Women’s basketball: high school tournament puts crimp in Gophers’ WBIT plans

Dawn Plitzuweit’s Gophers did not earn an NCAA tournament berth on Sunday as they had hoped, but they did earn a No. 2 seed in the second-tier WBIT tournament later that evening.

Unfortunately, the Gophers will not be able to enjoy the immediate spoils of that top seed, a home game, for the first or, if they advance, second rounds of the 32-team tournament because the boys state basketball tournament is setting up shop in Williams Arena this week.

“It makes it challenging, certainly,” Plitzuweit said.

The Gophers (20-11) were hoping their Big Ten resume would make them one of the last teams in the 68-team NCAA tournament, but they’re also happy to keep playing starting Thursday against MAC runner-up Toledo (24-8) in Ohio.

Tip at Savage Arena is set for 6 p.m. CDT.

“The positive to it is I guess we’ve done it in the past,” Plitzuweit said Monday. Last season’s team, her first at Minnesota, advanced to the WNIT championship, where the Gophers lost to St. Louis. The last of their five games were played on the road between April 2-6.

The Gophers stayed on the road for all three of those games.

“I thought it really helped us this year,” Plitzuweit said. “It helped us with doing some of those things and being better in adverse situations.”

The Gophers are ranked No. 39 in the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings, behind the 11 Big Ten teams that made the NCAA tournament: No. 1 seeds UCLA and Southern Cal, No. 4 Maryland and Ohio State, No. 6 Iowa and Michigan, No. 7 Michigan State, No. 8 Illinois, No. 9 Indiana and No. 10 Nebraska and Oregon.

Toledo is ranked 115th in the NET rankings, and 0-2 in Quad 1 wins. The Gophers were 0-8. That doesn’t mean advancing in the WBIT wouldn’t be important, particularly for a program just beginning under Plitzuweit, who last season took West Virginia to the NCAA tournament, and in 2022 led South Dakota to the Sweet 16.

At one point this season, the Gophers were 17-2 overall and 5-2 in the Big Ten and ranked No. 23 in the Associated Press poll, their first appearance in the national poll since 2019, despite losing returning leading scorer Mara Braun (foot) and Michigan transfer Taylor Woodson (knee) early to season-ending injuries.

But the schedule got tougher, and while the Gophers played well against ranked teams such as Maryland, Ohio State and Southern Cal, they were never able to get over the hump. The winner of Thursday’s game will meet the winner of a first-round game between Missouri State (25-8) of the Missouri Valley and the Summit League’s Oral Roberts (24-8).

Although the Gophers would be the higher seed in that game, they wouldn’t be able to play that game — currently scheduled for Sunday — at home, either. Plitzuweit said it’s possible a third-round game could be played at the Barn but noted that to make that happen, her team has “a lot of work to do.”

“Right now we have one opportunity to play, and that’s at Toledo,” she said.