The restlessness was evident in both the players' bumps and bruises and their words Monday at a Gophers media day involving both the men's and women's basketball teams.

With a month of practice in the rear view mirror, the start of the season — bringing new opponents — is just around the corner. For the women, it starts Tuesday, with an exhibition against Winona State. The men's first game, against Cardinal-Stritch, is Friday.

"They are sick of [playing] each other, you can tell it," new Gophers men's coach Richard Pitino said. "They're definitely sick of it. I'm sick of watching them against each other."

Soon, the aggression will be let out on opponents. This week will bring answers to many questions about the men's and women's teams.

"We are excited for this season," women's coach Pam Borton said. "The expectation here is always for us to be in the NCAA tournament. We have to teach 'em how to win, how to get there. Hopefully that's something we can do this year for our senior class."

Led by Pitino, the men's squad introduces a new up-tempo system that will be a notable change from a year ago, when former coach Tubby Smith had the team operating a half-court system most of the time.

"We press all the time, we're running up and down the floor," guard Andre Hollins said. "And that is going to make us difficult to play again, because we practice that way every day. I love this style. It's a different philosophy; I had a hard time grasping it at first. But right now I'm liking it a lot."

It starts with defense

The formula, Borton said, is simple: Defend better, win more.

The Gophers women's team begins its season with Tuesday's 7 p.m. exhibition against Winona State at Williams Arena. And Borton, entering her 12th season as head coach, wants to wed last season's offensive powerhouse with a little more defensive punch.

"Last year, of my 11 years here, was probably the worst team we had defensively," Borton said. "But we had one of our better offensive teams."

So, keep one, improve the other. The Gophers were second in the Big Ten in both scoring and field goal percentage last season, and Borton has her top four scorers back. But the team was also second-to-last in scoring defense. So the focus of the team's 21 practices (so far) has been on bolstering the defense.

"I think it's our on-the-ball defense," Borton said. "And another issue is having our post players defend the rim."

Borton said she feels the addition of center Amanda Zahul B. will help with interior defense, allowing Micaëlla Riché to play power forward.

On the perimeter, Rachel Banham, the conference's top returning scorer (20.7) and Sari Noga will work on their on-the-ball defense. Borton said she believes a better balanced team will result in an improvement from last year's 18-14 record and a return to the NCAA tournament.

Still tinkering

Pitino said he still hasn't set his lineup for Friday, and could do plenty of tinkering beyond this week's first exhibition.

"I'm kind of contemplating what I want to do," He said. "Who we start Friday does not mean that's the starting five. I may try to do something different just because we have an opportunity to kind of dabble with that a little bit.

"It changes every week. Guys may have a good practice, somebody may not have a good practice. I think it's probably not beneficial for our basketball team if I say this is the starting five because certain guys may get discouraged and they want to work their way into the starting lineup. So it changes week by week, opponent by opponent."