Men’s basketball: Cold shooting ends Gophers’ season in Crown tournament
· Yahoo Sports
A cold-shooting stretch doomed the Gophers men’s basketball team in the quarterfinals of the College Basketball Crown in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
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Minnesota made 2 of 19 shots across the halves as Baylor ran away with a 67-48 win in the second annual tournament at MGM Grand Garden Arena.
“Unfortunate to go out this way,” head coach Niko Medved said on KFAN postgame show.
The Gophers’ season ended at 15-18, while Baylor (17-16) earned at least $50,000 in name, image and likeness (NIL) money with the win and will play Oklahoma in a semifinal Saturday afternoon.
Baylor’s pair of NBA prospects, Cameron Carr and Tounde Yessoufou, had a quiet first half with a combined 10 points. But they turned it on in the second half.
Yessoufou ended with a game-high 19 points, while Carr, who spent part of his childhood in Eden Prairie, had 15.
On top of the cold shooting stretch over those 17 minutes, Minnesota’s eight turnovers turned into 15 points for Baylor.
“I thought we had a stretch, especially in the second half, where we had a number of good looks and maybe, kind of, had an opportunity to make a run, but unfortunately we just really couldn’t get anything to go,” Medved said on the radio. “Some key turnovers and maybe not sharing the ball kind of the way we typically have all year.”
In the first half, the Gophers endured more than eight minutes without a basket, but didn’t trail by more than nine points as Baylor also was cold, managing only one field goal over a six-minute stretch.
Minnesota cut Baylor’s lead to 31-26 at the half. With 13 points, Cade Tyson helped keep the U in it, but no other teammate had more than four points before halftime.
Baylor went on a 15-1 run to start the second half and put the game away.
The Gophers shot 3 for 23 (13%) from 3-point range in the game.
Tyson, in his final game at the U, finished with 19 points. The senior from Monroe, N.C., ended the year with 628 total points, which placed him third in program history for points in a season. Mychal Thompson (647) remains first and Kris Humphries (629) second, but Tyson is now ahead of Quincy Lewis (625).
“Such a blessing to coach him,” Medved said of Tyson.
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