Read my full game story on tonight's 84-64 win over Western Carolina here.

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Three quick observations:

The tale of two halves continues. This is becoming a real thing. The Gophers have played a sluggish half, whether it be the first or the second, in each of their last five games. Friday, as Joey King said, Minnesota came out sleep-walking. The Gophers couldn't buy a rebound and seemed disinterested in stopping an inferior Western Carolina team. It's a concerning habit to be sure -- and frankly, brings back eerily similar memories about the Tubby Smith years -- but I guess the flip side is that when the Gophers play well, they actually look pretty good. If Minnesota can put it all together -- and at this point, that's still a real "if" -- it's an NCAA tournament team. But again, we haven't seen a whole lot of that yet.

Is this team build to rebound? Issue No. 1 with this squad right now. Outside of Elliott Eliason, who is coming off the bench due to his lesser offensive ability compared with starter Mo Walker, there are no real natural rebounders on the team. Joey King is much more of a stretch four than a bang-in-the-paint type of guy. Charles Buggs has no physical side to his game. Walker doesn't get nearly as many as he should. With coach Richard Pitino's system, and now the newly implemented matchup zone, a lot of that rebounding will fall to the guards. But it's going to be a tough go. Carlos Morris, now in more of a hybrid role than ever with Daquein McNeil suspended, must box out better and make life on the boards more of a focus. Overall, it's got to be very much a team effort. But January and February will be rough if the rebounding production doesn't pick up.

From one year to the next, defense has improved. There have been moments of real defensive greatness and moments of complete laziness, often in the same game and sometimes from one possession to another. But overall, this team understands Pitino's system better and has bought in. Players are more active; the press is less of a liability; Minnesota leads the league in steals. Senior guards DeAndre Mathieu and Andre Hollins have really embraced their roles as the defensive sparks on the team. And that improvement makes a difference in games like tonight, when Minnesota needed a strong stretch of defense -- a few good stops -- in order to get its feet underneath it and finish out strong. It's not the Gophers' identity, as Pitino wants it to be, just yet, but it certainly looks better than last year's team that sank to the Big Ten basement in defensive efficiency.