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Men's basketball: Marist 63, Gophers 56
Managing only one trip to the foul line, and never tying or having the lead, a crisis of confidence appears obvious a mere four games into the season.
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LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA. - It's a quandary, a mind-twister right up there with that whole chicken or egg thing.
In order to win, a college basketball team has to play with confidence. But how, exactly, does a team get confidence without winning?
That is the puzzle that Gophers men's basketball coach Dan Monson needs to solve. And in a hurry.
Playing less than 48 hours after a late game loss to Iowa State, the Gophers looked like a team with its head down Thursday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the Old Spice Classic. The result? A 63-56 loss to Marist that wasn't as close as the score.
With center Spencer Tollackson on the bench in street clothes because of a stomach virus, the Gophers (2-2) played passively. They didn't work the ball inside, they didn't attack and didn't defend with any sort of vigor.
"We just weren't a very sound basketball team and we weren't a very confident basketball team," Monson said.
The first half was as poor of a display of basketball as the Gophers have shown in this young season. The game was only three minutes old when the Gophers lost the Red Foxes Will Whittington -- a career 43.4 percent three-point shooter -- on the defensive end. Whittington made three-pointers on consecutive possessions and Marist led for good.
"We never got them uncomfortable," said Gophers guard Lawrence McKenzie, who scored a team-high 17 points. "They were comfortable [offensively] the whole game."
Marist stretched its lead to double digits before the game was 15 minutes old and still led by nine at halftime.
The Gophers -- who will face a good Southern Illinois team in today's consolation semifinals -- closed within two in the second half, but they never tied the game or held a lead.
"We've just got to settle down," Monson said. "We got panicked in the first half. We've got to believe in ourselves, believe in our teammates."
The most telling statistic about the Gophers play at Disney's Wide World of Sports was 37 minutes, 51 seconds.
That's how long the Gophers went before they shot their first (and only) free throws of the game. Instead, 31 of Minnesota's 67 shots were three-pointers.
"That, to me, is a big tell-tale about how we played," Monson said. "We played very tentative around the three-point line, and we're not a team that's good enough to live and die by threes and hope they go in.
"We didn't screen, we didn't cut aggressively, we didn't play off each other to get open. I thought our offense really, really lacked pace, really lacked confidence."
McKenzie got the Gophers within two, 40-38, with a three-pointer with 12:32 to play. Marist, which had four players in double figures, then scored the next eight points.
"We came down here to grow and unfortunately we found out we have a lot more growing to do than we wanted to do," Monson said.
"We've got to grow and we've got to do it fast."
Etc.
Because of Tollackson's illness, Monson changed his starting lineup for the first time this season. Sophomore big man Jonathan Williams started in Tollackson's place while Limar Wilson started instead of Kevin Payton.
• How bad was the Gophers offense? Well, no player who took multiple shots hit 50 percent from the floor.
• In the past three games, the Gophers are minus-8 in rebound margin. The only time this season that Minnesota outrebounded its opponent was against NDSU.
• Thursday's game was the first time Marist had ever played a Big Ten team.
Jeff Shelman • jshelman@startribune.com
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