Gophers at Northwestern looking for that second road win - OPEN THREAD

Where

Evanston

When

8:00 PM

How

ESPN2

Who

Northwestern

Needing a road win in the most desperate way, the Gophers are at Northwestern facing a Wildcat team in the midst of an 8-game losing streak. YIKES! Can the Gophers pus that to 9 and get a win that they absolutely have to have?

KEYS TO A GOPHER WIN

Contain Vic Law - When Northwestern has really been bad, Vic Law has been too. When he shoots poorly, they don’t just lose, they get killed. It’ll be fun to watch Gabe Kalscheur on him tonight.

No Offensive Lulls - Too many times this team goes into a funk on offense for long stretches. Part of that is due to the fact that they don’t have a scoring guard, part of that is just that they get lazy on offense and partly because this isn’t a great shooting team. But they can’t afford to go up 8 and then not have any offense for the next 7 minutes.

The Game Runs Through Jordan Murphy - Let the big man go to work and dominate the paint. Daniel Oturu will certainly do his thing too, but let’s ride Murphy for the next few weeks and see what happens.

PREDICTION

I just have little confidence in this team on the road. I really like what this team is capable of, but I just haven’t seen it. On the road against the team in the Big Ten that is probably playing the worst basketball in the conference right now, I should be more confident. They are pretty good on defense, suck on offense and will muck this game up into the 50s. I think we get above the 50s...barely.

Minnesota - 60
Northwestern - 61