As if you couldn’t see it coming many months ago, here we are — a must-win situation to keep the NCAA Tournament hopes alive. The Gophers have done a textbook job fumbling away what was a promising season, one that saw them ranked in the top-20 in the country, before collapsing into a black hole that now has them desperately hanging on in the bubble.
The good news? They are still IN according to many pundits, but just barely. As in, the last team in. The final stretch of the season is favorable, however, with Minnesota facing the dregs of the conference in Northwestern and Nebraska, before heading on the road to take on a beatable Penn State team and concluding with a home tilt against a similarly vulnerable Rutgers team.