Minnesota Basketball: Three Keys to beating Wisconsin and extending the winning streak

Where

Madison

When

3:30 PM

How

BTN

Who

Wisconsin

The Gophers have gone on a very surprising 2-game win streak with wins over Iowa and Michigan State. Now they head on the road and will face the Badgers. Can the come away with another significant win?

KEYS TO A GOPHER WIN

Get to the Free Throw Line - This is a strength of ours and probably the single most important thing we can do to win this game. Do what we do best. Get to the line, make our free throws and put some of the Badger players in foul trouble. Scoring efficiently on Wisconsin is not easy, getting a lot of points from the charity stripe will help.

Offensive Rebounds - Getting extra possessions/shots by offensive rebounds will help tremendously. I’m a little surprised that our long-armed, athletic wings haven’t translated into more offensive rebounds. But getting more than Wisconsin today would be significant.

Keep their guards in check - Not letting Brad Davison or D’Mitrik Trice have a really big day scoring will make a difference. If one of those guys has a 25 point game, it will be hard to overcome.

PREDICTION

I like how this Gopher team is starting to gel and play together. We are improving, incrementally, on both ends of the floor. But Wisconsin is an experienced team that is quite good this year. They did just lose to Maryland at home, but I’d be really surprised to see them lose back-to-back games at the Kohl Center.

If we do our thing and happen to shoot well this afternoon, we can beat anybody. As an official prediction, I’ll go with Wisconsin today.

Minnesota - 68
Wisconsin - 73