INDIANAPOLIS - Forget the ugly stats, forget what the scoreboard said. There was optimism in the Gophers men's basketball team's locker room at halftime Thursday.
Yes, the Gophers had more turnovers (12) than baskets (eight) in the first half of their first-round Big Ten tournament game against Michigan. Sure, Vincent Grier didn't score in the first 20 minutes. And the Gophers trailed the Wolverines by four points.
"We had a lot of guys encouraged," Gophers guard Adam Boone said.
Encouraged? Yeah, encouraged. The reason was simple: The Gophers held a Michigan team that likes to run and jump and dunk and score to just 27 points.
"At halftime [Gophers coach Dan Monson] put 54 on the board and said, 'If you get to 54 or above, we're winning this game if we keep playing 'D' like we did,'" Boone said.
That's exactly what happened. Holding Michigan more than 15 points below its season average, the Gophers defended their way to a 59-55 victory over the Wolverines and avenged two regular-season losses.
As a result, the 10th-seeded Gophers (15-13) advance to today's quarterfinals and will face No. 2 seed Iowa at 5:40 p.m. Despite the Hawkeyes' high seeding, this game is a better matchup for the Gophers because Iowa doesn't rely on speed and athleticism like Michigan does.
Point guard Daniel Horton led the Wolverines to their earlier victories against the Gophers, with Michigan twice reaching the 70-point mark.
Because of that, Monson changed his defensive plan against the Wolverines star. This time Grier would defend Horton even if it meant his offense would suffer.
"We just couldn't play Horton the same way we did the first two times," Monson said. "It didn't work, and we needed something to change that. We challenged Vince early in the week, and just giving a potent point guard a different look was really important to us."
Horton, a first-team All-Big Ten selection by the media, was limited to 14 points and never really got on a roll. Neither did Michigan. Dion Harris scored 16 points for the Wolverines, but no other Michigan player got to double figures.
"I'll do whatever the team needs me to do to win, and they needed me to defend today and hit free throws down the stretch and just get buckets when I could," Grier said.
With Grier's emphasis on the defensive end, the Gophers needed to find offense elsewhere. They got it from three sources: guard Moe Hargrow (15 points), forward Dan Coleman (10 points) and center Spencer Tollackson (nine points). Zach Puchtel scored only three points, but he grabbed a career-high 15 rebounds, five on the offensive end.
It didn't take long after the break for the Gophers to take control of the game. Not surprisingly, the Gophers used their defense to get going.
Pushing the ball up the floor after a Michigan miss, Hargrow gave the Gophers the lead for good, 33-31, during a 15-4 Minnesota spurt. When Hargrow capped the run with a layup with 11:43 to play, the Gophers led 42-36.
The Gophers increased their lead to 10, 53-43, when Hargrow posted up his defender and scored with 4:03 to play.
"We were attacking on 'D' and that turned into, 'Let's get greedy, let's run out and jam it,' " Hargrow said after the Gophers had six second-half transition opportunities. "In a game like this, it's a grind, and transition baskets can make a big, big difference."
This victory, however, became a little more interesting than necessary.
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