LINCOLN, NEB. – One game after the Gophers suffered their worst-ever home loss to Northwestern, coach Richard Pitino switched up the starting lineup at Nebraska, benching his two seniors in favor of an all-freshman and sophomore first five.
But new look or not, Minnesota had no answers once again at Pinnacle Bank Arena, disintegrating in an 84-59 loss to Nebraska, matching last year's 0-5 start to Big Ten play. The defeat was the Gophers' sixth in a row and their ninth in the past 10 games. Minnesota, which never had started back-to-back conference schedules with five losses, has dropped its past two games by a total of 50 points.
As the clock ran out on the Gophers' final possession — in a game in which they trailed by 30 or more points for nearly 12 minutes of the second half — the players dropped the ball, ignoring a shot-clock violation before the buzzer.
Afterward, Pitino called the team "extremely unconfident" and said the Gophers' offensive, defensive and rebounding struggles are the "recipe to lose a lot of games."
"We've got a real problem with communication," he said. "That's why I went with that lineup … that lineup is the most connected."
Freshman Jordan Murphy said he saw teammates hanging their heads early.
"I think a lot of people are just in their own heads right now," he said. "We're not really confident in ourselves, and we need to get that back somehow … I don't know what it is. It's a very confusing situation we have."
Murphy was part of momentary spark of energy at the game's start — when seniors Joey King and Carlos Morris sat and freshmen Ahmad Gilbert and Dupree McBrayer entered the lineup — but that evaporated as soon as Nebraska pushed back.