Familiar feeling for Gophers going into Hoosiers rematch

Six weeks ago, the Gophers were drowning.

They had lost four in a row and were struggling to get over the hump, and things were looking pretty bleak.

Then they played Indiana.

Sound familiar?

"When we played them the first time, our backs were against a wall, and that's how it is now," junior guard Julian Welch said. "We're definitely looking to get a W under our belts. It's do or die time now."

In that first game at Indiana on Jan. 12, the Gophers pulled off a major upset over a team ranked in the top 10 at the time, a victory that spurred a three-game winning streak, put the team in the NCAA tournament conversation and inserted Tubby Smith in Coach of the Year chatter.

It changed the immediate course of the season, giving the Gophers a spark and some greatly needed confidence to build on. They tore past Penn State and Northwestern, and after a hard-fought loss to Michigan State, they took care of Illinois in overtime.

They have lost four in a row and are struggling to get over the hump, and things are looking pretty bleak.

Going into Sunday's game against Indiana, the Gophers are hoping they can get the same spark from the visiting Hoosiers, something Minnesota needs now even more than they did in early January.

"We need it bad," Smith said. "We need a whole lot of sparks. We need a fire. We need flames. We need a flamethrower on us at this point."

A key difference: In that first Hoosiers matchup, the Gophers still were searching for their identity -- trying to find the right players and the right style. Now, it seems the team is still looking for those things, but in the meantime, the Gophers have formed a tangible pattern.

It's not so much that the Gophers need to find an identity; rather, they need to change it.

"I need Rodney and Ralph to make plays," Smith said. "They need to get more rebounds, they need to be more aggressive getting to the basket to get fouled. If that doesn't happen, we have a real dilemma."

Without that leading presence, the Gophers simply look like what they are, a young team that doesn't know how to finish opponents off. That appeared to be the case again against No. 6 Michigan State on Wednesday, a game the Gophers led most of the second half before collapsing at the finish for a 66-61 loss.

"[It's] just lapses," Welch said of the breakdowns the Gophers have had in stretches. "We're a young team. When something doesn't go right, we kind of put our heads down, so we kind of talked about that. We just need to be level-headed the entire time and we need to just not have so many ups and downs, highs and lows."

Incredibly, it appears the Gophers still have time to turn it around. They have three regular-season games remaining; after facing the No. 23 Hoosiers at Williams Arena, they travel to Kohl Center to take another crack at No. 16 Wisconsin, a team the Gophers took to overtime before losing 68-61 at home earlier this month.