Ben Johnson hopes to win for his seniors in Gophers men's hoops final home game

GOPHERS MEN'S HOOPS VS. INDIANA

FULLER'S FOUR THINGS TO WATCH:

Senior sendoff

Seven of the eight players being honored for Sunday's game on senior day transferred to the team this season. But Gophers coach Ben Johnson is grateful for what they've all done to help him establish the program's culture in his first year.

Payton Willis, Luke Loewe, E.J. Stephens, and Eric Curry have been senior starters for most of the season. Sean Sutherlin and Charlie Daniels have been the first two players off the bench. And walk-on Joey Kern has supported the team from the sidelines.

"They kind of came here on a leap of faith," Johnson said. "Without me having a body of work. Trusted my vision and thoughts about how were going to play and what we were going to run. The culture we were going to have here. Totally belief is pretty cool."

Willis and Curry had been recruited by Johnson previously. They were both on the team in years past, but they had never played together until this season. Willis filled a desperate need at point guard for the Gophers. And Curry did the same at center.

Curry, who will be honored on senior day for the second straight season, could actually request the NCAA to grant him a seventh year of eligibility. But Johnson said his veteran big man will be done this year.

"He does but he doesn't," Johnson said about Curry's eligibility. "It's official barring something crazy I don't know of. He's done. I think it's pretty cool for him to make it the whole year basically. To play the amount of minutes he played. I was thinking if he could give us 18 minutes a game that is heaven."

Willis, Loewe, Stephens, and Sutherlin gave the Gophers the oldest and most experienced backcourt foursome in the Big Ten. They combined to average nearly 42 points per game. It will be hard for Johnson to replace that type of production and leadership next season.

"We got extremely lucky with every guy," Johnson said. "The way they've been able to bond with each other from Day One and just their ability to be coached [was] great."

Willis back to form

Willis, who averages 15.5 points, 4.8 rebounds and a team-high 4.3 assists this season, got off to a slow start against the Badgers, but he finished with 11 of his 13 points in the second half.

"It was kind of weird being cleared a couple hours before the game," Willis said about Wednesday. "I felt like I gave everything I had. Obviously not playing basketball for four or five days was not usually during the season. It was a little different routine."

In his previous two games, Willis had been feeling ill when he totaled 10 points and six turnovers combined on 4-for-17 shooting in blowout road losses at Ohio State and Penn State.

At his best, Willis was averaging nearly 19 points during an eight-game stretch in January and February, which included a career-high 32 points and a school-record tying eight three-pointers in a Jan. 22 win against Rutgers.

In Willis' absence against Northwestern last weekend, Loewe stepped in at point guard and had 24 points on six threes and seven assists in the 77-60 win. But Willis' return to form soon would help the Gophers become more formidable offensively in the last three games.

Minnesota ties

The Gophers and the Hoosiers will both have Minnesota natives on the floor Sunday.

The U's leading scorer is sophomore Jamison Battle, who has become one of the Big Ten's top players in his first season after transferring from George Washington.

Battle is a player the Gophers could build the team around moving forward. He's averaging a team-high 16.6 points and 6.5 rebounds, while also shooting 37% from three-point range.

Sutherlin, who transferred from New Hampshire, started his third game of the season Wednesday against Wisconsin. But the 6-5 Irondale product was typically the Gophers' top player off the bench with 7.0 points and 3.3 rebounds this season. Sutherlin has scored 11 points in back-to-back games against Northwestern and Wisconsin.

The Hoosiers have also seen a career-year out of Plymouth, Minn., native Race Thompson, who is averaging 12.9 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 1.6 assists. Thompson, who considered transferring to the Gophers last spring, had a season-high 19 points in Indiana's 74-64 win Thursday against Maryland that snapped a five-game losing streak.

Defensive consistency

Defensive inconsistency was a major reason the Gophers fell off the winning track in Big Ten play.

A good sign was Northwestern being held to 37 percent shooting from the field, including 7-for-21 from three in last weekend's win at the Barn.

But in the second half of Minnesota's last two road games, Ohio State and Penn State combined to shoot 61% from the field. But the Gophers shot just 29% combined after halftime.

Nebraska hadn't won a Big Ten game all season going 0-12 before putting up 78 points on the Gophers after shooting 58 percent in the second half Feb. 9, including 61% inside the arc. The Cornhuskers scored 40 points in the paint and 21 fastbreak points as well.

In a Feb. 6 loss, the Gophers allowed Iowa to shoot 52% in the second half, so there's been a downhill trend defensively for most of Big Ten play.

During the Gophers' 10-1 start this season they held opponents to 63.1 points per game, 24.8% shooting from three-point range, and 41% shooting from the field. Obviously, the competition wasn't outstanding as a whole, but they did have wins against Western Kentucky, Princeton, Pittsburgh, Michigan, and Mississippi State.

Going 2-11 since then before last weekend's win, the Gophers allowed their opponents to score 74 points per game, shoot 39.4% (104-for-264) from three-point range and 48.7% from the field (369-for-758).

GAME INFO

PROJECTED STARTERS

MINNESOTA GOPHERS (13-13, 4-13 in conference)

Pos.-Player Ht. Yr. PPG

G – Payton Willis 6-4 200 Sr. 15.6

G – Luke Loewe 6-4 190 Sr. 8.9

F – Jamison Battle 6-7 225 So. 16.6

F – Eric Curry 6-9 245 Sr. 8.0

Key reserves – Sean Sutherlin, G, 6-5, Sr., 6.8 ppg; Charlie Daniels, F, 6-9, Sr., 1.7 ppg; Treyton Thompson, F, 6-11, Fr., 2.3 ppg.

Coach: Ben Johnson 13-13 (1st season)

Notable: Eleven out of Minnesota's 13 losses have been against teams in the NET's top 50, including seven games against currently ranked opponents. … Junior forwards Parker Fox (Northern State transfer) and Isaiah Ihnen are sidelined indefinitely after offseason knee surgery. Fox, who tore his ACL and MCL in late March, is past nine months recovered. But both Fox and Ihnen will sit out this season.

Pos.-Player Ht. Yr. PPG

G – Parker Stewart 6-5 210 Sr. 7.1

G – Xavier Johnson 6-3 200 Sr. 9.4

G – Miller Kopp 6-7 215 Jr. 7.4

F – Race Thompson 6-8 228 Sr. 10.8

Reserves – Rob Phinisee, G, 6-2, Sr., 4.5 ppg; Trey Galloway, F, 6-6, So., 4.3 ppg; Michael Durr, C, 7-0, Sr., 2.2 ppg; Jordan Geronimo, G, 6-6, So., 4.5 ppg; Tamar Bates, G, 6-5, Fr., 5.3 ppg.

Coach: Mike Woodson 17-10 (1st season)

Notable: Indiana shot 59.6 percent from the field and got a season-high 24 points from Xavier Johnson in the win against Maryland. The Hoosiers snapped a five-game losing streak Thursday to improve to 14-3 at home this season, but they're 2-7 on the road. The Hoosiers have won nine of the last 11 meetings against the Gophers, including 73-60 on Jan. 9 in Bloomington. Their last loss in the series was 84-63 at Minnesota in 2019.