Playing for the first time in 10 days, the Minnesota Golden Gophers stumbled out of gate but quickly corrected course to notch a 86-67 win over the North Carolina A&T Aggies from the MEAC.

Here were the main takeaways:

• Still no Eric Curry for the Gophers (10-2, 1-1). After being a gametime decision, the big man missed his 12th straight game with a knee injury and has now missed 7.5 weeks after initial reports indicated he would miss 4-6 weeks. Minnesota has one game left (Dec. 30) for Curry to shake off the rust before conference play restarts. The redshirt sophomore was seen at practice Thursday with a brace on his left knee, and Pitino indicated that Curry has only practiced with contact for limited portions of practice. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t play on the 30th,” said head coach Richard Pitino. “I think it’s important that he continues to progress with the contact portion of practice, the non-contact portion of it. There’s so many variables that go into it.” With Matz Stockman lacking the scoring or physicality needed down low (he was minus-9 on Friday), the impact a mostly-healthy Curry could have on the rotation is enormous, especially in Big Ten play. But he’s running out of time to re-acclimate before meaningful games. Curry hasn’t played since the 2017 NCAA Tournament.

• The Gophers once again toyed with a non-conference opponent they were heavily favored to beat. In their third straight “guarantee game” (as Pitino has called them) against a sub-.500 foe, Minnesota struggled to gain separation in the first half despite being 21.5-point favorites. The Gophers trailed 25-15 with 8:15 remaining in the first half before embarking on a 16-0 run fueled by Jordan Murphy and Daniel Oturu. Their 14-point lead in the second half even dwindled to eight with six minutes to go before a final push gave them clearance. It’s sensible that the rigors and challenges of the November and early-December schedule have left the Gophers lethargic. Will they be able to reengage against Wisconsin on Jan. 3? “Hard schedule coming up, especially January 3 with Wisconsin,” said Dupree McBrayer, “so we’ve just got to take advantage of every rep we can get in practice, and that falls on me and Murphy and Amir and Eric, just getting these guys ready.”

• The Gophers continue to struggle from 3. They had dropped to 242nd in the country in 3-point field-goal percentage entering play Friday and will likely sink lower after a 4-of-20 performance. “I want them to play freely,” said Pitino. “We’re gonna have better shooting nights than we did. We still put up 86 points and we missed nine free throws.” Gabe Kalscheur had missed 13 consecutive 3s before hitting one late in the first half and finished 2 for 8 from deep, while McBrayer went 1 for 8. Kalscheur is still a 40 percent sharpshooter, but no other Gophers player came into Friday shooting better than 31 percent from long range. Minnesota isn’t blessed with a wealth of shooters. When Kalscheur’s cold, the team has been cold.

• Murphy’s season of ridiculous box scores continues. With a season-high 30 points and 16 rebounds, he put forth his fifth game with 16 or more rebounds, and in four of those he’s coupled it with 15 or more points. Friday he awoke Minnesota from its slumber with his typical bulldog mentality near the basket. “It doesn’t have to just be me,” said Murphy about invigorating the team, “but today it just happened to be me. I got very passionate about it.” The Gophers pounded the Aggies in the paint 56-30 and grabbed 22 offensive rebounds to A&T’s seven. Murphy has double-doubles in nine of 12 games thus far.

• Oturu added a season-high 20 points and 11 rebounds of his own, capping a great tag-team effort by the Gophers starting bigs. Murphy and Oturu shot a combined 20 of 27. The rest of the team: 14 of 47. Oturu has had three huge games against the last three opponents, albeit lesser competition, averaging 17 points and 11 rebounds. Of late, he’s had more patience with better footwork in the post, though nothing fancy has been required against the trio of smaller mid-majors. “I think that he’s producing, which is important,” said Pitino. “Production, obviously, is important, but it’s a matter of the defensive side of it, where he can grow like all freshman do, but the effort’s there and the production’s there. Great kid, fun to be around, really wants to win.”

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Sam Ekstrom

Sam Ekstrom is an executive producer and host at Locked On Sports Minnesota. He's previously covered the Vikings for 105 The Ticket, Zone Coverage, Purple Insider, and the Associated Press. He grew up in Vermillion, S.D. rooting for the USD Coyotes (not SDSU) and graduated from Dordt (not "dork") University in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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