The ball in his hands, driving toward the hoop, DeAndre Mathieu looked like a shrub among the redwoods, almost lost beneath Florida State's towering frontcourt hungrily waiting for him under the basket.
None of that seemed to matter. With quickness that's at times hard to track, Mathieu dodged the trees and threw the ball up against the backboard, dropping it in boosting the Gophers' lead to six with 1 minute, 48 seconds to play. The shot helped lift them — on Tuesday night the little team that could — to a 71-61 victory, their biggest of the young season.
"I got my shot blocked all night and I was getting pretty tired of that," Mathieu said. "[I just wanted to] get it as far away from his hand as possible, as far off the backboard as possible. I knew if I got it off the backboard it was going in."
In an ACC-Big Ten Challenge game in which the Gophers were outsized at almost every position, they attacked Florida State with strong guard play, hitting a cascade of transition baskets and stifling the Seminoles defensively with full-court pressure and a 2-3 zone, while keeping 7-footers Boris Bojanovsky and Michael Ojo in check.
Andre Hollins led the Gophers with 21 points and four assists, while Austin Hollins added 16 points and five rebounds.
Between the two teams, 52 fouls were called, slowing the pace to a tortoise's crawl. But the fast-paced Gophers (7-2) were able to overcome offensive deficiencies — they shot just 34 percent from the floor — with strong defense, keeping the Seminoles off-balance throughout.
The Gophers finished the game without their two tallest players, Mo Walker (6-10) and Elliott Eliason (6-11), who both fouled out. But they got to the free-throw line eight times in the final 73 seconds, making five to seal the victory.
"We just kept each other's heads up and kept telling each other to keep playing hard," Austin Hollins said of the bevy of calls.
