Sara Scalia of the Gophers took a long-range shot over Joiya Maddox of Rutgers on Thursday night in New Jersey. (Trenten Gauthier, U of M/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Coach Lindsay Whalen was 1,200 miles away from Piscataway, N.J., at home in Minnesota, recovering from an appendectomy.

She called the team pregame, texted, but had to sit and watch this one.

Associate head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis was on the Gophers women's basketball team's bench, running a college game for the first time, just a half-hour drive from where she played in college.

With Thibault-DuDonis' parents in the stands, with the Gophers locked in on defense from start to finish, the Gophers navigated a difficult situation, leading Rutgers from start to finish in a 62-49 victory.

Credit Jasmine Powell at the start, Kadi Sissoko down the stretch.

"She addressed the whole team before the game,'' said Powell of Whalen. "It was, 'You guys got this.' We felt her spirit the entire game."

In their first game in two weeks, the Gophers (8-7, 1-2 Big Ten) got their first conference win. Powell had a game-high 19 points. Sissoko scored all 11 of her points in the fourth quarter. Sara Scalia had 10 points and nine rebounds.

"This is what we needed,'' Sissoko said. "To start the new year the right way. It feels good to have a win.''

BOXSCORE: Gophers 62, Rutgers 49

The Gophers offense hummed in the first halfich struggled at times in the second. But the defense was there from the start in this wire-to-wire win. The Gophers used the extra prep time created by the cancellation of their game with a Northwestern team battling a COVID-19 outbreak to work on a zone defense that stymied Rutgers (7-9, 0-4), which struggled when forced to shoot from the outside. The Scarlet Knights shot just 32.8% overall and made just three of 12 three-pointers.

Afterwards Thibault-DuDonis deflected credit and focused on her players. "New Jersey is a special place for me," she said. "I wanted to do whatever I could to help the team win."

Up two points after a quarter, the Gophers got 12 points from Powell in a 21-12 second quarter that had the Gophers, shooting 50%, up 38-27 at the half.

Things changed in the second half. Rutgers changed the way they switched on the pick-and-roll, avoiding having a big switch onto a Gophers guard; Powell in particular had been effective driving and kicking in the first half.

The result: the Gophers shot 3-for-13 and scored just 10 points in the third quarter, which ended with them up seven. With 6½ minutes left in the game. Rutgers' Shug Dickson (17 points) banked home a three at the shot clock buzzer to pull Rutgers within 51-45.

Enter Sissoko. Until then she was 0-for-5 from the field with no points. But she scored Minnesota's final 11 points. Her basket on a break put Minnesota up eight. After a missed three by Rutgers, she hit a midrange jumper. Dickson scored again, but Sissoko was fouled and made both free throws with 3:33 left to put the Gophers up 10 and in control for good.

"She is very streaky," Powell said of Sissoko. "When she sees one go in, she gets aggressive, trusts her shot."

Said Sissoko: "It was the pace and the flow of the game. I started feeling in rhythm taking my shots, for sure."

Prone to allowing offensive rebounds for much of the game — Rutgers had 15 — the Gophers locked that down during the stretch run.

The result was a much-needed victory, which Thibault-DuDonis credited to Whalen as well as fellow assistants Kelly Curry and Shimmy Gray-Miller.

"She made it easy for me,'' Thibault-DuDonis said of Whalen. "She gives all her assistants a voice. She was able to be in a couple practices before surgery. I was able to see her vision, what she wanted to see."

The Star Tribune did not travel for this game. This article was written using the television broadcast and video interviews before and/or after the game.