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This is Amelia Rayno's first season on the Gopher's basketball beat. She learned college basketball in North Carolina (Go Tar Heels!), where fanhood is not an option. In 2010, she joined the Star Tribune after graduating from Boston's Emerson College, which sadly had no exciting D-I college hoops to latch onto. Amelia has also worked on the sports desk at the Boston Globe and interned at the Detroit News.

  Follow Rayno on Twitter @AmeliaRayno

Postgame: Gophers miss a major opportunity in OT loss to Badgers

Posted by: Amelia Rayno under Gophers players Updated: February 9, 2012 - 10:33 PM

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In a way, this feels just like the first game of the season, at Illinois.
 
In the league standings, the Gophers are seventh. Wisconsin is two. Home court or not, the Gophers were never really expected to win this one. But after fighting back from a big deficit and forcing overtime, it simply feels like a major missed opportunity.
 
With the game on the line, the Gophers didn’t make the shots they needed to, hit the free throws they needed to or harness the aggressiveness they needed to have.
 
In the end, they wasted a great comeback and a very impressive game from freshman Andre Hollins – and most of all, lost the opportunity to notch a resume-building win.
 
It was a chance to give the Gophers a win against a team that is definitely going to the tournament – and a chance to give the committee another reason to maybe pick Minnesota to join them.
 
Instead, the road ahead only looks tougher.
 
Some other notes from tonight’s 68-61 overtime loss:
 
·      Andre Hollins played very well, especially down the stretch, much like the Gophers’ last overtime game – against Illinois at home. He scored nine points in the critical 16-2 run that yanked the Gophers back into the game and forced overtime. Coach Tubby Smith hinted afterward that he could play the freshman more in the future.
 
·      Being that Hollins is indeed still a freshman, he had one critical hiccup. After Wisconsin missed its final shot, Smith ran a play designed to have Hollins score by driving to the basket. But his rushed shot with 4 seconds left missed the hoop, and Austin Hollins’ second attempt wasn’t much better. From one perspective, it cost the Gophers the game; from another, they would never be there in the first place if not for Andre Hollins.
 
·      Including those two, the Gophers missed five consecutive shots spanning into overtime, and Rodney Williams clanked the teams’ only two free-throw attempts.
 
·      The Gophers fouled seven times in the final four minutes of overtime – including five in the last minute – and the Badgers went 13-14 from the line.
 
·      Joe Coleman – who is clearly getting scouted more these days – had his third consecutive scoreless game. Rodney Williams had 16 points, but only two rebounds. Ralph Sampson III had seven rebounds, but just four points. I wouldn’t be shocked if Smith decides to shake up the lineup down the stretch.

·      As a reminder, the Gophers have six games remaining – four more against current ranked teams. The Gophers will realistically need to go 4-2 over that stretch to break .500 and make the tournament, which would mean beating two teams out of ranked Ohio State, Wisconsin (on the road next time), Indiana and Michigan State. 

The final stretch begins tonight

Posted by: Amelia Rayno under College basketball, Gophers players Updated: February 9, 2012 - 4:17 PM

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People don’t like the words “must-win.” And technically speaking, tonight’s game against Wisconsin isn’t. 

But the Gophers are going to have to pull off some upsets down the stretch if they want a chance at the tournament – and this may be as good an opportunity as any. 

In order to finish .500, the Gophers will need to go 4-3 in their final seven games (including tonight) and that assumes beating Northwestern on the road, Nebraska at home and at least two currently ranked teams. 

These are the options: The Gophers face Wisconsin tonight, and then Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan State at home and have to head to Kohl Center in Madison for another game against the Badgers. 

Ohio State will be an incredibly hard game, as will Michigan State – those games are tough matchups for the less-physical Gophers regardless of the arena played in. Playing at Kohl Center will obviously be the tougher game of the two against Wisconsin. That leaves home against Indiana – a team the Gophers have already proven they can beat on the road – and tonight.

Tonight’s game will be tough too, but it represents a real opportunity that would help to put less pressure on the Buckeyes and Spartans games. Can the Gophers seize the chance?

Three things that will be key to that:

1.      Dictating the pace. The Badgers like to slooowwww things down. But the Gophers have always looked best when they’re running and playing up-tempo. If they can enforce that early, they’ll have a chance.

2.      Guarding Jordan Taylor. Not only is the senior leading the team in points, he’s on pace to shatter the NCAA assist-to-turnover ratio. If he gets his hands on the ball too much, it could be trouble for the Gophers.

3.      Crowd. The Gophers had their first sell-out against Illinois a couple of weeks ago, and the intensity was felt throughout the building. A big part of home-court advantage is the life in the “home."

“I don’t like where we sit,” Gophers coach Tubby Smith said. “I don’t like that we’re under .500 in the league. We’ve had some tough losses, but I really don’t pay much attention to brackets this time of year. I just want to make sure our guys are taking care of practices every day. They’ve got enough to think about and we’re in a position where that’s all we can focus on because we’re a team that has to do a lot of work. We’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to accomplish between now and ... the rest of the season if we want to accomplish anything at all.”
 

Short takes on this week in the Big Ten

Posted by: Amelia Rayno under College basketball Updated: February 9, 2012 - 5:53 PM

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Reggie Hearn has been critical for the Wildcats

Reggie Hearn has been critical for the Wildcats

 

It’s crunch time in college basketball right now and the bulk of the Big Ten is duking it out for potential spots in the NCAA tournament. Every game seems to matter more this time of year, when there’s a sense of both excitement and desperation for a lot of teams sitting on the bubble.

Some quick thoughts as I look around the Big Ten:

Best team of the week: Ohio State. Will they ever not be the best team of the week from here on out? The Buckeyes won two this week – including a strong win at Wisconsin’s arena -- to stretch their win streak to six.

Worst team of the week: Nebraska. The Huskers' best shot at pulling into the pack was sneaking wins against Northwestern and Minnesota at home. Instead they lost both and solidified their place in the basement with Penn State.

Player who impressed: Reggie Hearn. The Northwestern guard may not get as much attention as teammate John Shurna, but the junior has been key in the Wildcats’ recent success. The former walk-on – who finally has a scholarship – finished with 20 points against Nebraska and played a big role in helping Northwestern get away from the Huskers in the second half on Thursday, and on Sunday paced the team in the first half against Illinois when Shurna was struggling.


Three observations:

1. Illinois has to be the most erratic team in the Big Ten. Yes, even more so than the Gophers. One day, they’re looking clutch against Michigan State; the next day they’re crumbling against Northwestern. Coach Bruce Weber talked Monday about the team’s consistency problems. “We just couldn’t get over the hump,” he said of the Northwestern game. “I was almost pleading with them, 'come on guys, we can win this thing. Come together. Make plays. Don’t play not to lose.' But we just didn’t have that emotional zip that we needed to get a win, that we had at Michigan State. The look in the eyes, it was not the same.”

2. Draymond Green is a beast. Just more than a week ago, when Green went down in the final minutes of a Michigan State loss at Illinois, it looked like Green could have a season-threatening knee injury. Five days later – after telling reporters that only “death” could keep him out of the Michigan matchup - Green was back on the court, scoring 14 points and adding 16 rebounds. Ridiculous. “Coaches are always trying to make guys tougher,” Spartans coach Tom Izzo said. “And not play with any injury that is threatening, but playing with the bumps and bruises you get in athletics -- and he demonstrated that to the fullest.”

3. Ohio State can play any style. Facing an up-tempo, running team? Fine. A stifling defensive zone? Bring it. A pace-halting team like Wisconsin? Not a problem either. In fact, the Buckeyes are probably the best team in the Big Ten when it comes to adapting on the fly, and converting whatever style they take on better than the original. “I’ve always said I think to win in the Big Ten, you’ve got to be able to play a couple different styles, because to me there’s 11 contrasting styles and that’s one of the difficulties of coaching in this league and playing in this league," coach Thad Matta said.

Five-for-five switch has at least one really beneficial byproduct

Posted by: Amelia Rayno under College basketball, Gophers players Updated: February 8, 2012 - 6:08 PM

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Eliason has been key in the second team's success

Eliason has been key in the second team's success

 

Players say Gophers practices are getting a lot more intense these days, and there was proof of that today on Elliott Eliason’s face, after he ran into freshman Joe Coleman in a practice and had to get four stitches in his lip.


“It’s been pretty competitive, it’s been pretty hard-fought,” Eliason, a redshirt freshman, said. “I think it’s been more physical than it has been these last few practices, and I think that’s led to success on the floor.”

Perhaps some of that intensity comes from a legitimate head-to-head matchup between the Gophers’ starting five and the second five, which has outscored the starters in the last two wins.

The discrepancy of talent between the two groups is getting slimmer by the day, coach Tubby Smith said. The bench has outscored the starters in the Gophers’ past two victories – 39-38 against Illinois and 40-29 at Nebraska – and has been critical in lighting a fire underneath the Gophers.

And yes, Smith admitted, some of that probably comes from his often-talked-about, sometimes criticized method of substituting -- replacing five starters with five reserves, and playing them as two separate teams. 

“They probably know each other better because in practice they play all the time together,” Smith said. Therefore their execution is a lot better.”

Said Eliason of the switches: “I think it helps from some chemistry aspect. We know how each other plays and what to expect out of everyone that is on the floor with you at the same time. So it definitely does help from a chemistry and a flow aspect.”

Plenty have criticism for the method – it’s unorthodox and many believe it gets starters out of their own flow, just when they’re starting to get comfortable. Even Smith himself doesn’t have a really good explanation for why he uses the technique. To him, it simply makes sense. 

But regardless of its perceived flaws, the players say it’s working – and the outside world is now starting to see the results.

“It doesn’t frustrate us at all, because sometimes you just get tired, and he’s trying to rotate people in and get fresh legs on defense and offense running the floor,” Austin Hollins said. “So I would say it’s a good thing. I have seen an increase in bench play. Part of it comes from that and part of it comes from working hard in practice.”

Where are they now: Kevin Lynch

Posted by: Amelia Rayno under College basketball Updated: February 8, 2012 - 12:26 PM

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Kevin Lynch (right) with 89-90 teammates Melvin Newbern (front) and Connell Lewis.

Kevin Lynch (right) with 89-90 teammates Melvin Newbern (front) and Connell Lewis.

 
Earlier this season, I started a blog series highlighting different former Gophers, looking back at their careers here and catching up with what they’ve been doing since then.
 
The latest victim, Kevin Lynch, has not stayed out of the local spotlight, now broadcasting for the Minnesota Timberwolves and making occasionally appearances over at the Barn. But the Minnesota-native – who lives in Eden Prairie now --has a lot of history in the state, from his high school years at Bloomington Jefferson, to his Gopher years, and a wealth of experience elsewhere, playing for the Charlotte Hornets for two seasons and then heading overseas to Spain and Germany. I enjoyed chatting with him about all of it.
 
 
So Kevin, you’ve said you still play over at Lifetime Fitness – play with any former or current players? I still play pickup basketball two, three times a week and try to keep my gut small and keep running around and try to be somewhat healthy … The guys I play with, I’ve kind of gotten to the point where I don’t really care about I don’t want to play with former gopher players or former NBA players or current. I don’t really do that anymore. And that’s kind of been an issue I have with pickup basketball. You have too many guys that ... act like they’re still playing for money, it’s too big of a deal, there’s too much trash-talking and fighting. And then I come out there and they know I used to play in the NBA and they want to prove something to me and I’m 42 years old and I’m like, ‘I’m too old for this.’ I do this for the exercise, I don’t do this to exercise my manhood, like a lot of these young guys do. I just want to run around and break a sweat and have some fun with some guys. We’re just all respectful of each other. I don’t play a lot of pickup basketball now with younger guys, I kind of play with guys my age or older and it’s just more fun.
 
Totally get that. When you were coming out of high school, did the ‘U’ just seem the natural place to play? Why did you end up choosing it?
There are a few reasons. At the time, the program had kind of been dragged through the mud a little bit. Back in 1986 there was the big rape scandal; that was right when I was in high school. And it just seems like this program, every 15 years goes through some big scandal, there’s just been three big scandals in the last 30, 40 years it seems like. Anyway, so at that time, when I was in high school, the program was kind of dealing with that, the coach quit and a bunch of players were kicked off the team and there was a bunch of stuff going on and it wasn’t in a very good position. And then they hired Clem Haskins and I was a part of Clem’s first real recruiting class. I was just really impressed by Clem, and he basically kind of sold me on [the idea of] ‘Hey as a freshman, you’re going to get the chance to play a lot at a Big Ten school,’ and it was a good school. Initially as a high school kid I kind of thought it might be best if I leave the state, go somewhere else and kind of expand my world a little bit but Clem kind of sold me on the U. My parents kind of thought that the U might be a good option, so I kind of listened to them too, and playing close to home, that was another thing that turned out to be a pretty good idea. So it all turned out pretty well and I can’t complain.
 
Considering your relationship with Clem, years later when you heard about the academic fraud scandal, did that shock you? Was I shocked? I was shocked. I wasn’t a part of all that, and all that stuff happened after I was gone. Stuff like that happened probably in a lot of places. Yes, I was probably, on some level [thinking] “things are happening.” Now, I wasn’t a part of it. If you don’t believe me, just look at my transcripts and I’ll show you my grades (laughs). I feel bad for Clem. I respected Clem a lot. It’s too bad all that stuff happened. I feel bad for him because I did respect him a lot and I think he was a good coach … as far as all that stuff, it’s too bad it happened, but that’s the way it goes and I think it does happen more often than what people end up knowing.
 
Your teams, of course, had some great years. Any favorite memories from ‘89 and ‘90? We beat Iowa and they were maybe ranked fifth, they had a top-ten ranking. My sophomore year was the year where we really started to play well and kind of bring it all together and we played Iowa at home in early January and we beat them at the last second and we had a great celebration in the locker room, because we were a pretty young team at that time, most of us were sophomores and juniors, and we had just had so little success. We lost – I don’t even know – my freshman year at the U, we had lost 20-some Big Ten games in a row. And we were a really bad team but we were really young, there was some talent there, we just couldn’t put it together. And my sophomore year, it’s like a switch was turned on and we just became a good team. We beat Iowa and we just pulled off a last-second tip-in and we all went down the floor into the locker room after the game and we were all jumping up and down celebrating and someone had the TV on and our coach, Clem, was getting interviewed up on the floor and so we’re all celebrating this big win in Williams Arena. Someone said Hey, coach is on TV, so we all stopped and watched the interview, and then when the interview was over, we knew just within seconds, 30 seconds he’d be walking in the door to come talk to us. So we all hustled over to the door coming in from the hallway and we all kind of hunched down waiting for him. He came walking in and we just mobbed him. It was such a great team moment of celebration and I swear, things just turned around after that game and after that little celebration and then we beat Illinois, who was ranked No. 1 two weeks later at Williams Arena and it was weird the way things just turned and we became a good team. And next thing you know we’re in the tournament at the end of the season and the next thing you know we’re playing Duke in the Sweet Sixteen and then we just rode that momentum all through the following season, too, when we were juniors and seniors.
 
That camaraderie you get in situations like that, years like that, is that the stuff you miss most? I can look back on my years at Minnesota and you can think of individual success, or certain games when I had a ton of points or certain plays like a dunk, certain things that can get you excited, but none of that comes even close to what you feel with these guys that you went to battle with every game and every practice and they’re like your brothers. That’s your most special time.
The game we lost my junior year, when we lost in the Elite Eight against Georgia Tech, I’ve never been in a locker room that was more sad and depressing after we lost that tough game. We got jobbed. They had a couple of ACC refs doing that game and they shot like 35 free throws and we shot like 12. We were up 12 at the end of the first half, I was on the bench at the time and I was thinking to myself, we’re going to the Final Four. And we did, we kind of got hosed. But after that game, we’re in the locker room and you had teammates crying, you’re just completely heartbroken. Everybody poured their souls into this team and into the effort. But it’s stuff like that that makes it special when you look back.
 
How different is that part of it in the NBA? It’s so different. In the NBA, you show up and you put forth an effort and you play hard and you try to help the team. You show up for your job, you punch the clock, you try to do well for yourself, which hopefully helps the team effort and then you go home.
 
When I played for Charlotte, nobody was really that close. In college, you’re just close. You do everything together as a team. In the NBA it’s just the opposite: just do your best when you’re together. After that, everybody goes 12 different ways. That was my NBA experience. It was so different.
 
Did you enjoy your time there? Yes and no. I did because I had an opportunity to live my dream. As a little kid I wanted to play in the NBA, that was my goal and I was living it, so that was great. But at the same time, it was a disappointment too, because of the lack of camaraderie as a team. It’s such a business, it’s all about money. I was disappointed at my NBA experience because all the other off-the-court stuff and all the politics of playing time and contracts and coaches, dealing with them. ... It didn’t live up to what I was hoping it was going to be.
 
Why did you go overseas? I had an opportunity to go to Spain which was one of the top leagues in Europe. And in going over to Europe I found kind of that team feel that you didn’t get in the NBA but that I experienced in high school and college, was there. It was much more of a college type of atmosphere and I really enjoyed that and I had success over there.
 
Why do you think that is, that you get that atmosphere there and not in the NBA? You’re not dealing with the gigantic NBA contracts, I think that’s a big reason why. Egos and guys have their posses and they kind of insulate themselves from people just because of the money that they make. You can make good money in Europe, but I don’t know why it’s like that. Just the schedule too, we played twice a day in Europe and we played twice a day and that never happened really, when I was playing in college or the NBA. So you’re just together a lot. You show up and workout in the morning and then you come back and practice later in the day and that was pretty typical. The egos weren’t quite as big of a factor in Europe and everybody for the most part, I got along with all my teammates really well, whereas in the NBA, you just weren’t close a lot of times.
 
What were the other big differences in playing overseas? You’ve got the cultural part to it. And another thing I enjoyed about Europe is was I was a history major and my focus in college was modern European history so being in Spain and in Germany and then traveling around to other countries while I was over there was awesome. You can read about the roman Coliseum in a book or something or watch a video on it and that’s great but when you can actually stand inside it and actually be there and touch it, that’s amazing. When I was playing in Germany, we had a game in Tel Aviv, Israel, so we were there for a couple of days and I went to Jerusalem and to actually walk around a historical place like Jerusalem is pretty amazing. So I got a kick out of that, just being around all the history and the culture, that was a lot of fun for me.
 
Did you go straight into broadcasting after you retired from playing? I came back home in 2000. I had about a year to go to finish at the U with a history degree, so 2000 and 2001, I was back in school just finishing up my degree, and then in 2001, Ray Christensen who did Gopher basketball on the radio retired after about 45 or 50 years and so then I talked to WCCO and I got that job. And broadcasting had been something I’d actually thought a lot about back when I was in college and then once I got into playing professionally, everything sort of got pushed to the back burner. So it was something I’d thought about before and then that job just happened to open up. And I did seven years of Gopher basketball.
 
Do you follow the current team pretty well? I’m a big fan of Gopher basketball and a big fan of Tubby, and a lot of these guys on the team are Minnesota kids and I used to broadcast the state high school league state tournaments on TV so I saw a lot of these kids play in high school: Rodney Williams, (Trevor) Mbakwe, Joe Coleman, Chris Halvorsen, all those Minnesota kids that played in the state tournament. I saw most of them. Like I said, I’m a big high school sports fan, so it’s been fun to watch the development of this team from high school to college.
 
(Elliott) Elliason, when I first saw him in the summer, a couple of summers ago, I saw him run and I just thought I wasn’t sure if he was ever going to be able to play in the Big Ten. The way I evaluate players, especially big guys, I watch them run. And if they run smoothly, they’re probably a pretty good athlete. But he just stumbled around, kind of uncoordinated and weak and I just didn’t know if he was going to fit into this. I have to admit, I wasn’t very impressed with him. But I saw him at the Virginia Tech game and the kid has got some limitations, but he’s got a little fire to him, you know? He’s out there yapping at the refs and Clem used to call guys dead heads. He’s say some guys have no playing personality, they just are out there, they don’t say anything, they don’t show any energy or any life and a lot of big guys are like that. They’re just kind of mellow, kind of dead heads. And he seems like to me – he’s talking to the refs, he’s animated, he’s got a little playing personality – and for a big 7-foor guy like that, that will take you a long way.
 
For a big guy, it’s different from a 6-foot point guard to a 7-foot center. Point guards, you have to do everything but big guys, if you just play with energy, block some shots, take up some space, get some garbage points, get your eight points, seven boards and two blocks, that’s a good night’s work for a kid like that I think.
 
 

 

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