minnesota dispensing of Northwestern by 23 at Williams Arena in late January and NU beating the Gophers by 11 in mid-February.
Their game Thursday in the Big Ten Tournament will be held on a neutral site at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The winner moves on to face No. 2 Michigan. The loser will likely see their NCAA Tournament hopes fade away.
The Gophers finished the year 6-12 in conference play thanks to an 0-4 start in the Big Ten. Their recent six-game losing streak near the end of the season didn't help the situation. Neither did losing star senior Trevor Mbakwe to an ACL injury in late November.
"No one expected us to be 6-12, but those things happen in this league," Gophers coach Tubby Smith said after his team's regular-season finale. "We've just got to be ready and prepared to go in there."
Northwestern, meanwhile, only strung together one winning streak during Big Ten play, winning three games in early February. The Wildcats had a big win over then-No. 7 Michigan State in Evanston, but that was their only victory over a ranked opponent this season.
In the most recent meeting between the Gophers and Wildcats, Minnesota fell behind by eight points at the half and couldn't recover after halftime. Northwestern senior John Shurna became the school's all-time leading scorer with an 18-point effort that night. In Minnesota's 75-52 win over the Wildcats, Shurna scored 21 but didn't get much help offensively from his teammates.
If the Gophers are to advance, they'll need a similar balance like what the exhibited in Saturday's win over Nebraska. For a team without a go-to scorer since Mbakwe went down, Minnesota got double-digit scoring from five players in the win over the Huskers.
Senior Ralph Sampson III, the Gophers' lone healthy senior, also remembers Minnesota's Big Ten Tournament run two years ago. He was a sophomore that year when the Gophers boosted their postseason chances by going deep in the conference tournament.
After Saturday's win over the Cornhuskers, Sampson said he can see Minnesota putting together another Big Ten Tournament run in 2012.
"We still have the feeling here about making that run, so we know exactly what we need to do," Sampson said. "We know exactly how to execute and what to do. It's all about getting everybody on board on the same page and attacking every game like it's our last, because it could be."
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