Minnesota tips off against Penn State at 4:15.
Most bracketology experts agree that the Gophers need some combination of two more wins to slip inside the NCAA tournament bubble.
Meaning that even if the Gophers lose to Penn State on Saturday, their path to the Big Dance is probably not statistically impossible.
But a scenario in which Minnesota drops their finale to the Nittany Lions would make the journey ahead imminently more challenging.
First of all, the Gophers would need to win back-to-back games in a tournament environment on the road -- never an easy task, especially for a squad that has been so inconsistent all season.
Additionally, a loss tonight would put Minnesota in the midst of a complicated four-way tie for seventh place in the Big Ten.
In that scenario, Penn State, Illinois (which just picked up its seventh win with a victory over Iowa last night), Indiana and Minnesota would all sit at 7-11 in the conference.
The four teams' combined head-to-head records against each of the other three teams would then be looked at to determine seeding in the league tournament. In that case, the teams would fall like this:
