Big second half lifts Gophers basketball over Western Carolina

This time, Richard Pitino didn't wait to see if his team would stir from its slumber.

At halftime of a one-point game against Western Carolina, the Gophers men's basketball coach marched his players down to the locker room and had some words. This team had started a trend of slugging through one half or another, and it looked like more of the same at the break on Friday.

"I yelled at them," Pitino said. "Very, very loudly."

The emphatic pep talk seemed to work, at least eventually.

In the second half, the Gophers turned up the pressure, clamped down on the control and pushed past the pesky Catamounts 84-64, overcoming another anemic showing on the boards.

After struggling to pull away from a Western Carolina team that arrived at Williams Arena as a 20-point underdog, the Gophers (6-2) held the Catamounts (3-6) to 38.5 shooting from the field and forced 14 turnovers in the second half, and then used a 9-3 run — capped by a three-point play by DeAndre Mathieu — with 10:33 left to build the elusive double-digit lead at 59-49.

"We weren't imposing our will, we weren't forcing turnovers, [in the first half]," Mathieu said. "So once we got into that it really showed us that when we're playing hard, it gets the game going."

Offensively, the Gophers played well, drilling four three-pointers in the final 12 minutes and shooting 57.4 percent from the floor overall. Five players finished in double digits, with Mathieu and Carlos Morris leading the way with 16 apiece.

But troubles came in the little things.

The deficiency on the boards has been a troublesome trend for the Gophers, who rank last in the Big Ten in defensive rebounding. Through eight games, no player is averaging more than five rebounds. The shortcoming is only worsened by the suspension of Daquein McNeil, who was charged with two counts of domestic assault last week. Without him, Pitino's rotation is in crunch mode, and with out-of-position players stepping in at small forward — such as power forwards Charles Buggs and Joey King — the coach has implemented a matchup zone to lessen the roster's defensive liabilities.

The Gophers led only 39-38 at the break after getting crushed on the boards — 19-8 — by Western Carolina. The Catamounts, who topped the Gophers 34-26 in rebounding overall, collected 10 offensive rebounds and turned them into 12 second-chance points before halftime.

"We just came out sleepwalking," King said, "which is completely unacceptable."

That's when the halftime talk came. Pitino's message?

"Play harder," King said.

Said Morris: "You could say it was the long ball, they were taking crazy shots and there were long rebounds, but it just came down to us being physical. You've just got to do it."

Pitino pointed out that the Gophers, who rank first in the Big Ten in steals, are playing much better defense through this point of the season than they did a year ago.

Still, the differences between halves have been confounding. The Gophers have taken off in the second half of their past two games, after building double-digit leads in the first half of their previous two.

"If we could just take care of all the little things, we could really be playing some great basketball," Pitino said.