San Francisco Dons dump Gophers; another 2nd half disaster
For the second time this season the Minnesota men's basketball team lost after being badly outplayed in the second half. On Nov. 16, the Gophers (4-2) blew a 21-point lead with under 12 minutes to play and lost to Missouri. On Sunday night, the Gophers trailed by one point with 13 minutes remaining only to get blown out 76-58 by San Francisco (5-2).
Cam Christie's 3-pointer trimmed the deficit to 47-46 with 13:07 to play, and that's when the Dons went on a huge run, increasing the lead to 17 points at 70-53 with 2:58 to play.
If you do the math, that's a 23-7 run in 10 minutes, 9 seconds to put the game on ice. The Dons led by as many as 20 points before Christie hit a shot to make it an 18-point game.
Minnesota never led in the game.
San Francisco is no slouch. The Dons were picked to finish third in the talented West Coast Conference behind Gonzaga and Saint Mary's.
Dawson Garcia led the Gophers with 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting. The rest of the starting lineup – Elijah Hawkins, Braeden Carrington, Josh Ola-Joseph and Isiah Ihnen – combined to shoot 3-for-9 and totaled 8 points. Ihnen and Carrington didn't score.
Pharrel Payne came off the bench and finished with 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting. Christie scored 7 points and Mike Mitchell finished with 9 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists.
Minnesota plays New Orleans on Thursday and then opens the Big Ten schedule at Ohio State on Sunday, Dec. 3.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.