Richard Pitino stormed onto the court, red-faced and screaming at one of his own players, a tirade that somehow earned him a technical foul less than two minutes into the game.
He tore off his sport coat and tie in disgust less than a minute after that. Pitino shed his clothes so quickly I thought he might be auditioning to become an underwear model.
He probably wanted to strangle Akeem Springs with his discarded tie when the senior pulled up for an off-balance three-pointer with seven seconds remaining and the Gophers trailing Indiana by one point on a night when Springs couldn't hit water from the middle of Lake Minnetonka.
But in a fitting conclusion to a weird performance, Springs scored on an acrobatic put-back of his own miss for the deciding points in a 75-74 victory over the Hoosiers on Wednesday night at revved-up Williams Arena.
And now for the truly goofy part: Springs wasn't even supposed to have the ball in his hands. Pitino set up the play for Amir Coffey, but things went haywire and the coldest shooting player got the last shot. "I was clear as day what we were going to do," Pitino said. "Evidently it wasn't as clear as day because we didn't execute it."
Oh well. A win's a win, right?
That should be the main takeaway from the Gophers' 19th victory. They made the game feel like a root canal at times. But they still found a way to win.
Good teams scratch and claw and survive on nights like this, when shots don't fall and a loss seems inevitable.