Dawn Plitzuweit made her pitch for an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament for her team prior to the Gophers’ a few days before the Gophers started the Big Ten conference tournament.
The Big Ten has never been better, or bigger, she said, so limiting the conference to a certain amount of NCAA tournament invitations doesn’t make the same sense that it used to.
This year, the conference comprised 18 teams, and two of them — UCLA and Southern Cal — were consistent top five teams all season, and Minnesota played many of the first-tier teams tough. But the Gophers didn’t beat any of them, and it cost them.
The metrics, particularly the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings, didn’t favor Minnesota, and the Gophers on Sunday found themselves outside looking in at 68 teams that were invited to the Big Dance.
They could still be invited to the 32-team Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament. The WBIT started last season and has replaced the WNIT, which the Gophers nearly won last season, advancing to the championship before losing to St. Louis. That field is being set tonight.
The first four teams left out of the NCAA bracket get automatic bids to the WBIT.
Playing without returning leading scorer Mara Braun (broken foot) for most of the season, as well as transfer Taylor Woodson, the Gophers (20-10) were a good team but not above-average Big Ten team, finishing behind the 11 programs that made the NCAA tournament in the final standings.
The Gophers were 0-8 in Quad 1 wins and because of that were unlikely to make its first NCAA tournament field since 2018. If it wasn’t entirely clear after Minnesota’s first-round loss to Washington in the first round of the Big Ten tournament on March 5, it was when, about halfway through the tournament field reveal, the Huskies were given a play-in game as a No. 16 seed.
The Huskies were the only team Minnesota lost to twice this season.
No. 1 seeds UCLA and Southern Cal led the Big Ten field. Only one, No. 10 seed Oregon, lost its first conference tournament team. The others are No. 4 seeds Maryland and Ohio State, No. 6 Iowa and Michigan, No. 7 Michigan State, No. 8 Illinois, No. 9 Indiana and No. 10 Nebraska — all teams that beat the Gophers this season.
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