Pregame: Gophers looking for a hint they could be breaking out of losing streak

After Nebraska notched its first win on Tuesday against Penn State, the Gophers are now the lone team without a Big Ten win

By ajrayno

January 13, 2012 at 12:17AM

• Lineup to come

With Nebraska winning at home against Penn State on Tuesday, the Gophers are officially the only Big Ten team without a single conference victory, putting them alone at the bottom.

It would take a major upset for that to change tonight – Indiana is one of the best teams in the league and Assembly Hall is (as I'm seeing it for the first time) just incredible.

It's big. It's loud. And it's a bad place to be on a four-game losing streak.

Usually I list three things coach Tubby Smith wants to see in the game. Tonight, I'm switching it up a bit.

Here's what Smith wants to see: something; anything; a hint that this team could be on the road to a win in the near future; a clue that this team is not headed down the same path as last year's disheartening collapse.

"It feels a little similar, just for the simple fact that we're sill losing, we're still on that losing streak from last year in the Big Ten," Rodney Williams said yesterday. "What I remember from last year, is it didn't feel too real. We'd be winning games and with the last minute and a half, our lead is gone and we're down and we're trying to fight back and after a while, you couldn't even get mad anymore because it didn't feel real at all. Because nobody was used to losing that many games in a row – like that. I think there was only like one game that we lost by more than five or six points in that stretch that we lost all those games last year. So that was tough for us."

The Gophers aren't at the point where it's so bad it doesn't seem real -- just yet -- but they need to make some serious moves to turn it around because a hole can get big quickly.

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ajrayno