Gophers are firmly on Big Ten Tournament bubble through first part of conference play

The Gophers men's basketball team struggled on Friday night on the road against Wisconsin, falling 80-59. The 21-point loss was its biggest defeat of a poor 2024-25 season. In this first year of the 18-team Big Ten, a berth in its own conference tournament now even looks like a longshot.

The Big Ten officially added Southern Cal, UCLA, Oregon and Washington for the 2024-25 athletic year, and they're now taking a different approach to the Big Ten conference tournament. The bottom three teams in the standings will not even qualify for the event.

After an 0-5 start to conference play, Minnesota is firmly in last place and 1.5 games out of 15th — the last position that would qualify for the conference tournament.

Big Ten conference standings as of Jan. 11 | Picture via: ESPN

Since the Big Ten conference tournament event began in 1998, the Gophers have the fourth-worst winning percentage out of long-term members — excluding Nebraska, Maryland and Rutgers. The only schools worse are Penn State, Northwestern and Indiana, all of which have also never won the tournament.

Being frustrated at conference realignment and the system that leaves the bottom three teams out of the tournament is one thing, but failing to qualify for your own conference's postseason tournament is a glaring result for any program.

The Gophers have 15 conference games remaining, which is technically 15 opportunities to pull themselves out of last place. After losing their first five conference games by an average margin of 15.0 points per game, they've shown very little evidence of a possible turnaround.

One thing that makes college basketball is unique is every team usually has a chance for a cinderella run in March, but it looks like this Gophers team won't even have an opportunity.

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