U awaits NIT bid but also gains guard for future

As the Gophers pondered what will become of the rest of the season, they received good news about next season.

Julian Welch, a junior college combo guard, said Saturday he will play for the Gophers.

Without a veteran point guard to step in after Al Nolen suffered a broken foot in January, the Gophers struggled down the stretch. Welch likely will help.

Welch averaged 19 points and five assists per game for Yuba College in Yuba City, Calif., during the 2010-11 season, when he spent most of his time at point guard. He said he's capable of playing both guard positions.

Welch played two seasons -- he redshirted his freshman year -- at the University of California-Davis, where he averaged 7.8 points per game and shot 35 percent from three-point range last season.

Welch visited the University of Minnesota earlier this month. He said he was impressed by the coaching staff, which sold him on the team's lack of experienced guards. He'll be a junior next season.

"Pretty much, it was the coaches are real good people, the players are real good people. I like the college atmosphere," Welch said Saturday. "[I'm] going somewhere where I know I can contribute and have a big role."

They hope to receive a bid, but they finished the season with 10 losses in their last 11 games and zero guarantees of a berth, a year after they locked up their second consecutive trip to March Madness.

Former Kentucky athletic director C.M. Newton, who hired Tubby Smith in 1997, is the NIT's committee chairman, which should help the Gophers' cause.

But they're also subject to the rules that require the committee to select conference champs that don't make the NCAA tournament. Memphis won the Conference USA tourney Saturday, but Alabama-Birmingham (the league's regular-season champ) sits on the bubble and could take up another spot in the NIT.

The College Basketball Invitational, a 16-team tournament that started in 2008, and the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament are options, but they typically feature midmajors, and the Gophers probably wouldn't accept an invitation to either.

So it's NIT or nothing for this squad. And although the Gophers probably won't be host to a first-round game if they're a part of the 32-team field, they're trying to find something positive about the potential experience, which ends with semifinals at Madison Square Garden in New York City. They last played in the NIT after the 2007-08 season.