The Gopher women’s basketball team announced Monday morning that junior guard Tori McKinney suffered a knee injury in practice last weekend and will miss the entire 2026-27 season. It’s a huge blow to Minnesota’s chances at returning to the NCAA Sweet 16 for the second season in a row. McKinney was a huge player in last season’s postseason run, and was expected to step up and take another level this season.
McKinney was coming off of a summer where she saw action with the US U23 3×3 team that won
the World Cup in Wuhan, China in September. McKinney was named the MVP of the Tournament and was a star for the US team on both the offensive and defensive end of the floor.
Last season for the Gophers she led the offense, averaging a team-high 12.7 points per game and finishing the season with 369 points, the third-highest total on the team. She set Minnesota’s single-season assist/turnover ratio record at 2.20 (75 assists/34 turnovers) and was named All-Big Tn Second Team and to the All-Big Ten Defensive Team.
McKinney’s loss opens up a spot in the Gophers starting lineup and creates more competition for depth roles. Minnesota was allready expecting to have a pair of freshmen in Tori Oehrliein and Natalie Kussow play large roles this season, but now the opportunity is there for one of them, or one of the returning depth players in either junior Makena Christian or Kennedy Klick to have a breakout role.
Unfortunately for the Gophers, they have not been foreign to having key players hurt and needing players to step up earlier than expected. In 2024-25 when Mara Braun missed a majority of the season with her foot injury, it was a freshman McKinney who stepped into a larger role than expected. She unfortunately had a role model to model her rehab and her ability to be “another coach” on the bench as she recovers just as Braun did two seasons ago.
McKinney talked about how Braun handled that situation on the Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm from Big Ten Media Days just two weeks ago. “How she celebrates others and her leadership with that. I saw it from my freshman year when she did get hurt and she was the first person that was talking to me when I had to step in and start starting—and I was super stressed out, and I was like, Oh Wait, Mara’s here, I’m going to be fine. And she was genuinely supporting all of us even through she was probably struggling the most out of us because she wasn’t able to play. And she’s now translated that to the court now that she’s back and you can still see that leadership and support she shows to everyone.”
McKinney will miss her last chance to play with Braun as it will be Mara’s final year of eligibility. McKinney will have two years left when she returns for the 2027-28 season.
We will have more on the McKinney injury and how the Gophers will try and adjust in our season preview coming out prior to the November 2nd start of the season against Harvard at The Barn.
