Men's basketball: Confident, composed U scores first road victory

EVANSTON, ILL. - The video started rolling as the Gophers' bus pulled out of the team hotel early Wednesday evening.

Gophers players figured coach Jim Molinari was trying to make one last point before their game at Northwestern. In a way, he was. But instead of pointing out one more thing that needed to be fixed, Molinari was playing the good cop.

As the Gophers made their way from Skokie to Evanston, they watched the second half of Saturday's victory over Penn State, perhaps the Gophers' best 20 minutes of play in an otherwise difficult season.

"It made us feel like we were a team that could beat anybody or that could play with anybody," guard Lawrence McKenzie said. "It gave guys a lot of confidence."

It worked. The Gophers looked like a completely different team in a 62-55 victory than they did 11 days earlier in a loss to Northwestern.

Instead of panicking, the Gophers attacked. Instead of standing around, they moved. Instead of launching bricks, they made shots.

Led by Jamal Abu-Shamala and Dan Coleman, the Gophers made 10 three-pointers for the game, including eight in the second half. Mix in some decent defense and the Gophers (9-13, 3-5 Big Ten) picked up their second consecutive conference victory and won away from Williams Arena for the first time this season.

It also ended Northwestern's run of six consecutive victories against the Gophers, dating to the 2003 Big Ten tournament.

For Abu-Shamala, watching footage from the Penn State game again was one of the reasons for the victory.

"It got guys fired up," said the sophomore guard, who hit five three-pointers and scored a career-high 19 points. "Sometimes it takes watching it to see how well you played, especially offensively with how we moved the ball.

"Coach basically said, 'All you have to do is play like that and you'll win.' "

After a back-and-forth first half, the Gophers used good ball movement to get open three-pointers and grab control of the game.

"Guys are penetrating to get their teammates open instead of trying to penetrate to score," McKenzie said.

More than half of the Gophers' made field goals in the second half were three-pointers. At one point, they made four consecutive long-range shots.

Still, the Gophers trailed 44-42 with nine minutes to play. But McKenzie, Coleman and Abu-Shamala grabbed control of the game. The three combined to score 13 points in a 17-6 run that put the game away.

Coleman, who finished with 17 points, hit a three-pointer with 3:17 to play that put Minnesota up 56-50. McKenzie stretched the lead to 59-50 with a three -- his third of the second half -- with 1:25 to play.

"We did change," Molinari said. "We tried to spread the floor more, we moved the ball more, but we made shots.

"When you make shots, your offense looks better."

Notes

• The Gophers have hit 20 threes in their past two games. In their first six Big Ten games, they made 27 threes.

• The victory ended a stretch of brutal performances on the road. Before the victory, the Gophers had lost 17 of their previous 19 games away from Williams Arena. They had also lost 13 of their previous 14 true road games.

• Coleman has been very consistent of late, reaching double figures in scoring 16 times in the Gophers' past 17 games.

• Gophers players really wanted to win this game for Molinari, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs and was previously an assistant coach at DePaul. "We wanted to get him a win with his family here," Abu-Shamala said.

Jeff Shelman • jshelman@startribune.com