Big Ten women's basketball tourney is go time or go-home time for Gophers

The Big Ten women's basketball tournament will start Wednesday at Target Center. The University of Minnesota is the host. But, honestly, the Gophers would rather not be a part of the inaugural game.

They will be. Because of a 12th-place finish in the conference, they will play in the first game, at 1 p.m., against a Penn State team they defeated twice this season for half of their four conference wins.

The good news: The team is playing perhaps its best basketball of the season right now. The bad: Their season is almost over barring a five-win ride through the tournament, which has never been done.

"It is,'' Katie Borowicz said when asked if that was frustrating. "Because we've kind of shown what we can accomplish. But we all realize the season is almost done. But we want to do our best to finish out the year.''

But, as Mara Braun — named Wednesday to the Big Ten's all-freshman team by both the coaches and the media — said, it's nice to be playing their best ball at the start of March.

Minnesota is 11-18 overall and 4-14 in the Big Ten entering the tournament.

But, over the last few weeks — with the glaring exception of a loss at Northwestern — the Gophers appear to have started turning a corner.

They won their last two home games, on Feb. 15 against Nebraska and Sunday against Purdue. ESPN analyst Charlie Creme had Nebraska on the bubble for an NCAA bid and Purdue one of seven conference teams in the field in his most recent bracket. Minnesota also lost by four at Michigan State, another team on the NCAA bubble.

In their last four games, their scoring has gone up (from 71.6 over the course of the season to 75.3), their shooting has improved both overall (from 40.7% to 45.9%) and from three-point range (from 31.9% to 41.8%).

And, perhaps most importantly, their turnovers have gone down. They've had 15 or fewer turnovers in three of their past four games, and their two-point edge on points off turnovers vs. Purdue was just the second time in Big Ten play that they've won that battle.

So what's the goal for this week? Nobody is saying really. But another victory over Penn State would be a start. Perhaps an upset on Day 2, which would put the Gophers in the quarterfinals?

Whatever happens, the Gophers are treating this tournament like they treated the season: a place for a very young team to get valuable experience.

Coach Lindsay Whalen had players with postseason experience talk to the team this week. But the pressure of tournament action has to be experienced.

"More than anything, there is so much to learn from the postseason,'' Whalen said. "There will be a lot of growth from these games, with so many going through it for the first time.''

Both Borowicz and Braun said a positive showing in the tournament would create some momentum into the offseason.

"We're excited,'' Borowicz said. "We've been talking as a team throughout the year on what we can accomplish. And maybe we didn't accomplish as much as we wanted to this year. But we're family, and we're excited to finish out the year in a great way.''

And do it in a venue that is the closest thing to a home court as the Big Ten tournament could provide.

Braun, the former Wayzata star, has never played at Target Center. After practice Tuesday she talked about how her teammate, former Hopkins star Amaya Battle, always kept her from it.

''It's a good time to be playing our best basketball,'' Braun said. "In March anything can happen.''