For the first time in the same academic year, the Gophers have won both their football bowl game and an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game.
Minnesota’s football team beat Georgia Tech, 34-10, in the Quick Lane Bowl on Dec. 26 in Detroit. Last Thursday, the 10th-seeded men’s basketball team then beat No. 7 seed Louisville 86-76 in the first round of March Madness on Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa.
The U lost to No. 2 seed Michigan State in the second round, 70-50, on Saturday.
While the wins are considered steps in a winning direction for young coaches P.J. Fleck and Richard Pitino, it’s a feat that has been achieved at 12 of the 14 Big Ten programs, and all but one Big Ten West division had previously won both in the same year since 2010-11.
But Nebraska, Penn State and Rutgers have never done it, so the Gophers have ditched inclusion with that lackluster group. Both Fleck and Pitino have tried to put their achievements in this type of context.
Fleck has noted that the 2018 season was the first time in school history Minnesota has won the last regular-season game and a bowl game. Pitino has pointed out that because of vacancies brought by NCAA rules violations, the Gophers’ win Thursday was only the program’s second official NCAA tournament win in the past 29 years.
The Gophers nearly did the double in 2016-17 when coach Tracy Claeys led the U to its best bowl win in recent history, 17-12 over Washington State in the Holiday Bowl, but Pitino’s fifth-seeded Gophers were upended by No. 12 Middle Tennessee in the first round that March.
The U’s lack of matching success in football and basketball extends to the late 1990s, when basketball coach Clem Haskins produced wins during that now-vacated era. They won a first-round game in 1994, but Jim Wacker went 3-8 on the football field that year. When the U advanced to the Final Four in 1997, new football coach Glen Mason was just starting his rebuilding process at the U and went 3-9.
Excluding consolation games, Illinois was the first Big Ten school to win both an NCAA tournament game and bowl game in the same season (1951-52), while Ohio State and Iowa joined the Gophers in achieving the double this school year.