After a solid shooting and rebounding effort was ruined by a plethora of turnovers and poor defensive performance five days ago in Minneapolis, Micah Shrewsberry clearly must have instilled it in his players’ heads that the defensive effort and ball handling needed to be much better if they were going to exact revenge against Minnesota.
That’s because today’s performance felt like the polar opposite of the painful 76-70 loss last Saturday, with the defensive tenacity representing perhaps the best effort we’ve seen all year from this squad. The Gophers were held to a cold 33 percent shooting from the floor as Jamison Battle was the only Minnesota player to reach double figures with 16 points, while Eric Curry, who lit up this PSU team for 22 points in the previous meeting, was held to just a single point.