Souhan: Gophers basketball surging at the perfect time

For years, the Gophers basketball programs have been testing the validity of the Minnesota state motto, “It could be worse.”

For years, it couldn’t have been.

You could say that Williams Arena has been a ghost town for much of this decade, but that implies that ghosts were willing to hang around to watch bad basketball.

As of a week ago, the men’s program was 15-50 in the Big Ten under coach Ben Johnson.

Until a month ago, the women’s program hadn’t been ranked since 2019.

The problems with the men’s program began with disgraced athletic director Norwood Teague. Teague thought so highly of his basketball connections that he fired future Hall of Famer Tubby Smith shortly after Smith had won an NCAA tournament game.

Can you imagine the Gophers basketball program firing a future Hall of Fame coach after he won an NCAA tourney game?

Teague dived into the coaching market and hit bottom. Richard Pitino had a last name and one year of head coaching experience at the Division I level.

Considering that Teague hired Pitino because he couldn’t get any top candidates to take the job, Pitino did remarkably well. Like Tubby, he won an NCAA tournament game, and not long after was fired.

The Gophers knew they couldn’t land any of the reputed top candidates, so they hired Johnson because of his connections to the program and local recruiting.

The timing could not have been worse for Johnson.

He entered a maelstrom of constant transfers and NIL spending, and Minnesota was not positioned to succeed in either realm. If he could have kept his best players on campus for three or four years at a time, he’d probably be contending for an NCAA tournament berth. Instead, he appears to be coaching this winter for his job.

Smith won 43% of his Big Ten games, Pitino 36%, and as of a week ago, Johnson was winning 23%.

The women’s program became a force during and immediately after Lindsay Whalen’s playing career, and remained competitive until Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle hired Whalen as head coach.

Whalen recruited high-end Minnesota talent, but did not come close to winning, and was fired after a particularly embarrassing performance in the Big Ten tournament at Target Center in 2023.

Enter her replacement, Dawn Plitzuweit, a respected coach with Midwest recruiting connections, who figured to succeed with Whalen’s players.

Then, during her first season, her star, Mara Braun, injured her foot, and the Gophers finished 5-13 in the Big Ten. During this, her second season, Braun reinjured her foot, and promising sophomore Taylor Woodson was lost for the season because of a knee injury.

For all of the problems with these programs, today there is hope, because the Gophers men are learning to lean on their star, and the Gophers women are learning to play without theirs.

For a team lacking talent and depth, the Gophers men have had too many games this season in which Dawson Garcia, by far their best player, wasn’t active or aggressive.

In his past two games, he has played like a leader, and helped the Gophers produce two upsets — at home over a ranked Michigan team, and at Iowa, where the Gophers hadn’t won since 2015.

The Gophers women Wednesday night played the first game between two ranked women’s teams at The Barn since 2019, a 70-65 loss to No. 24 Michigan.

The crowd was small but noisy. Gophers point guard Amaya Battle scored 25 points. The Gophers lost because they went 6-for-25 from the three-point line. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Braun making a difference in this game.

At the moment, it’s the men who suddenly seem tougher in games against quality opponents, thanks largely to Garcia, who seems to have realized that if he doesn’t dominate, no one on this roster will.

The women’s success and the men’s surge mean that we’re in for a stretch of big-time basketball.

The next six games for the women: Wisconsin, at No. 4 USC and No. 1 UCLA, Iowa, Indiana and at No. 12 Ohio State.

The next five for the men: No. 15 Oregon, at No. 8 Michigan State, Washington, at Penn State, No. 17 Illinois.

The women could build a national reputation.

The men could save their coach’s job.