Scoggins: Up, down Gophers women still shooting for NCAA tournament

Marlene Stollings' debut season as Gophers women's basketball coach actually feels as if it should be categorized as three separate seasons.

The first one featured Rachel Banham, one of the best players in women's college basketball. That team looked formidable.

The second one captured the team's response to Banham's season-ending knee injury, an inspired stretch of performances buoyed by a "Buckets for Banham" campaign. That team showed grit.

The third one felt like air rushing out of a balloon, a string of flat performances that brought the feel-good narrative to a screeching halt. That team looked defeated.

Not often does a team overachieve and underachieve in a span of a few weeks, but the Gophers found a way to touch both extremes. Once seemingly a lock for the NCAA tournament, now firmly on the bubble.

The one constant has been Stollings' message — tournament or bust.

She still believes that.

"We never stopped talking about going to the NCAA tournament, even when [Banham] went down," Stollings said Sunday after an 86-79 victory against Michigan State. "It's been a goal since my arrival, and we're going to keep it a goal. We're full speed ahead to get there. Nonnegotiable."

Despite a recent skid, the Gophers still find themselves in position to reach that benchmark. They have 18 victories and enter Wednesday's home game against Wisconsin with a 7-5 Big Ten record.

Stollings believes 22 victories represents the "magical number" to feel confident about an at-large tournament bid. The Gophers still have three home games and three games remaining against teams below them in the Big Ten standings.

Even without Banham, the Gophers have no excuse for failing to reach the NCAA tournament. ESPN's latest projections still include the Gophers as a ninth seed. The conference is not overpowering.

Some coaches downplay tournament speculation this time of year. Stollings remains frontal about it.

"We don't hide behind it," she said.

What makes the Gophers so unpredictable is that they're both talented and flawed. They're equally capable of scoring a lot of points and giving up a lot.

The Gophers feature one of the top post players in the country in Amanda Zahui B., a potential WNBA player in Shae Kelley, the Big Ten's assists leader in Shayne Mullaney and a quick-trigger scorer in Carlie Wagner. They thrive in Stollings' entertaining run-and-gun system.

On the flip side, the Gophers struggle defensively, which Stollings blames on a lack of energy and intensity. Only lowly Penn State allows more points per game than the Gophers (72.6 per game) in Big Ten play.

The Gophers have virtually no bench, either. All five starters average 33-plus minutes in Big Ten games and only one reserve averages more than 10 minutes. Kiddie pools are deeper than their roster.

Three players who saw little or no playing time left the program midseason in search of a better fit, which is not unusual after a coaching change and the implementation of a different system. But those departures added to an eventful first season for Stollings.

The loss of Banham trumped everything, of course. Her talent and scoring are irreplaceable. Without her, the dynamics changed.

"We were like, what kind of season is this going to be?" Stollings said. "It was really hard to predict how our kids were going to respond."

They didn't flinch initially. They kept winning, improved to 16-2 and entered the national rankings. Banham's injury galvanized the team.

"We did have some kids overachieving in certain areas," Stollings admitted. "But what I think happened is they gained confidence and saw what they could be and what they could do."

Then the other shoe dropped. The team lost four of five games, including a couple of bad losses to inferior teams. Confidence waned. Defense disappeared.

Stollings refers to it as a "bump in the road," though it looked more like a Minnesota spring pothole. Stollings wasn't deterred.

"Nobody is going to feel sorry for you because it's the time of year when everybody increases their intensity level," she said. "Nobody is just going to roll over."

Stollings doesn't believe her team will, either. She remains confident the Gophers will make the tournament, even if their recent slide reduced their margin for error.

These final six games feel like another new segment to categorize, a stretch that will define this team.

In a season full of surprise developments, any attempt to predict the outcome would be nothing more than guesswork and probably proven wrong.

Chip Scoggins • chip.scoggins@startribune.com