The Gophers men’s basketball team shrugged off another bad-luck injury to add the latest chapter to its feel-good story on Saturday.

A day after starting forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson was ruled out indefinitely with a foot injury — Minnesota’s third starter to go down this season — the U blew out Rutgers 80-61 at Williams Arena.

The Gophers’ (13-14, 6-10 Big Ten) hot shooting led to their second-straight victory and stopped Rutgers’ (11-16, 4-12) run of two wins in a row.

Minnesota was 60% from the field and 58% from 3-point range. It was the first time the U shot that percentage from the field since February 2024 and the U’s 15 made threes Saturday were the most in a Big Ten game this season.

When head coach Niko Medved was hired last March, he put out a mandate to add outside shooting and he checked that box with transfer portal additions Cade Tyson and Bobby Durkin.

Tyson scored a game-high 27 points on 7 of 9 from deep. Dukin added 12 on 4 of 7 from behind the arc.

When Durkin made three treys in a row in the second half Saturday, fans at The Barn chanted “Bob-by!”

Langston Reynolds added 19 points and nine assists and provided good defense on Scarlet Knights leading scorer Tariq Francis, who was held six points below his scoring average. He had 10 points on 4 of 12 shooting.

On Friday, head coach Niko Medved said Crocker-Johnson will likely miss the rest of the season after pain became too severe in his injured foot. The U’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer had missed the two previous games, a 69-57 loss to Washington last weekend and a 61-44 win over Oregon on Tuesday.

Without Crocker-Johnson, Minnesota’s rotation stayed at six total players, with five playing more than 3x minutes.

Saturday’s 11 a.m. tipoff led to a groggy start for both teams at The Barn; Minnesota missed its opening five shots, while Rutgers began 2 for 9 from the field.

Coming out of the under-16-minute timeout, Minnesota put together a 9-0 run over next three minutes to take an 11-6 lead.

Minnesota surged late in the half taking a 36-23 lead at the break. Cade Tyson and Isaac Asuma each hit threes in the last minute of the half.

The threes would keep falling in the second half.

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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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The bars and eateries lining West Seventh Street are generally thought of as places to go before and after hockey games, and not often listed among the highly-regarded breakfast establishments in the Capital City.

For one day anyway, with Olympic gold on the line, that’s going to change.

Team USA faces off versus their neighborhood rivals from north of the 49th parallel at 7:10 a.m. Minnesota time on Sunday morning, with the Americans seeking their first Olympic title since the famed Miracle On Ice in 1980. And with three Minnesota Wild players wearing red, white and blue, along with several more from the State of Hockey on the team, bars and restaurants throughout the region will be making adjustments to accommodate the fans.

“We’re going to be open at 6:30 in the morning,” said Tom Reid, the Wild broadcaster and namesake of his Hockey City Pub, located two blocks from Grand Casino Arena.

They normally open at 11 a.m. on Sunday, but with Team USA playing for gold for the first time in 16 years, exceptions are being made.

“We’ll have breakfast sandwiches and our full menu as well,” Reid said.

Although if you want a screwdriver or an oatmeal stout, you will have to wait until the first intermission. Per Minnesota state law, beer, wine and liquor may not be served at on-sale establishments until 8 a.m. on Sunday. At least one area restaurant manager thinks a one-day, one-hour exception is in order.

“We should definitely have that. How many times is the U.S. playing Canada for the gold medal? This is bigger than the Stanley Cup,” said Julia Flaherty, manager of Joseph’s Grill on Plato, across the river from downtown St. Paul. They will open at their normal time for a Sunday, 7 a.m., and have been experiencing big crowds for all of the Olympic men’s and women’s games so far.

An email to Governor Walz’s communications office regarding the idea of an earlier liquor serving time on Sunday was not immediately returned.

A few miles to the south in Inver Grove Heights, the folks at B-52 Burgers & Brew experimented with early openings on Sunday for the Minnesota Vikings games played in Europe in September and got good crowds. On Friday night when they announced their 7 a.m. Sunday opening for the hockey game, manager Michael Pitsiladis said the Facebook post got more than 400 likes almost immediately.

“We do brunch every Saturday and Sunday, we’re just starting it earlier,” he said, noting that the huge response on social media caused them to ramp up their staffing. “We were planning on opening with just one server and one bartender, but now we’re having a full crew on hand.”

And from the sounds of things, they will be busy early, even if they’re just serving coffee and orange juice for the first hour.

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MILAN, Italy — Dylan Larkin has been thinking about the United States facing Canada for gold at the Olympics for a year. All the dreams he had as a kid crystalized after he and his teammates lost to their rival in the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off.

MILAN, ITALY – FEBRUARY 20: Jack Eichel #9 of Team United States celebrates after scoring a goal in the second period during the Men’s Semifinals Playoff match between the United States and Slovakia on day fourteen of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on February 20, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

“I’ve thought about it so much,” Larkin said. “It’s what everyone wanted, this matchup in a gold-medal game. Yeah, I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Those thoughts become reality Sunday when the North American countries that have become the pre-eminent global hockey powerhouses face off in a titanic final of a best-vs.-best tournament with many of the NHL’s biggest stars. The U.S. against Canada on the biggest stage in sports should be hard-hitting, quick-skating, must-see entertainment.

“It’s gonna be a big-boy game,” Canada’s Tom Wilson said. “It’s going to be as fast and physical and skilled as you can ever imagine. Right now it’s the two big countries for hockey in the world. Every single guy is going to be doing everything they can at every single moment.”

Canada and the U.S. entered the tournament as the favorites and played like it. Each team went undefeated, winning all five games, with the U.S. outscoring opponents 24-8 and outshooting them 201-124 and Canada 27-8 and 202-106.

“It’s two of probably the best teams ever, maybe,” U.S. winger Matthew Tkachuk said. “We’ve got a lot of respect for the players over there and what they’ve done in the past, and we want to be the team that comes out on top.”

There were some scares and nervous moments along the way: Canada needed late tying goals to get past Czechia in overtime in the quarterfinals and Finland in the semifinals, while the U.S. also gave up the lead late against Sweden before winning in OT.

Unlike the preliminary round, the U.S. and Canada have each been tested facing elimination.

“It hasn’t been the smoothest quarters and semis for us,” said Canada’s Connor McDavid, the leading scorer at the Olympics with an NHL player-record 13 points. “But I think that adversity is good. Going through that has brought us closer. You can definitely feel that in the group, it’s been been fun to play in those games.”

In the last two Olympics the NHL participated in, Canada took home gold. In 2014, the team never trailed. In 2010, Sidney Crosby scored in overtime to defeat the U.S. and win on home ice.

Canada has won three of the five Games with NHL players to give it a record nine gold medals. Hockey was born in Canada, and the expectation is always to be the best in the world at it.

“You always feel that responsibility as a Canadian,” Wilson said. “We want to be the best. It’s been our game for a long time. The guys that are pulling the jersey on, it’s our responsibility to go out there and try and prove why we’re the best and why we should be the best. And continue to be the best.”

Arguably the best Canadian Olympian in history, Crosby, may not play because of an injury that knocked him out of the quarterfinals. Coach Jon Cooper did not show his hand over whether Crosby will be available.

“Obviously we’d love to have him,” Cooper said.

The last American men’s hockey gold medal at the Olympics was 46 years ago in Lake Placid, N.Y. The 1980 team of college players pulled off the “Miracle on Ice,” beating the heavily favored Soviet Union on the way to authoring one of the most talked-about underdog stories in sports history.

None of the players on this U.S. team were alive to see it; coach Mike Sullivan was about to turn 12. The reverence for that team remains as the current generation of players seek to join the likes of Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig in U.S. hockey lore.

“It’s unbelievable,” said forward Brock Nelson, whose uncle Dave Christian was on the 1980 team. “It’s exciting. The adrenaline, the chills, everything. This is kind of what you dream about as a kid and why you want to play the game.”

Eruzione captained the U.S. in 1980 and visited with players at the 4 Nations last year in Montreal. Auston Matthews, the U.S. team captain, said Eruzione’s best advice was, “Just leave it all out there.”

“This is what you play for,” Matthews said. “This is what you came here for: to have this opportunity and put ourselves in this position. We just got to go out there and leave it all on the ice.”

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