The Gophers men’s basketball team is much improved this season, and that trajectory can remain upward if the U roster stays mostly intact for next year.

Continuity in college sports now comes with big contingencies, primarily the NCAA transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation.

Head coach Ben Johnson is hopeful his current roster won’t have a major makeover for a fourth straight offseason.

But first, the Gophers (18-11, 9-9 Big Ten) will play its penultimate conference game against Indiana (16-13, 8-10) at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Williams Arena.

The regular-season finale against Northwestern comes Saturday night, followed by the Big Ten Tournament at Target Center next week and an increasingly likely NIT Tournament berth after that. Then Johnson will conduct season-ending meetings with players.

“Guys have different decisions they have to make,” Johnson said Tuesday. “I’m hoping. I think this is a really good group. I think it’s a fun group. I think it’s a group, again, still with an offseason can get better and be more consistent and has a chance to really be improved next year.”

The Gophers’ Senior Day last year included the surprise addition of Jamison Battle, who ended up transferring to Ohio State.

This year’s Senior Day, however, didn’t have any shocks.

Spark-plug forward Parker Fox participated in the Senior Day festivities surrounding the 75-70 win over Penn State at Williams Arena. The sixth-year forward does have one more year of eligibility left, but it doesn’t appear he will use it.

Other than that, the Gophers rotation could remain intact for 2024-25 season. Johnson said there have been positive signs about their level of buy-in to finish the season strong.

“All that stuff will probably come to a head at the end of the year, but I give a lot of our guys credit,” the coach said. “They have been so focused on just the task at hand. We haven’t had any distractions. That is hard to have in today’s day and age, but we’ve had great practices because everybody is in it.

“We haven’t had a guy that’s been moody or been a pain or been pouting,” Johnson continued. “Everybody has truly been engaged, and I think they are really focused on making sure we finish the season the right way.”

Two of the Gophers’ best players — Dawson Garcia and Elijah Hawkins — were noncommittal about their futures on Tuesday.

“Naw, truthfully I haven’t” made a decision, Garcia said. “I’ve just been focused on the season. I do have an extra year left of eligibility, so it’s definitely a possibility that I could use that. It’s really going to be a decision. I will make it quick in the spring because whatever I want to do, I want to be fully committed.”

“Same,” Hawkins added. “Just trying to focus on the rest of the season. That will take place when it’s time.”

No more games at The Barn

If the Gophers advance to the NIT tournament, they will go on the road. The U said that’s because the boys basketball state tournament has been moved to Williams Arena with the Big Ten tournament taking over Target Center the next two weeks.

The NIT first-round games are March 19-20 and second-round matchups are March 23-24.

Briefly

Braeden Carrington (concussion) has been progressing through the protocol, Johnson said Tuesday. The guard missed the Penn State game with his injury. … Gophers guards had a poor showing night in the 74-62 loss at Indiana on Jan. 12. Hawkins, Mike Mitchell and Cam Christie combined to shoot 4 of 28 from the field.

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In 2006-07, the Minnesota Wild finished the regular season on a 12-1-1 run to secure the Western Conference’s seventh and penultimate playoff spot. That’s a heck of a run, 25 of 28 total possible points.

It also helped that the Wild started the season winners of 10 of their first 12 games, earning them 20 points by Nov. 2. You can do the math on what happened in between.

The point is, it matters how a team starts a season. As Wild coach John Hynes said back on Feb. 23, “It helps when you can put points in the bank early,” a roundabout way of pointing out that the Wild didn’t — 5-10-4 when he was hired to replace Dean Evason on Nov. 28.

Some holes are too deep to climb out of, especially for a team that started the season with little margin for error or injury, a roster dominated by long-term contracts and $14.7 million worth of dead salary cap space, part of the penalty for buying out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.

The Wild begin a two-game, back-to-back road trip on Thursday in Arizona at least eight points out of the eighth and final playoff position in the West. It’s not officially over, but with the NHL trade deadline here on Friday afternoon, Bill Guerin has little choice but to work ahead on a 2024-24 team that will hold many of the same challenges as this one (such as that $14.7 million in dead space).

To get any major lifting done this week, the general manager will have to get creative. The Wild have a few veterans due for unrestricted free agency at season’s end — the typical asset that gets swapped for draft picks or prospects this time of year — but injuries and no-trade clauses have limited that already shallow well.

Pat Maroon, a veteran wing who will be a UFA at season’s end, has won three Stanley Cups but is rehabbing from back surgery. Marc-Andre Fleury, another pending UFA with three Stanley Cup wins, is unlikely to waive his no-trade to spend the final months of what might be his last NHL season with a new team.

Veteran defenseman Zach Bogosian is the Wild’s best pending UFA asset, but the Wild are interested in extending his contract. A Stanley Cup winger acquired from Tampa Bay for a seventh-round draft pick on Nov. 8, he has helped prop up a shaky blue line that got only 16 games from Jared Spurgeon this season. Only 33, he lives here in the offseason, and Guerin has shown a willingness to wrap up reliable veterans for the right terms.

That leaves go-go winger Brandon Duhaime and Maroon as the pending UFAs likely to go. Duhaime has been a reliable checker all season. He plays hard and can skate, but he isn’t a reliable points-getter — four goals and eight points in 62 games. He could help a better team. So could Maroon if he’s healthy.

Maroon, 35, has been productive for stretches while playing up and down the lineup and is a big body who doesn’t mind a scrap. And while he remains on injured reserve, the Wild traded from Gustav Nyquist last season when he was on IR with a shoulder injury in Columbus. Nyquist played in only three regular-season games for Minnesota but had a goal and four assists, and he has been a good player this season for Nashville this season, 16-35–51 in 61 games.

The Wild would probably send highly skilled Marcus Johansson elsewhere in a heartbeat, but he has a no-trade clause on a two-year deal that expires after next season. And even if he were open to waiving it, he’s hurt, injured early in last Saturday’s 3-1 loss at St. Louis.

Connor Dewar has been a reliable fourth-line center all season, and has a career-high nine goals in 56 games. He’ll be a restricted free agent next season looking for a raise on his $800,000 salary. The Wild might be able to swap him for a decent draft pick, but he has been loads better than any minor league forward the Wild have recalled this season.

Guerin has proven himself a savvy trader. He got Brock Faber and a first-round pick for Kevin Fiala in July 2023. This season, he bailed on Calen Addison (one goal, minus-18 for Los Angeles) for a prospect and a draft pick, and got two useful players by sending seventh-round picks to Tampa Bay for Bogosian and Maroon.

The problem, of course, is the myriad no-movement and no-trade clauses that make players such as Johansson, Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman and Freddy Gaudreau, players that could help postseason teams and fetch good returns, all but unmovable. All can help Minnesota next season, but all but Zuccarello need to be better.

Could Guerin, deep into talks with other suitors, somehow swing a surprising deal that includes one of those players? Yeah. Unlikely, but yeah. Could he trade Filip Gustavsson and re-sign Marc-Andre Fleury, still effective at 39, for another year to tutor Jesper Wallstedt? It’s a risk, but maybe.

It’s not shaping up as an exciting trade deadline for the Wild, but Guerin has shown he’ll take a risk — such as buying out Parise and Suter — if he thinks it will make the team immediately better.

Briefly

The Wild waived forwards Vinni Lettieri and Jake Lucchini on Tuesday, perhaps a signal the team expects prospect Marat Khusnutdinov to arrive this week. The center signed a two-year, two-way contract on Feb. 28.

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Best known for highly stylized action-comedy movies, English filmmaker Guy Ritchie hasn’t exactly stepped out of his comfort zone for a foray into television with “The Gentlemen,” a fairly entertaining eight-part hourlong action-comedy series debuting on Netflix this week.

It’s inspired by his similarly enjoyable 2019 film of the same name in which expensive-suit refinement meets drug-trade violence.

(This would seem to be similar to the move Ritchie made as a producer with 2000’s “Lock, Stock…,” a seven-part series coming two years after his feature directorial debut, “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.”)

Hey, sometimes it’s best to stick with what you know.

First, know that you need not have seen the big-screen ‘Gentlemen’ to sip, sophisticatedly, on its small-screen cousin. Although press materials for the series state it “is set in the world of ‘The Gentlemen’ film,” we get not so much as a quip about Mickey Pearson, the drug kingpin played by Matthew McConaughey in the film.

In this streaming offering, it is Ray Winstone’s Bobby Glass who oversees a cannabis empire built on high-yielding weed labs existing underneath English country estates. One such estate is Halstead Manor, home to the Horniman family.

In the series’ opening minutes, as the Duke of Halstead (Edward Fox) nears death, his problem-solving son Eddie (Theo James) is called home from duty with the British Army to be with the family. Father then instructs son to watch out for his brother, Freddy (Daniel Ings).

“He won’t survive without you.”

We soon get a sense of why that may be true when the now-deceased duke’s will is read, with older brother Freddy not receiving the windfall he anticipates, the estate instead being handed to Eddie. First suggesting there may have been some understandable Eddie-Freddy confusion, Freddy goes ballistic.

And so now we have an important dynamic: Freddy being the Fredo Corleone to Eddie’s Michael — at least if Fredo were prone to going on cocaine binges and racking up huge debts to dangerous men such as Tommy Dixon (Peter Serafinowicz), a member of powerful drug family.

As Eddie tries to plot a course of action that will free Freddy, he also gets close to Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), the daughter of the imprisoned Bobby and the runner of his business’ day-to-day activities.

Kaya Scodelario’s Susie Glass speaks with her father, Ray Winstone’s Bobby Glass, who’s spending time in a pretty comfortable prison, in a scene from “The Gentlemen.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

After learning of the deal his father had made with Glass, which helps to explain how the family has managed to maintain its quite comfy lifestyle, Eddie wants to end the partnership. However, he knows this cannot be done immediately, and he agrees to help Susie with various business-related matters for the time being. The measured-and-steady type, he shows a real affinity for this work, even if he’s hampered by his inexperience at the onset.

Susie, in turn, helps him with his Freddy trouble, which, predictably, goes from simmer to boil at the climax of the first episode. It isn’t easy to rattle her, but she may have a weakness in her pro-boxing brother, Jack (Henry Goodwin).

Among those who may look to exploit such a potential pain point is Stanley Johnson (Giancarlo Esposito), an American with an appreciation for the finer things who affords them with a meth-pedaling organization — a fun nod to Esposito’s great character from “Breaking Bad,” Gus Fring.

At least a tick stronger than its movie counterpart, “The Gentlemen,” is never stronger — or more stylized — than its first two episodes, which see Ritchie making his TV-directing debut. These are highly cinematic installments not matched by the series’ other directors Nima Nourizadeh, Eran Creevy and David Caffrey. (To be fair, your eyes tell you that none of them had the per-budget episode afforded to Ritchie.)

“The Gentlemen” may feel like a film in stretches, but, as written by Ritchie and six others, it certainly dances to the rhythms of a television show, with lower-stakes middle chapters leading toward a climax that brings together several plot threads.

It possesses many pleasant elements, such as colorful side characters including sincere, stoned-out-of-his-mind pot grower Jimmy Chang (Michael Vu) and Halstead Manor gamekeeper Geoff Seacombe (Vinnie Jones), to whom there’s more than initially appears. The inclusion of Jones is a nod to Ritchie’s past, the actor making his movie debut in “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and also appearing in the director’s second film, “Snatch.”

“The Gentlemen” almost certainly would have benefited from a ratcheting up of the sexual tension between Eddie and Susie, a bit more will-they-won’t-they energy. As it stands, their mutual attraction rarely rises above the level of a polite flirtation.

All the same, the talented actors are enjoyable together. James (“Divergent,” “The White Lotus”) is ideal in the lead role, fitting nicely into his character’s pricey menswear but also is believable when Eddie shows the aggression fueled by his inherent determination. And Scodelario (the “Maze Runner” movies) is pretty cool and confident herself as Susie, a strong woman operating in a world of violent men, er, gentlemen.

Kaya Scodelari and Theo James share a scene in “The Gentlemen.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

With episode titles such as “Tackie Tommy Woo Woo,” on-screen translations for certain chunks of dialogue and colorful language that’s oh-so-British, to go along with spurts of violence, “The Gentlemen” is pure Ritchie and will most delight his fans.

For the rest of us, it likely will prove to be as impactful as many, but not all, of his films — a flashy but ultimately flimsy distraction you’ve all but forgotten in a week or so.

‘The Gentlemen’

What: Eight-episode debut season of hourlong series.

Where: Netflix.

When: All episodes available March 7.

Rated: TV-MA.

Stars (of four): 2.5.

Nolan Roed’s foray into the United States Hockey League in the fall was an eye opener. The White Bear Lake senior played 16 games with the Tri City Storm, posting six goals and seven assists.

But don’t correlate statistical success with an easy transition.

“It’s the hardest hockey jump I’ve ever had to do in my career,” Roed said. “I’ve talked to a lot of other guys and they’re like, ‘High school to USHL is the hardest one.’”

He didn’t recognize it as the same game. It was far less about finesse and skill and far more about grit and toughness. If you couldn’t be physical, you couldn’t succeed.

“It’s a lot harder, it’s a lot more tight battles, you have to win every battle,” Roed said. “And, when you do score, it’s usually not a pretty goal.”

Which, frankly, suits Roed well. He’s not afraid to mix it up in a contest to see who can control the puck.

“He’s not like a flashy, toe drag (goal scorer).” Bears coach Chris Anderson said. “He just makes very sound plays, and he knows how to finish. And I think, at the end of the day, he plays a very hard game. He wins battles. He plays a very hard game in a sense that he’s not running into guys, but he wins battles, and that’s just something that’s really hard to coach.”

Or replicate. After his time with Tri City, Roed returned to White Bear Lake with the same physical mindset and translated it beautifully back to the high school game.

“People are looking for the pretty play, and I take pride in getting into the dirty areas to score goals,” Roed said. “A lot of guys in high school maybe still think it’s going to be a lot of skilled plays, but it’s really not. I think me playing a more pro-style game really helped me produce.”

The result has been a 33-goal, 24-assist season, and counting. Because Roed, a Mr. Hockey finalist and St. Cloud State commit, has the Bears back in the Class 2A state tournament for the first time since 2019. Fourth-seeded White Bear Lake will meet fifth-seeded Grand Rapids in the quarterfinal round at 8 p.m. Tuesday in St. Paul.

“I take a lot of pride (in getting the team back to state),” the center said. “One of the reasons for coming back (for my senior year), I feel like my career wasn’t filled, because I didn’t get to take the trip to the X. So being able to come back and do that with my buddies is something I’ve always dreamt of.”

White Bear Lake forward Nolan Roed skates to the bench during the third period of a high school hockey game against Hill-Murray at Aldrich Arena in Maplewood, Friday, March 1, 2024. White Bear Lake won 3-0. (Craig Lassig / Special to the Pioneer Press)

He certainly led the charge. White Bear Lake graduated a strong senior class a year ago. Many of those players are now playing in the North American Hockey League or the USHL. The Bears also experienced a number of injuries during the season. For instance, junior forward Jack Stanius, the top winger on Roed’s line, missed much of the season before returning just in time for the sectional tournament.

Many of the players who logged significant ice time for the Bears this season, while talented, didn’t enter the winter with much varsity experience.

“So Nolan has kind of had to take on some more of a workload in that sense,” Anderson said.

Much of that workload, Roed said, came in the form of leadership. His line was shuffling every week as White Bear Lake tried different combinations to succeed while down critical pieces.

He was trying to aid different players in the transition to becoming pivotal varsity players.

“I think that really helped my leadership skills. Because guys maybe thought, ‘Dang, we lost Stanius, how are we going to do this?’ ” Roed said. “Just telling guys that everything is going to be fine, and you’ve just got to buy in. It doesn’t matter who’s on the ice, you’ve just got to play the right way.”

He was a shining example of that.

Anderson noted there are a number of A-level players with C-level work ethics, and vice versa. Roed, he said, is “the total package.”

“Nolan plays the game the right way, plays very hard, and he’s a great leader on and off the ice. He’s a good friend to a lot of guys,” Anderson said. “So he’s just been the type of hockey player that a coach wants and wants to be able to have on his team and leverage as a leader … just because of the way he plays. It’s hard to describe. He does things the right way. I don’t even need to talk to him very much. We just look at each other and he knows and I know.”

And when the rest of the Bears see the team’s best player grinding away in the tough areas, they’re likely to follow suit.

Roed’s increased goal total this season could perhaps be linked to just greater responsibility to score. But he feels it was a natural progression in his game.

Roed, whose brother, Lleyton, is currently Bemidji State’s top scorer as a sophomore, has always had physicality to his game and a stride to quickly create space and bust into open areas. But he believes he’s seeing the game better now than ever before. That was evident during White Bear Lake’s late-season road victory over Cretin-Derham Hall, during which the center tallied five points on four goals and an assist.

Two of those goals, he said, came on breakaways he created by reading the Raiders’ offense and anticipating a turnover. Anderson recalled the final score came on an empty-netter after Roed won a battle in the Bears’ end to obtain the puck.

“That game epitomizes who he is,” Anderson said. “He’s a special kid.”

Finalists

Jimmy Dodig, junior defenseman, Cretin-Derham Hall: Merrimack commit has 22 points from the blue line of the state-bound Raiders, who have allowed two goals or fewer in 21 of their 28 games to date.

Leo Gabriel, junior goalie, White Bear Lake: The Bears believe that, with Gabriel in the net, they have a shot against anyone in the state. “I think everybody in the state and on our team knows that,” Roed said.

Aiden Grossklaus, junior forward, Woodbury: Minnesota State Mankato commit potted 27 goals this season to go with 18 assists.

Harper Searles, senior forward, Centennial: Searles has 24 goals and a gaudy 41 assists. His 65 points pace the Cougars, who enter the Class 2A tournament as the No. 3 seed.

Zach Wooten, senior forward, Eastview: Maine commit had 18 goals and 32 assists while guiding the Lightning to the top seed in Class 2A, Section 3.

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