Minnesota trailed Northwestern by 11 between the third and fourth quarters Sunday in Evanston when Gophers coach Dawn Plitzuweit laid out a plan of attack to rally.
Get a stop, then get a bucket. Get another stop, then score again. Do that one more time and suddenly it’s a three- or four-point game.
Brillaint.
“Then none of that happened,” the coach joked on the postgame radio show. “So then we called another timeout.”
Whatever was said in that one somehow did the trick, as 24th-ranked Minnesota closed the game on a 29-8 run to edge Northwestern 87-82.
Minnesota (17-2, 5-2 in Big Ten) held Northwestern to 5 for 17 shooting in the fourth quarter while going 7 for 11 itself while going 14 for 17 from the free-throw line in the final frame. A Tori McKinney triple knotted the game at 80-80 with 2 minutes, 15 seconds to play. Then four-straight points from Niamya Holloway put Minnesota in the driver’s seat.
“I think it just is you had to fight every play, try to get the best shot possible and finish every play on the defensive end,” sophomore wing Grace Grocholski said on the postgame radio show. “Just take it one play at a time is how we were going to fight back.”
Grocholski played all 40 minutes Sunday, tallying 27 points and 10 rebounds. She’s certainly a usual suspect in powering Minnesota to victory. But there were some surprising contributors, as well. Alexsia Rose and Holloway played larger roles than usual, and were pivotal in the amped up defensive pressure that forced the Gophers back into the game.
“There’s going to be a point and time where you need different players to step up and help us,” Plitzuweit said. “And Alexia Rose did that at a very, very high level, helped us apply ball pressure in a new way, a different way – better than we were.”
Because Minnesota was stuck in the mud for much of Sunday’s matinee. The Gophers are still recovering from an illness that’s circulated through the roster. A number of players still aren’t at 100 percent, and it looked that way for much of the game.
“We were trying to do everything we could to create some energy, some ball pressure, anything we could. And we just could not get it going,” Plitzuweit said. “I just think our young ladies were really at a major, major, major disadvantage in this situation, and it juts looked that way. It just looked like we were stuck in the mud from the beginning of the game, up until there were eight minutes left in the game.”
Gophers forward Sophie Hart takes a shot in the first half of Minnesota’s 87-82 victory over Northwestern in Evanston, Ill. on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Courtesy of Meghan Bielich/University of Minnesota)
And yet the Gophers found a way to win anyway. This group has tended to do that. It’s why they’re the first top-25 team this program has sported in six years. When problems arise, they find solutions. The Gophers nearly delivered a miracle rally days prior after facing a 20-point deficit in Maryland, only to fall short at the end. This time, the Gophers finished the job.
Amaya Battle finished with 18 points, six rebounds and six assists. Grace Sullivan led Northwestern (7-10) with 18 points. Minnesota next battles Michigan at home on Wednesday.
“To our players’ credit, they found a way with an incredible resiliency,” Plitzuweit said. “And now we’ve got to get back and do everything we can to recover, because we’ve got a really important stretch coming up next.”
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