How Can Minnesota Gophers Make the 2024 NCAA Tournament?

As March draws near, the Minnesota Gophers are gearing up for some annual madness. The Big Ten Tournament kicks off at the Target Center on Wednesday, March 13th. Currently sitting 7th in the conference standings, the Gophers are currently scheduled to get a 1st round bye. A double bye isn’t impossible… but pretty much.

The Gophers are currently 16-9 (7-7) and ranked 78th in the NET Rankings. If they finish with 10 conference wins or more, it will be just the third time that’s happened at Minnesota since the turn of the century. Ben Johnson has done a great job turning the team around in 2023-24 but they still have a lot of work to do, if they want to make the NCAA tournament.

With only six games remaining, the question arises: how many victories do the Minnesota Golden Gophers need to secure a spot on the tourney dance floor next month? The initial answer is easy: win the Big Ten Tournament.

But since that has never happened in the program’s history, it’s probably not a route we should count on. If the Gophers handle business the rest of the regular season, however, they can still land an at-large bid. What will that take?

What are the NET Rankings and why do they matter?

Well, that conversation starts with the NET Rankings, which now dictates who gets in and who is left out of the NCAA Tournament. Sure, there is still a committee and they hold final say on Selection Sunday, but it’s the NET Rankings that they are instructed to hold most valuable. Here’s how the NET Rankings work (with the equations left out for simplification purposes):

• Beating bad teams can’t really help you, but losing to them will destroy you
• Winning on the road helps you more than winning at home
• Off/Def Efficiencies and margin of victory matter too

Quad System: The entire country is broken down into four different tiers or “quads”, but a team’s quad is different, depending on where they are playing. Beat a top-30 team, it’s a Quad 1 win no matter where the game is located. But on the road, any win over a top-75 NET team counts as Quad 1.

The Gophers are 1-5 vs Quad 1 opponents this season and have three such games left. All of them are on the road: @ Nebraska, @ Illinois and @ Northwestern. The Gophers have already beaten Nebraska and Northwestern at home. Both wins were Quad 2, because the games were played at Williams Arena (where the opponent has to be top-30 to count as Q1).

How can the Minnesota Gophers get into the NCAA Tournament?

Beating Iowa in Iowa City would have counted as Quad 1, which is why blowing that massive 19-point 2nd half lead hurt the Gophers March Madness chances so badly. Ben Johnson and his boys have handled all quad 4 games and don’t have any remaining. The Gophers’ only Quad 3 loss came vs Indiana.

Minnesota Remaining Opponent Quads

This season-deciding six-game stretch starts with Ohio State at The Barn on Thursday, a Q2