Patrick Reusse: Tubby's Gophers turn tables on NDSU

We haven't seen a mismatch like this between men's athletic teams from North Dakota State and the University of Minnesota since ... heck, since the Bison registered 585 yards in a not-that-close 27-21 victory over the football Gophers on Oct. 20.

This time, NDSU was in Minneapolis to play Tubby Smith's basketball team. This group of Bison discovered in their 88-56 loss that there's considerably more defense being played by Gophers on the east side of the river than there was on the west.

"I'm not sure I remember a team pressuring us like the Gophers did tonight," said Ben Woodside, NDSU's star guard. "Tubby has them playing very intense.

"Individually, it seems like they wanted to get the ball out of my hand as soon as possible. Even on the screen-and-roll, the big man stayed with me, and that forced me to give up the ball."

Woodside, the 5-11 junior guard from Albert Lea, was averaging 26.4 points and shooting 53.8 percent from the field through seven games.

On Monday, he went 6-for-15, scored 17 points and committed three of his team's 19 turnovers.

"We call this a game with catastrophic turnovers," Woodside said. "And they also dominated us on the boards. They go 10 deep and everyone who came in the game played very intense."

A year ago, NDSU made a November visit to Williams Arena and carried considerable expectations of a victory. Then, the Bison choked mightily in the first half, stumbled to 18 points in those 20 minutes and lost 63-49.

That was a self-inflicted drubbing for NDSU. It also was a season-opening victory for Dan Monson. One more followed over Long Island, then he lost five in a row and was fired.

Those Gophers finished 9-22, the worst record ever for a men's basketball team at Minnesota. And isn't it quite an achievement that when the next season for a high-profile team came along this fall, the Gophers produced the worst record -- 1-11 -- in their football history?

This is a remarkable exacta for athletic director Joel Maturi to have hit in a period of eight months, when you consider that our state university has been sponsoring both football and men's basketball since the 19th century.

Fortunately for Maturi, Smith was hand-delivered to him as the new basketball coach. Tubby wanted to get away from those knucklehead fans in Kentucky, and Minnesota was a great place for a soft landing.

Smith was on the sideline for his sixth official game Monday, and we've already discovered that a demanding, perceptive coach can make an astounding difference.

The Bison didn't have a chance on this visit to The Barn -- and it wasn't because they choked. It was because Smith's defenders and rebounders were on the attack for 40 minutes.

"I was very impressed with them, but we have to play better than this," Woodside said. "They came with pressure on defense, pressure on the boards, and I feel like we gave into it."

Watching it, the outclassed Bison didn't seem to have much choice.

The Gophers are now 5-1. There are six more nonconference games and they look like cupcakes, other than a game against UNLV at the end of the Duel in the Desert in Las Vegas.

So that puts Smith's first team at 10-2, minimum, when it opens the Big Ten season Jan. 5 at Michigan State. The home opener is four nights later against Northwestern.

The Wildcats recently lost at home to Brown. Michigan recently was blown out at Harvard. Iowa lost to Louisiana-Monroe in the first round of its Hawkeye Challenge -- its second loss in 26 years of the tournament. Ohio State has scored in the 40s twice in a pair of losses. Penn State finished eighth in the Old Spice Classic in Orlando.

What we're saying here is that there appear to be any number of inferior teams in the Big Ten. And these new, Tubby-fied Gophers do not appear to be one of them.

This was such a beating that the Bison faithful had no choice but to walk out of the Barn on Monday shaking heads and saying, "Thank goodness we got to play 'em in football."

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com