Gophers freshman Mara Braun keeps grinding as shots start to fall again

Looking for the right words, Mara Braun first settled on these:

Playing hard.

But that didn't seem right. The freshman guard on the Gophers women's basketball team has played hard from the minute she took the floor for her first game three months ago and scored 21 points on Western Illinois.

She was trying to describe how she's been able to pull herself out of a mid-season lull and get back to that attacking style she showed during the nonconference schedule and showed again, in longer spurts, in recent games.

Maybe a better way to describe it is not playing tentatively.

"I think that's right,'' said Braun, after finishing Friday's practice with an extended workout session with assistant coach Kelly Curry and teammate Isabelle Gradwell. "It's not giving up. I think some of these games recently, we've kind of let it get to us. We can't be doing that anymore. We've got to show growth.''

The Gophers host Wisconsin at Williams Arena on Saturday. They enter the game having lost five straight, four to teams ranked either in the AP Top 25 or the coaches' poll. Many have not been close. The feeling when the season started was that a team whose top six players include four freshmen and two sophomores, was going to take some lumps in their first Big Ten Conference excursion.

At different times all three true freshmen — Braun, Mallory Heyer and Amaya Battle — have played wonderfully and, at other times, they've all struggled.

Braun scored 21 points or more in five of her first seven games, rising to the top of opponents scouting reports. That was followed by a stretch where her shot came harder and fell less often. As each of the three — who are roommates and friends — have ridden the season-long roller coaster, they have been there for each other. "It's almost like we've taken turns,'' Braun said. "We're helping each other through this, finding ways to better ourselves.''

For Braun, that means adapting her game. The Big Ten is a physical league. Finishing at the rim can be daunting. She said she has worked on finding other ways to score. "The people in the lane are so big,'' she said. "I'm not used to that.''

As one of the team's best three-point shooters, the pressure to score there is big. When she struggled for a while from long range, other shots became harder, too, because teams weren't closing as hard.

Still, Braun said, she found herself settling for shots when she could have worked harder for better ones.

She hit seven of 18 shots, three of eight threes and scored 19 points, her highest total in 19 games. In her last three games. Braun has scored in double figures and hit nine of 19 threes.

"She comes in here every day and works,'' coach Lindsay Whalen said. "She loves the game. She's always been determined. But there was a different sense of that [at Ohio State].''

Braun is the team's leading scorer, and she plays shooting guard, a vital spot. Getting her into more of an attacking mode is important. The Gophers have five more regular-season games left, only one against a team currently with a winning record in Big Ten play. At this point the goal is to finish strong into the conference tournament.