Entering her third season as the Gophers’ women’s basketball coach, Dawn Plitzuweit told reporters at Big Ten media day Wednesday in Chicago that the team hopes to use what was learned at the end of last season.
The Gophers started the season 16-1 before losing seven of their final nine regular season games and falling in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament.
“It gave us five more games to prepare and practice,” Plitzuweit said. “We’ve learned so much along this path about how we need to do things better, more consistently. We shot the ball better in the last four games of the season, in the WBIT. We shot 39 percent from the arc. Before that, we were under 10 percentage points in the Big Ten season. So we need to look at why. And what that process looked like. So how can we repeat that process and apply it to his year and continue to improve. “
The Gophers overcame injuries to Mara Braun and Taylor Woodson and went 5-0 in the WBIT to finish with a 25-11 record and back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since 2019. The 25 wins were the most by a Gophers team since 2005, when they went 26-8 and reached the Sweet 16. The Gophers went 20-16, reaching the Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship, in Plitzuweit’s first season.
“I think it really comes down to our pillars and the building blocks of our program,” said Plitzuweit, who has had just one losing season, his second, in 18 seasons as a college coach. “Our stamina. People think stamina is just defense. And defense is great, and she gets on the field and takes charges. And while it’s those things, she also does the little things really well. We call that in our stamina category, and for us that means continuing to improve all the time.
“And there’s the unity aspect. If you want to be tough, you’re going to play together. And the third piece is finding a way. … We’ve been through that especially the last two seasons with injuries hitting us in Minnesota, at a very high level. Then we had to find a way to do things differently than we had in the past.”
Senior guard Amaya Battle, who averaged 12.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game last season, hopes to extend last season’s finish into this season.
