A year ago this time, Minnesota’s women’s basketball team was playing itself out of an NCAA tournament bid. Heading into Sunday’s home game against No. 18 Michigan State, the Gophers are in position to improve their seeding and, perhaps, even be host to the first two rounds.
Coming off a convincing victory over 10th-ranked Ohio State last Wednesday, No. 23 Minnesota appears to be peaking at the right time, winners of nine straight and owners the No. 8 spot in the NET rankings, the most important statistical rankings system used by the NCAA tournament committee when choosing and seeding automatic qualifiers.
Minnesota point guard Amaya Battle drives on Ohio State’s Kennedy Cambridge during the Gophers’ 74-61 victory Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026, at Williams Arena. Battle’s five assists moved her into second place on the Gophers’ career assists list. (Claudia Staut/Gophers Athletics)
“It feels good, but now we’ve got to redirect our focus,” guard Mara Braun said after Wednesday’s 71-64 victory over No. 10 Ohio State. “But, yeah, this team is just so much fun.”
Braun has been a big reason for Minnesota’s success this season.
Part of the 10th-ranked 2021 recruiting class, Braun had an auspicious freshman season before breaking her right foot as a sophomore, and again last season as a junior. The guard from Wayzata was not available at this time last season, and she didn’t play in the Gophers’ five-game run to the 2025 WBIT championship.
Braun scored 18 points against the Buckeyes and hit a big clock-beating 3-pointer in the fourth quarter to keep Minnesota in control. Since scoring a season-high 22 points in a victory at Penn State on Jan. 28, she is averaging 17.1 points a game.
That takes big pressure off of last year’s leading scorer Grace Grocholski, and with senior Amaya Battle, graduate transfer Brylee Glenn and sophomore wing Tori McKinney gives the Gophers (21-6 overall, 12-4 Big Ten) five veteran guards who can score, distribute and defend.
In Sophie Hart, the team has a classic post who can defend and fill up the score sheet; she finished the Ohio State game with 18 points and 10 rebounds.
The close ones aren’t getting away as much as they did last season.
“I think we’re just a little bit more relaxed than we’ve been in the past,” grad Hart said.
Heading into Sunday’s game against the Spartans (21-6, 10-6), Minnesota has the fewest turnovers in Division I basketball (279) by a long shot, and the fourth-best assist-to-turnover ratio (1.61).
Against Ohio State, which owns the nation’s seventh-best average turnover margin (8.59), the Gophers had nine, despite gamelong full-court, half-court and double-team pressure on their guards.
“We work on press-break every single day,” Braun said. “It’s the first thing we do in practice, making sure we take care of the ball.”
Minnesota has put in a bid to host a regional; whether it’s awarded will come down to how strong the Gophers finish the season. They have two regular-season games left — finishing Big Ten play at Illinois on March 1 — and the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis to make a case.
The Gophers beat then-No. 10 Iowa on Feb. 5 in Iowa City, and then-No. 21 USC on Jan. 11. A victory over the Spartans would be another feather in the Gophers’ caps before they begin a conference tournament that will have six teams in the top 15 of the current NET Rankings (UCLA, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Maryland and Michigan State).
“The way that they’ve approached things has gotten even better,” third-year coach Dawn Plitzuweit said. “They’re really locked in. They create their own energy. … You’ve got to play hard and get after it, but you need to be relaxed.
“When you play at your best, performing at your best, at anything, you are calm and you’re relaxed, and that’s really important to us. They’re figuring out how to do that at a really high level.”
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