Pressure for Ben Johnson to make changes amid slow starts, bad finishes

Pharrel Payne, Cam Christie and Mike Mitchell have played big minutes off the bench.

What's hurting the Gophers men's basketball team more, slow starts or awful finishes? 

At 5-3, Minnesota has beaten the cupcakes on the schedule while losing to Missouri, San Francisco and Ohio State, three teams that are all likely to be in the NCAA tournament conversation when March and April roll around. 

Against Missouri and San Francisco, the Gophers were putrid in crunch time. Minnesota led for all but 9.9 seconds against Missouri and they blew a 20-point lead with 11:25 to go as the Tigers closed the game on a 31-9 run. Against San Francisco, the Gophers were down 47-46 with 13:07 to go when the Dons took control and built a 17-point lead with under three minutes remaining. 

In Sunday's loss to Ohio State, it was a slow start that killed the Gophers as the Buckeyes jumped out to a 30-12 lead. Minnesota trimmed the deficit to six points a couple of times late in the game, but they never came all the way back and lost by ten. 

Asked multiple times this week about making adjustments to the starting lineup, head coach Ben Johnson has simply said he's analyzing the situation on a game-by-game basis. 

"Do we need to have a different lineup? Not that anybody in there was doing anything necessarily bad, it's just sometimes a different lineup or change, do you need to get more ball-handling? Do you need to get more guards in there? Do you need to be bigger? Yeah, you definitely look at all of that," Johnson said Tuesday on his weekly radio show on KFAN-FM 100.3. 

Minnesota's starters have remained the same with Elijah Hawkins, Braedon Carrington, Isiah Ihnen, Josh Ola-Joseph and Dawson Garcia. Against Ohio State, Garcia dominated with 36 points and 11 rebounds but the rest of the starters combined for 17 points, with Carrington and Ihnen both going scoreless. 

• Elijah Hawkins: 10 point, 5 rebounds, 3 steals
• Braeden Carrington: 0 points, 1 rebound, 1 assist in 12 minutes
• Dawson Garcia: 36 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists
• Isaiah Ihnen: 0 of everything except for 3 fouls in 7 minutes
• Josh Ola-Joseph: 7 points, 4 rebounds in 20 minutes

The loss to San Francisco was similar as Garcia led the way with 19 points while Ihnen and Carrington went scoreless and Ola-Joseph and Hawkins had four points apiece. 

Meanwhile, Pharrel Payne, Cam Christie and Mike Mitchell are playing big minutes and contributing off the bench. Payne had 6 points, 7 rebounds and 3 assists in 31 minutes and Christie had 11 points in 27 minutes against Ohio State. 

Against San Francisco, Payne had 15 points and six rebounds while Mitchell played 32 minutes and finished with nine points, six rebounds and four assists. 

If Payne, Christie and Mitchell are getting more minutes off the bench, it might be a matter of time before Johnson inserts one, two or all three of them into the starting lineup, regardless of the issue being slow starts or bad finishes. 

"We're going to stick with the group or the guys that are gonna do the right things and are going to either maintain a lead or get us back in the lead," Johnson said of the second half effort against the Buckeyes. "The guys that are gonna do stuff that impacts winning, whether that's taking care of the ball, really good shot selection, getting the ball where it needs to go, defending their position, defending as a team, those are the guys that you gotta role with."

Dec 3, 2023; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Minnesota Golden Gophers head coach Ben Johnson reacts to a call during the second half against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Value City Arena / Credit: Joseph Maiorana-USA TODAY Sports