Patrick Reusse: It's not so hard after all; beating the 'Cats, that is

Tubby Smith has stated clearly that he wants a separate practice facility for his men's basketball team at Minnesota. He also has hinted that there should be discussion about what to do with ancient Williams Arena.

The people paying a premium to sit in the Barn loft suites and also to occupy the club room before games and during halftime have more modest goals:

They would like to have the games on television, in order to see replays and highlights involving the team they came to cheer.

Unfortunately, those sections of Williams Arena do not have access to the Big Ten Network. It would cost a few thousand dollars to wire that part of the building for this New TV Home of the Gophers.

The athletic department is more than willing to accept the extra dollars from those loyalists, but too cheap to pay for a TV hookup of the Big Ten Network.

That's right, folks: The Gophers' basketball blackout exists not only in your cable-equipped TV den but also in much of Williams Arena.

The game you didn't see on Wednesday night was Smith's first Big Ten home game. The Gophers were fortunate the opposition was Northwestern, since they had long stretches of very mediocre play.

The final was 82-63, and people who were not privy to watching the game are allowed to be impressed. In truth, this is a horrible Northwestern team -- less talented than the bunch that went 2-14 in the Big Ten a year ago.

This is the 40th anniversary of Northwestern's last winning season in the Big Ten. They have finished last or tied for last 20 times in those four decades, and this team is almost guaranteed to make it 21.

Remarkably, the Gophers had managed to lose six of seven to Northwestern dating to the 2003 Big Ten tournament. There's no more damning evidence of Dan Monson's tenure as the Gophers coach than that statistic.

And talk about a cushy situation for Smith. The new coach comes to Minnesota knowing that if he can beat Northwestern, he will be an improvement.

There were several minutes at the start when Tubby's Gophers seemed to be as confused by Northwestern's zone defense as was Monson's club in recent seasons.

The Wildcats' threes were more hurried and started clanging off the rim. Their next basket did not come until Jeremy Nash made a layup with 4:42 remaining, a scoreless stretch of over eight minutes.

The home team had slogged in front 24-20 as Northwestern went through that offensive misery. There was 6:15 remaining when Smith substituted Blake Hoffarber for Lawrence Westbrook.

The idea was for the lefthander from Hopkins to make Northwestern pay for the weakness in its zone.

Hoffarber went to the right wing and made a three. He went to the left wing and made a three.

Carmody called a timeout and offered the same message about Hoffarber as he had in the pregame scouting report.

No, they didn't. Hoffarber soon was making another three from down the middle. That put the lead at 36-22 and completed a 22-2 run.

Hoffarber made a three earlier, so he was 4-for-4. And then his soft touch turned ridiculous: His final three of the half bounced off the front of the rim, hopped straight up and fell through.

"I knew I was feeling it when that one hit the rim and bounced in," Hoffarber said.

The lefty with the hair trigger didn't score in the second half, and it wasn't required -- not for Tubby to get his first Big Ten victory over a Northwestern team that's bad even by its monumentally bad standards.