Minnesota Basketball: Three Keys to getting that elusive road win at Maryland

Where

Maryland

When

6:00 PM

How

FS1

Who

Maryland

OK, OK...we’ve discussed the lack of getting a win on the road since the first road game of the season. And the Gophers not only haven’t earned a win but they haven’t even been competitive, with the exception of Rutgers.

Is today that day we earn a road win? Here’s what it’ll take.

KEYS TO A GOPHER WIN

Find some offense - Maryland’s defense absolutely stymied the Gopher offense in the January home loss. It was the worst offensive performance of the season. Maryland’s length and physicality was too much and the Gophers couldn’t manage to get to 50 points. Some shooting and rhythm on offense has to be found today.

Dictate tempo - Set some tempo, control the pace of the game and do so for 40 minutes. Maryland was in control throughout. In fact, Thursday’s game with Purdue was similar. But in that game we made a late run to take the lead.

Box out - Maryland is really bad at offensive rebounding, but allowed them to have their 2nd highest offensive rebounding percentage in Big Ten games. Keep them to 1 shot, this will go a LONG way towards winning the 2nd key listed above.

PREDICTION

I’ll bury the lede here and say that I cannot pick Minnesota to win a road game until I’ve actually seen them do it.

I think we will play better, I think this game will be close, but I don’t see us getting that first road win today.

Minnesota - 68
Maryland - 71