There are better days ahead for the Gophers women’s basketball team even if it might not seem like it right now. The program seemed to be on an upward trajectory a month and a half ago. Frankly, a trip to the NCAA Tournament didn’t seem out of the question.

Then sophomore guard Mara Braun suffered a foot injury and everything felt apart.

The loss of their best player proved to be insurmountable for the Gophers. They only won twice in the past month and a half without Braun in the lineup. She watched helplessly from the bench on Thursday night at Target Center as No. 11 seed Minnesota bowed out of the Big Ten Tournament with a 76-57 loss to No. 6 seed Michigan.

For the second straight game in the Big Ten Tournament, sophomore guard Amaya Battle led the Gophers in scoring. She finished with 22 points in the game, shooting 7 of 15 from the field, and 7 of 8 from the free throw line.

That wasn’t nearly enough to compete with a balanced attack from Michigan, which featured junior guard Laila Phelia pouring in 23 points to lead the way, and grad transfer guard Lauren Hansen adding 14 points of her own. The game itself wasn’t much of a contest after Michigan went on a 10-0 run in the early stages to build a comfortable cushion.

Though the Gophers chipped away as much as they could throughout the game, they simply couldn’t string together enough stops to make things interesting. The dominance was best exemplified down low as Michigan finished with 36 points in the paint.

Meanwhile, Battle had a little more trouble scoring against Michigan after dropping a career-high 32 points against No. 14 seed Rutgers about 24 hours earlier. Not that it deterred her from making noise. She worked hard to get to the rim against solid defense on the perimeter, then found a way to finish against some big bodies in the paint.

It looks like Battle might’ve turned a corner in her development this week. That’s a good sign for the Gophers moving forward. She looked comfortable as the primary ball handler, and perhaps most importantly, she never backed down from a challenge.

Some other silver linings for the Gophers included freshman forward Ayianna Johnson finishing with 12 points, freshman forward Ajok Madol putting up 11 points off the bench, and sophomore forward Mallory Heyer grabbing a career-high 17 rebounds.

As for Braun, she sat on the Gophers bench in stretch clothes living and dying with every possession, wishing she could be out there competing with her teammates.

The good news for the Gophers is that Braun will be back next season. There’s no doubt this season would’ve played out much differently had she never gone down.

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Casey Vandertop entered play Thursday with nine goals all season.

It took the Edina sophomore forward just eight minutes and six seconds to tack three more on to that total.

Vandertop recorded his hat trick as part of a five-goal second period onslaught by the top-seeded Hornets en route to a 6-2 victory over unseeded Elk River/Zimmerman in a Class 2A state quarterfinal matchup at Xcel Energy Center.

“That’s the only multi-goal game I’ve had this year and it’s definitely my quickest hat trick,” Vandertop said. “I was just putting the puck on net and it was going in. I have to credit my linemates for getting me the puck in the right spots.”

Edina jumped out to a 1-0 lead when freshman Freddie Schneider tapped in a loose puck with 13:41 to play in the first period, but that’s where the score remained heading into the first intermission despite the Hornets holding a 10-3 edge in shots-on-goal.

“We knew how Elk River was going to play,” said Hornets coach Curt Giles, whose team beat the Elks 4-0 on Dec. 15. “We saw them earlier in the year and they’re very, very solid defensively. They try and shut you down as much as they possibly can. We talked about it before the game. We knew what kind of game it was going to be.

“The key to the whole thing was not getting frustrated. Just continue to play. Continue to do the things you’re supposed to do. Hopefully, good things will happen.”

Which is exactly what began to occur. Vandertop scored his first goal of the game with 11:20 to go in the second period and things began to snowball quickly.

Senior John Halverson added a goal 39 seconds later, followed by a second from Vandertop. Then, after sophomore Mason West expanded his team’s lead to 5-0, Vandertop struck for the third time with 3:14 still remaining in the second.

Suddenly, Edina was on top by six.

“They’re a really good team in the transition game,” Giles said. “What we wanted to do was get the puck down in deep and make them play in their end. It took us awhile to get that going and get that started.”

Elks senior Daniel Babcock finally got his team on the board with 2:11 remaining in the period, then classmate Kole Mears added a goal with 2:08 left in the third to cut the Edina lead to four.

“We had a rough stretch in the second period,” said Elk River/Zimmerman coach Ben Gustafson, whose team was back at the state tournament for the first time since 2005. “Edina’s speed and skill showed through. Give them credit. They made some nice plays.

“But I loved the way our kids competed in the third period. We challenged our kids after the second period to try to go out there and win the third, which they did.”

The Hornets (24-4-1) advance to play in the semifinals at 8 p.m. Friday at Xcel Energy Center. The Elks (18-10-1) will play in the consolation semifinals at 1 p.m. Friday at Aldrich Arena in Maplewood.

“We’re focused on what we can do better and putting three solid periods together,” Edina senior Barrett Dexheimer said. “If we do that, we have a really good shot at what we want to accomplish this year.

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Surely, he was running on springs.

Jumping on a trampoline.

Shot out of a cannon.

Something supernatural took place as Anthony Edwards took off in the final second Thursday in Indiana. Because there’s no logical explanation for a player leaping as high as the 22-year-old guard did — figuratively touching the heavens and literally slamming his head off the side of the rim — as he soared to reject Aaron NeSmith’s game-tying layup attempt at the rim to save Minnesota’s 113-111 road victory over the Pacers.

“I saw him at the lane, I knew he was going for the layup. I was like, ‘Man, I’m finna go get this,” Edwards said in his postgame, on-court television interview. “I ain’t ever jumped that high in my life.”

It was Superman lifting a building. Spiderman climbing a wall. Doctor Strange Teleporting.

Anthony Edwards saving the Timberwolves’ season.

No, one victory doesn’t define or salvage a campaign. But Minnesota was in need of a lift Thursday, or some type of reassurance that everything could possibly be alright. The news of Karl-Anthony Towns’ meniscus tear and impending surgery, that will keep him out of the lineup for at least a month, was enough to make everyone question whether this team’s goals, which stretch as high as a championship, are no longer attainable.

But Edwards provided another reminder Thursday that, when he is locked in and at the peak of his powers, he can lift Minnesota to unimaginable heights, almost on his own.

He scored nine of Minnesota’s 11 points in the final five minutes of the contest. Indiana continuously struck back on the other end, but Edwards found an answer time and time again. He scored 13 points in the third and 16 in the fourth while making Andrew Nembhard, Indiana’s best defender, look like a mere bug on his windshield.

“I found my second win in the fourth,” Edwards said. “And, once I found my second wind, I knew there was nobody that could stop me.”

In total, Edwards finished with 44 points in a game that was reminiscent of the performances he has delivered in so many other high-profile contests in the past, whether those be against some of the league’s top teams or in the playoffs themselves.

Indiana is not a top-tier foe. The Pacers are destined to be a play-in team in the Eastern Conference. But Timberwolves coach Chris Finch has always said Edwards has a feel for the moment.

And, in Thursday’s moment, Minnesota desperately needed a pick-me-up. The Wolves — and, perhaps more specifically, their fans — needed a reason to believe again, after their hopes and dreams were seemingly smashed just 12 hours earlier.

So of course Edwards stepped up to the plate. Superheroes have always been the ultimate sign of hope.

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