MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota was confident enough in this women's basketball resurgence that the event calendar for Williams Arena was blocked out months ago for the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
The Gophers hadn't made the tournament since 2018 or hosted since 2005, but the potential of coach Dawn Plitzuweit's team was easy to see for athletic director Mark Coyle before the season. The boys state high school tournament would have to wait
a week for building access.
That belief was rewarded when the Gophers — ranked 18th in the latest Associated Press poll — drew the No. 4 seed in their quartile of the bracket and got a first-round game at home against Green Bay on Friday.
“I think playing in our home arena is going to be a huge advantage, especially since this group hasn’t been to the tournament yet,” junior guard Mara Braun said. “There’s been a buzz around campus for sure, and just around the state.”
Mississippi, which came in 19th in the AP rankings this week, has the No. 5 seed in the "Sacramento 2" region and will face Gonzaga in the earlier game on Friday. The winners will play in the second round on Sunday.
Plitzuweit, who's in her third season at Minnesota, had four NCAA Tournament qualifiers in six years at South Dakota before taking West Virginia to the tournament in 2023 in her lone season there.
With a balanced offense belying a true star, an assist-to-turnover ratio (1.51) that's fourth-best in the nation, and a defense that ranks second in the Big Ten with an average of 57.9 points allowed per game, the Gophers have a down-to-earth identity that's been forged by a head coach who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin.
Plitzuweit pushed the lunch-pail theme so far that she asked the Gophers to make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in brown bags before their film session on Thursday morning.
“They kind of giggled and laughed, like, ‘Are we really doing this?’” Plitzuweit said. “I think it’s important that this team has some fun with the things that they’re doing, so we try to be intentional with that.”
Mississippi star forward Cotie McMahon is familiar with this site, having faced Minnesota in Big Ten play over the previous three years with Ohio State. Averaging a career-best 19.9 points for the transfer-heavy Rebels, McMahon has found the new challenge she was seeking for her final college season with a likely selection in the first round of the WNBA draft waiting next month.
Coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin, who has taken Mississippi to a fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament after reaching the Sweet 16 last year, connected with McMahon during her time in the transfer portal in a genuine manner that solidified the Ohio native's decision to move south.
“She always had my best interest,” McMahon said. “I feel like everything that we’ve talked about and everything that we kind of promised each other is everything that we’re accomplishing, and it’s all just falling into place. I would say it’s everything I expected.”
McPhee-McCuin, who's in her eighth season at Mississippi after five years as the head coach at Jacksonville, was an assistant with Portland in the 2007-08 season when current Gonzaga coach Lisa Fortier was an assistant for the Bulldogs as a West Coast Conference rival. They forged a friendship then that still stands.
“We're moms in coaching,” Fortier said. “I think we love to coach our teams hard and love our players well, and there’s a lot of similarities.”
Plitzuweit has even more familiarity with her opponent. Green Bay coach Kayla Karius served two years as an assistant under her at South Dakota and eventually returned there to replace Plitzuweit when she left for West Virginia in 2022. Karius took over last season at Green Bay for Kevin Borseth, who had Plitzuweit as an assistant under him at Michigan from 2007-12.
“When you’re from the same coaching tree, there’s a lot of philosophies that are the same,” Karius said. “I think we’ve both put our own twists on things as people do and found our own little ways to make it our own, but I think at the core, there’s a lot of similarities within our programs.”
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AP March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
