A team that some believed could play games in April didn’t even make it to March.
The Golden Gophers (15-17, 4-15) lost their opening-round conference tournament game to Rutgers at Madison Square Garden 65-54, ending a thoroughly disappointing campaign and bringing senior Nate Mason’s career to an end.
Playing without Reggie Lynch for the 16th time and without Amir Coffey for the 14th time, Minnesota was destroyed on the boards 48-28 and outscored 17-2 in second-chance points.
It took the Gophers nearly 10 minutes to record their first field goal of the game, and they were again held without a bucket for nearly six minutes down the stretch when the Scarlet Knights pulled away.
Jordan Murphy’s dunk cut the deficit to 49-47 with 6:48 to go, but the Gophers were outscored 9-3 over the next 5:54 and didn’t make another field goal until Isaiah Washington’s layup with under a minute remaining.
Rutgers beat Minnesota 15-5 in offensive rebounding, but none were bigger than Eugene Omoruyi’s offensive board with just over two minutes remaining which led to Corey Sanders’ jumper that gave the Scarlet Knights a 56-50 lead.
The Gophers were led by Washington with 18 points, who played one of his best games in front of dozens of friends and family in his home state of New York. Nate Mason scored 12 to finish his career with 1,731 points — fifth on the Gophers’ all-time scoring list behind Andre Hollins, Randy Breuer, Willie Burton and Mychal Thompson.
Murphy, meanwhile, grabbed nine rebounds to go with 11 points, padding his single-season rebounding record up to 361, a mark he may chase next year as a senior.
The Gophers picked a bad time to go cold from the field. They shot a season low 15.8 percent (3 for 19) from 3-point range and 34.6 percent overall, the eighth time they were held below 40 percent in conference play.
Big picture: For the second time in three years, Minnesota bowed out in the de facto play-in round of the Big Ten Tournament, having lost two years ago to Illinois.
Wednesday’s loss came to a Rutgers team they’d beaten by 22 points on Dec. 3 when the Gophers were still at full strength and ranked in the nation’s Top 25.
Minnesota’s 11-point defeat to the conference’s No. 14 seed acted as a final reminder how far the team fell from its pinnacle just a few short months ago.
