Up by 19 points at the half, the Gopher women’s basketball team’s third-quarter woes allowed Nebraska to get within eight points starting the fourth.

It was gut check time.

The maroon and gold scored the first seven points of the final frame to reestablish some extra breathing room, and, after the Cornhuskers got within six, Minnesota ended the game on a 13-2 run for an 84-67 win.

“I thought our young ladies showed a great deal of toughness. I thought they showed a great deal of resilience and a great deal of composure,” coach Dawn Plitzuweit said.

“At the end we came together and made those winning plays,” said Amaya Battle, who led five Gophers in double figures with 21 points.

It was the team’s seventh straight win, all in Big Ten action, and best since a 11-game stretch of conference wins from February 2003 to January 2004.

That success doesn’t surprise Plitzuweit.

“They’ve faced the highs and they faced the lows of not coming out on top in this type of an environment or a battle. Their desire is really, really high. Everybody has a desire, but then you have to put in the time. And this is a group that invests a lot of time. They invest a lot of time on the court on their own, they invest time watching film. They really lock in, they ask really intelligent questions in film and they have a lot of fun doing it.”

Mara Braun had 15 points for her third straight double-digit scoring effort, Sophie Hart 14, Grace Grocholski 12 and Tori McKinney 11 to go with a team-high five assists.

One of those helpers was a pass inside to Hart to start an eventual 3-point play that pushed the Minnesota lead to nine with 3:33 to play.

Surrounded by multiple Cornhuskers, Grocholski scored on a layup next time down the floor and Hart found Battle on a backdoor cut for a 78-65 lead.

“Those plays separate you from other teams, and especially down the line when we have to make plays. We talk about finishing the play, just finding the way, all the time, every single day, and we practice it. We’re expected to do it,” Braun said.

Unranked in either top 25 poll, Minnesota (19-6 overall, 10-4 Big Ten) entered the game 10th and Nebraska 25th in the NET rankings, the primary sorting tool for evaluating teams for the NCAA tournament. The Gophers last made the tournament in 2018.

Chalk this one up to the latest learning experience for when the calendar turns to March.

“Just cleaning up things and just knowing what that feels like to be able to bring that into a whole game,” Braun said.

A strong inside-outside game quickly led to a double-digit lead.

Ten of the first 15 points came in the paint — Minnesota outscored Nebraska 52-22 there in the game — and back-to-back 3-pointers by Braun gave Minnesota a 26-11 lead late in the first quarter.

Back-to-back 3-point plays by Battle made it 40-19 midway through the second quarter. Minnesota’s lead was 49-30 at the break.

Nebraska outscored Minnesota 22-11 in the third quarter.

“We made rush decisions … We passed on the run a couple different times. We threw it to kids that weren’t open,” Plitzuweit said.

“That was AI; it wasn’t us,” Battle said as she and Braun broke into laughter.

Britt Prince led Nebraska with 15 points and Jessica Petrie added 14, but the Cornhuskers (16-9, 5-9) lost for the seventh time in nine games.

With the win, the Gophers remained in fifth place in the Big Ten standings, one-half game behind Iowa in conference play. Next up for Minnesota is a trip across the border to face Wisconsin in Madison at 5 p.m. Sunday.

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A three-game winning streak for the St. Thomas men’s basketball team came to a close Thursday night as the Tommies lost their first Summit League game this season to a team not from North Dakota.

A second-half rally fell short as St. Thomas lost 98-94 at Omaha for the Tommies’ third loss in Summit play. The visitors couldn’t fully surmount a five-point halftime deficit despite getting double-digit scoring from six different players in the run-and-gun affair vs. the host Mavericks.

Isaiah Johnson-Arigu led St. Thomas (20-7 overall, 9-3 Summit) with 19 points in a reserve role. Nolan Minessale recorded 17 points to go with a game-high nine assists.

Grant Stubblefield and Ja’Sean Glover led Omaha (13-14, 6-6) in scoring, tying for the game high with 22 points apiece.

The loss dropped the Tommies into a second-place tie with North Dakota in the conference standings, with both teams now trailing idle North Dakota State by 1.5 games with four contests to go in the regular season. The Coyotes and Bison were the only two Summit teams to overcome St. Thomas this season before Thursday.

St. Thomas remains on the road for its next two contests, starting with a Valentine’s Day matchup at Kansas City (4-21, 1-10), with tip-off scheduled for 7 p.m.

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Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Brenda Drehmel logged onto Bachmans.com to search for a bouquet of flowers to send to Nora Gulyas, her friend and neighbor.

After Brenda chose the “Tulip Town” bouquet, her order joined a growing list of thousands of fresh floral arrangements, including about 40,000 stems of roses and 85,000 stems of tulips, that would be created in time for Valentine’s Day in the floral design center of the Minneapolis headquarters of Bachman’s on Lyndale Avenue as well as by designers working in other locations.

The Lyndale location is unofficially known as “Valentine’s Day Central.”

In celebration of this holiday of love and friendship, the Pioneer Press followed the “Tulip Town” bouquet from its creation in Minneapolis on Wednesday to its delivery in Mendota Heights on Thursday.

The timing of Valentine’s Day (and Galentine’s Day)

With Valentine’s Day on a Saturday this year, the holiday is drawn out for florists, as some people prefer to send flowers to a loved one’s workplace on the weekday versus to their home on the weekend.

Susan Bachman West at Bachman’s in Minneapolis. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“So typically, when it’s on a weekend, it gets spread out between Friday and Saturday,” says Susan Bachman West, CEO of Bachman’s, a family-owned business that includes six Floral, Home & Garden Centers throughout the Twin Cities as well as 29 floral departments within Lunds & Byerlys grocery stores.

In total, based on last year’s numbers, Bachman’s estimates 40 delivery vehicles will deliver more than 4,000 packages (with more than 1,000 on Feb. 14). This includes everything from blooming plants that have been locally grown at Bachman’s greenhouses in Farmington to five semi loads of cut flowers from South America via Miami.

In addition to all those flowers and plants for Valentine’s Day, “Galentine’s Day” has also been a thing since 2010, when the concept was introduced in an episode of “Parks and Recreation” as a way for women to celebrate their friendships on Feb. 13, the eve of Valentine’s Day. Bachman’s recognizes this day of friendship with “Conversation Hearts,” featuring a pair of bud vases filled with flowers like roses, gerbera daisy and sprays of aster.

Galentine’s Day is definitely a day to celebrate for Brenda and Nora, friends and neighbors from Mendota Heights.

‘We’re trying to find ways to connect’

If geography is destiny, that’s true for this friendship born across two backyards in this Dakota County suburb.

“I’ve known her for about 17 years, when she moved into the neighborhood,” Brenda says of Nora. “I think because we share backyards we have gotten to know each other pretty quickly, but where we started spending the most time together is during COVID: She was working at home and I was working at home and we started going out for walks in the evening and during the summer we went for a lot of bike rides together so we definitely connected more after March of 2020.”

Years later, they’re still connected.

“We’re going to Lucky’s tonight to play purse Bingo,” Brenda said on Thursday.

While Brenda typically spends Valentine’s Day at home with her husband, Craig, making a special meal and perhaps enjoying chocolates they bought at Regina’s Candies, this is not the first time she’s sent flowers to friends for special occasions.

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“I just turned 50 and I have other friends who are turning 50,” she says. “I want to find a way to celebrate them and make sure that they know that I’m thinking of them on particular days. So it’s always been my plan to send flowers to other friends when they are sending flowers.”

Or, during sensitive times, too: Especially now, under the tension of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, it was worth it to Brenda to send a goodwill gesture of $89.99 (plus tax and delivery for about $119 total).

“I think it’s just a boost right now,” Brenda said. “We live in Minnesota and it’s obviously challenging at times … so we’re trying to find ways to stay connected and get together, but this is just kind of another opportunity to celebrate our friendship.”

‘Why do you buy flowers?’

Workers, many of them from other departments, create bouquets for the busy Valentine’s Day week at Bachman’s Minneapolis Garden Center on Wednesday. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

About nine miles away from Mendota Heights, at Bachman’s on Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis, Jamie McLaughlin, lead designer, was dressed in pink for Valentine’s Day as she created Nora’s bouquet with multiple colors of tulips spread out on a large wooden table inside Bachman’s floral design room.

It was one of several arrangements in Bachman’s Valentine’s Day collection that she personally designed.

While it was winter outside, with snow on the ground and a chill in the air, in this large room it smelled like earth and flowers on Wednesday as staff worked on Valentine’s Day orders. In another room, more designers were focused solely on rose bouquets. In total, it takes about 250 employees for Bachman’s to bring Valentine’s Day to bloom.

Artfully, McLaughlin quickly arranged 22 tulips and six stems of swordferns in a six-inch glass vase, accessorized with swordferns.

“The tulips are nice,” she says. “It’s a good girlfriend gift.”

How does she make arranging flowers look so effortless?

“Practice, my dear,” McLaughlin says with a laugh. “It’s called 30 years of practice.”

McLaughlin, an artist who also paints flowers in her spare time, found her way into this career after doing the flowers for her own wedding and realizing she enjoyed it: “All I ever wanted to do for a job was to make pretty things,” she said.

Perhaps it’s about more than prettiness, though, as she considered what she hoped this bouquet of tulips might mean to the recipient.

“Joy,” she said. “Joy and love.

“You know, this probably doesn’t pertain to this, but on Friday, I waited on a customer who’s doing a celebration of life for her husband who passed away and she said, ‘All my friends are giving me grief about ordering flowers because they just die,’” McLaughlin said. “And I said, ‘That’s the point.’ I mean, flowers are a reminder that our time here is incredibly limited and our lifespan is short, just as the lifespan of flowers is short, and to celebrate the joy of every day, the brightness that’s in front of you, and to appreciate that. So that’s my, ‘Why do you buy flowers?’ speech.”

Waiting for joy

Pascual Briones, Bachman Farm shift leader, switches duty during the busy Valentine’s Day week and helps get bouquets ready for delivery in the shipping department at Bachman’s Minneapolis Garden Center on Wednesday. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

After McLaughlin finished preparing the bouquet, the tulips were handed off to Karen Bachman Thull, director of community and business development, who, dressed in a heart sweater and wearing a smile, walked it over to an area near the delivery bay.

(Note: The family roots run deep here; the CEO is Bachman Thull’s cousin and Brenda, the sender of the flowers, is her sister-in-law.)

After Bachman Thull dropped off the tulips, Pascual Briones took over. Normally, he is the ship leader at Bachman’s Farmington greenhouses. But now, like all employees at Bachman’s, he was pitching in where it’s most needed for the Valentine’s Day crush.

Assembling and taping a cardboard box printed with Bachman’s signature lavender, he filled it with a protective cushion of paper and a swoosh of lavender tissue paper, settling the bouquet in the nest and covering it in a gossamer layer of protective plastic wrap and tying it up with a lavender ribbon. After that, it was time to place the tulips in a cooler until Thursday’s delivery.

The way the staff rallies for Valentine’s Day is meaningful for Bachman’s CEO.

“The reason it’s one of my favorite holidays is because everyone comes together, whether you work in IT or accounting, to accomplish the holiday,” says Bachman West, who was also dressed in a heart sweater.

Happy Galentine’s Day

The sun was shining and the birds were chirping, heralding the promise of spring on Thursday as a lavender Bachman’s truck pulled onto Nora’s street.

Out popped Bachman Thull, dressed in a lavender Bachman’s jacket, carrying the box with the bouquet of tulips, glimpses of color peeking through the plastic wrap.

“The way I see it, everyone deserves flowers,” she said, “something beautiful in their life.”

Walking up to the rambler, she rang the doorbell and waited with the something beautiful.

With a nervous smile, Nora opened her door.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” Karen proclaimed, handing her the box of tulips that came with a card addressed to Nora and her children:

“To Nora, Izzi & Juli — best neighbors and friends! Love, the Drehmels.”

“Thank you!” Nora said, tears in her eyes.

Nora Gulyas, right, receives a Valentine’s Day bouquet, gifted to her by a neighbor, from Karen Bachman Thull at her Mendota Heights home on Thursday. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Oh, I love it,” she said. “I’m very emotional … It is emotional when you get flowers. And I’m a single mom, so I don’t get flowers too often!”

After they said goodbye, Karen was moved as she absorbed Nora’s reaction to this gift.

“I didn’t expect it to take this turn,” she says of the emotional response. “But this is why we do what we do.”

As she walked back to her lavender van, she spotted another Bachman’s van on the street. The driver pulled up to say hi, saying he had just delivered flowers to someone else in the neighborhood.

“We’re buddies!” Karen said with a laugh. “We’re delivery buddies.”

They couldn’t chat long, though. they both had to get back to “Valentine’s Day Central.”

“There will be hundreds of orders coming in today,” Karen said with cheer.

Valentine’s Day at Bachman’s

Bachman’s is extending its hours for Valentine’s Day, with stores open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday. Bachman’s flowers are also sold at Lunds and Byerlys. In addition, the chain will once again offer Cupid’s Quick Lane for drive-up options featuring a menu of Valentine’s Day flowers, chocolate and more.

Info on Valentine’s Day flowers and more at Bachmans.com.

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By LAURIE KELLMAN and ALMAZ ABEDJE

LONDON (AP) — Love and bacon hovered in the air of the Smalley house one sunny morning when Annie, 7, came to breakfast.

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A “baconaholic,” according to her father, Annie spied the last remaining strips of the intoxicating salty meat on a plate. She could easily have inhaled them all. But incoming was Annie’s sister, Murphy, 16, another bacon devotee. Annie paused and decided to offer one strip of crispy goodness to her sister. “Dad,” she declared, ““I just laid down my life for Murphy.”

Perhaps, Greg Smalley reminded his daughter, the pig had sacrificed more. But what struck him was the choice. The sisters had a history of generosity toward each other, but Annie had given up something important — a massive understatement for any bacon lover — for Murphy’s delight. “Love,” Smalley said by email, “is built on small, daily sacrifices that quietly say, ‘You matter.’”

In doing so, Annie arguably had gotten the love part right — a universal goal that’s been sought and debated across borders, politics and religions for as long as people have been writing things down.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day 2026, with the card and chocolate industries eager to help, loving someone well — a romantic partner, a parent, a child, a pet and especially yourself — can seem as perplexing as ever. It depends on what you want, and don’t, as well as what others want from you — now and in five minutes, relentlessly.

Love stinks, love bites, love hurts: What history says about loving well

Across traditions and philosophies, love is generally defined as an ongoing moral choice that requires truthfulness and accountability. What it’s not, those texts widely say: controlling, unconditional or abusive.

Valentine’s day Plush bears are displayed at a retail store in Lincolnshire, Ill., Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Aristotle wrote that to love, a person “wishes and does what is good, or seems to, for the sake of his friend.” St. Thomas Aquinas taught that, “to love is to will the good of the other.” The Old Testament includes a famous directive, translated roughly: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Love,” wrote the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, “can be defined as a wish that others be happy.”

It’s all pretty lofty-sounding, so The Associated Press asked people around the world how they got love part right in real, contemporary life. Here’s what they said.

Las Vegas: Knowing each other well enough to give the right gifts

“Personally, I love gift-giving,” said Ally Fernandez of Las Vegas, a seamstress. “I make a lot of my items, and I love making something special and like custom to my person, and I do that for pretty much everybody.”

For her husband, Fernandez said she did “some really cool, patchwork…It’s just so unexpected when you get something that’s handmade like that.”

Her husband, meanwhile, has paid close enough attention to know she loves surprises. One recent date night, he took her to Area15, an immersive entertainment experience in Las Vegas.

“You walk through it…and you can interact with all the things around you,” she recalled. “I love things like that, like just things that are different and artsy.”

Budapest, Hungary: Suffering through Sephora with your makeup-loving lover

A Valentine heart cushion is seen at a grocery store in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Back home in Budapest, Hungary, there are no Sephora stores. But there are multiples in Paris. So on a recent visit to the French capital, Lili Henzel, 25, couldn’t stay away from the cosmetics giant — and her husband, Bulcsu Alkay, 23, went along for the ride. Again. And again.

“Yesterday, we went to Sephora for five times,” Henzel said in an interview. “It’s not fun for him, obviously, so I appreciate that a lot.”

Alkay took it with good humor. “I guess it’s my second home, I would say,” he said. Turning to his wife, he empathized. “Because you have so much at Sephora and we don’t have it at home.”

They displayed admirable honesty, appreciation and clear communication.

“I love makeup, so we had to buy a lot of it,” Henzel explained.

“I’m not really interested in that kind of shopping,” Alkay said.

Replied Henzel: “Thanks again for that.”

Los Angeles: Spending enough time together to know when your person, or pet, feels down

Luis Mitre of Los Angeles says that “love is the most wonderful thing.” He tries to express how he feels to people, but his dogs seem to know automatically.

That might be because he takes them wherever he goes, even on travel. “They sense when you’re sad, when you’re happy, even when people don’t,” said Mitre, who also lives in Las Vegas, where he spoke to the AP. “I think they show their love in unexpected ways every single day.”

Colmar, France: Rooting for each other every day

Claudia Verdun and Francarlos Betancourt, French visitors to Rome’s romantic Trevi Fountain, took a quick selfie and kissed — then talked about love.

“For me, it is a daily test,” Verdun said. “Little attentions, respect, care for the other, to believe in the other pushing, for the best for him. I think that is important.”

Added Betancourt, love is “to help each other with some things, to always be together, starting with your differences — you have to love each other.

Colombia’s Ambassador in the United States Daniel García-Peña, right, hands out flowers from Colombia to pedestrians outside the Longworth House Office Building ahead of Valentine’s Day, as a symbol of the close partnership between Colombia and the United States, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Beijing: Accepting yourself

Yi Yi, a Beijing resident, thinks “no relationship is closer than that with oneself.”

“I think for many people, the most important is that you should really love yourself, fully accept yourself and accept your own vulnerability and shortcomings,” Yi said. “I think these are the most important aspects of love for oneself.”

Brussels: Choosing to keep talking

“What we do,” said Joel Stimpfig, 18, who visited Paris from Madrid, “is that we always have good communication and when we’re having a bad day, we always have a little moment to talk and discuss the relationship.”

Anke Verbeek, 40, and Jari Jacobs, 39, from Brussels, Belgium, “have difficult jobs.”

“She works late. I work early,” said Verbeek. “So communication is key for being together, for doing things together and keep the relationship alive.”

Brazil: Fighting to stand up a healthy family

FILE – A man walks holding flowers and balloons on Valentine’s Day, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

Rafael Almeida thinks love has to do with solid planning for the future.

“We have already married, and to have children was our big dream together, and we are planning to expand our family,” he said in Rome, on a visit from his home in Brazil.. “We are planning and fighting for that.”

But love is also the daily practice of showing “the respect and admiration we have for each other every day.”

Colorado Springs, Colorado: Making the bed just because it’s that important to her

Erin Smalley wanted the bed made. Her husband, Greg Smalley (Annie’s dad), didn’t see why when he’d just have to climb back under the covers in a few hours. Decades of marriage, several children and co-hosting a podcast did little to resolve this ongoing dispute. Until, that is, Greg watched Erin hobble around with a recent foot injury as she made the bed herself.

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Erin explained, “But I really like our bed made. It makes me feel good.”

“I finally got it,” Greg Smalley, a vice president at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based Christian nonprofit, wrote in his email. “I realized that this was an opportunity to sacrifice a little bit of my time in the morning for my wife.”

These days, he says, he makes the bed every day.

Contributing to this story were AP journalists Zheng Liu and Wayne Zhang in Beijing, Trisha Thomas and Silvia Stellacci in Rome, Alex Turnbull in Paris and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas.