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The Minnesota Golden Gophers took care of business in beating up of a very overmatched opponent on Wednesday night. For their last game before a ten day finals break, the Gopher women beat up on Coppin State 84-52 in a game that honestly wasn’t even that close. Minnesota gave ample time to its entire bench and sat its stars for a majority of the second half as the Gophers cruised to a 10-0 start to the season.
Minnesota took a 29-19 lead after the first quarter. It was the most points they had scored in a quarter all season, buoyed by a 70.6 % shooting percentage in the first quarter. Where the Gopher defense was a bit porous in the first quarter, that changed in the second as the Gophers held Coppin State to just seven points on 2-15 shooting. The Gophers kept scoring adding 21 points of their own to take a 50-26 lead at the break—the most points Minnesota had scored in a half this season.
The second half was more of the same with Minnesota getting plenty of action from their reserves. The Eagles put up no fight as the Gophers easily cruised to the 84-52 win.
The Gopher bench had some career games. Junior Kehinde Bello scored eight points in 14:30 of time on the court and freshman Delaynie Byrne scored six points in 15:48 on the floor—both career highs. Every healthy player on the roster played at least 11 eleven minutes and scored at least two points.
The leading scorers for the Gophers were the usual suspects. Kenisha Bell led all scorers with 20 points in just 25 minutes. She added five assists and four steals as well. Destiny Pitts continued to play well scoring 14 points. She was 5-6 from the field overall, and 4-5 from behind the three point arc. Taiye Bello recorded her fifth double-double of the season as she scored 13 points and added 11 rebounds as well.
The #13 Gophers now move to 10-0 on the season and still have the third best start in program history behind a 12-0 start in 2002-03 and a 15-0 start in 2003-04. Minnesota will have a strong chance to at least tie that 2002-03 mark after the finals break as they host a fair Rhode Island team in their final non-conference game on December 22 and open the Big Ten season as home on December 28 against Wisconsin.