The Gophers’ women’s basketball team has established a strong position to end its six-year NCAA tournament drought heading into the second half of the Big Ten Conference schedule. But up next is No. 4 Southern California on Thursday and No. 1 UCLA on Sunday.
Both games are in Los Angeles.
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In her 18th year as a head coach, Dawn Plitzuweit said this pair represents the most daunting back-to-back games of her career.
“I don’t think it gets more difficult than this,” she said Tuesday.
Plitzuweit’s team is 18-3 overall and 6-3 in the Big Ten, but is 0-2 in Quad 1 games this season. They fell out of the Associated Press top 25 this week with recent losses to ranked Maryland and Michigan teams, but are 29th in the all-important NET ranking.
Minnesota has been able to play well and win without leading scorer Mara Braun, lost to foot surgery after five games, and role player Taylor Woodson to a season-ending knee injury after 12 games.
Here are excerpts from Plitzuweit’s conversation with the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Tuesday:
How do you assess this season to date?
I think our young ladies are competing, and I think we’re developing. … So, I would say what I really appreciate about this group of young ladies is that that they’re working and they’re learning and they’re growing. They want it. That’s been really fun.
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How have you been able to overcome Braun and Woodson’s injuries?
That has been a major, major challenge. … What’s different this year is we have more experience. We have a better understanding where the returning players are — a little more developed. I think (on top of) all of that, we have some young ladies who have joined our program who are certainly helping us with that, too.
What are the chances that Braun comes back this year? How are you approaching that?
We’re kind of just in a wait-and-see situation right now. Her first X-ray came back, and it shows good healing, and we’re at the stage (where) that’s a great, great thing. But she’s still in a very careful stage of her development right now, so she’s not in practices yet.
Do you define success this season as making the NCAA tournament?
Is it a goal? Yes. But, like we talked about, too, when you focus on the outcome, a lot of times, it’s really hard to figure out what you have to do. … What is it about the Big Ten teams that played in the NCAA tournament last year? There were seven teams. What did those teams do statistically differently than our teams? What are some key statistics that we have to improve upon? And we took a look at those type of things.
So, then, we want to play faster. We want to score more efficiently in transition. What does that mean? Well, that means we need to have more players comfortable handling the basketball so that we have more players who can push it. … It’s a process that we focus on to hopefully end up with the results that we want to have.
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How important is NIL (name, image and likeness) to the women’s program?
Here’s what I told our boosters on Sunday before the (Wisconsin) game. We talked about where our program has made some strides, and where we’re getting better. … What’s the next step in terms of development in our program?
No. 1: It’s in talent retention, period. No. 2: It’s in talent acquisition. Well, in order to do that, there’s a financial component that’s definitely associated with that. So, it has become a major part of the women’s game.
I’m really thankful that we’ve had boosters and individuals step up, and then I think we’re all expecting revenue share to kick in. You know, certainly July 1. I know (player) contracts are going out. We’re not quite at that stage yet in women’s basketball, but we’re getting close to it. So, that’s exciting.
How does that work within the Gophers department when it comes to revenue sharing? Because there’s a lot of different sports that will want a piece of that pie.
Each institution can make those decisions within their administration. And, so trust me, if it was up to me (laughs). … You’d have to ask (athletics director) Mark Coyle that question, how that’s all split up, and how they’re doing that. What’s going to happen, I believe, (is) within at least a year or two, there’s going to be an opportunity to have some transparency in all of this, which there really isn’t in the NIL world. And I also wonder if that’s a good thing too, because I worry, I just think it’s a lot for these student athletes.”
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