NCAA basketball: Gophers’ job, be themselves and keep playing
The UCLA women’s basketball team will play in the NCAA Sweet 16 on Friday for a fourth consecutive time. In two of those, the Bruins had the misfortune of running into a wall — eventual champions South Carolina in 2022 and LSU in 2023. Now, the Bruins appear to be the wall, and it’s Minnesota’s job to run through it.
After breaking into its first Final Four last spring, top seed and second-ranked UCLA (33-1) is expected by many to finally make it to a championship game for the first time in program history. Meanwhile, fourth seed and 18th-ranked Minnesota (24-8) is playing in its first NCAA tournament in eight years, and has advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2005. That was a team goal at the season’s onset, sophomore wing Tori McKinney said Thursday, but that doesn’t mean Gophers are simply happy to be here.
“We talked about it a lot, about (how) you kind of reach your goals but once you reach them, it’s like where do you go from there? ” she said. “Especially with this team, I think we’ve kind of all realized that we want to keep playing for as long as possible.
” If they move forward, it will be with the game that got them here. The Gophers rallied late to beat 13 seed Green Bay in the first round, and 5 seed Ole Miss in the second at Williams Arena. “We are who we are and understand what our identity is and how we have to play, and that’s with great toughness and resiliency, togetherness,” Gophers coach Dawn Plitzuweit said.
Tip between the Big Ten rivals is set for Friday at 6:30 p. m. CDT at Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center.