Although those losses stung — leading to a players-only meeting after Sunday’s game — the No. 13 Spartans (17-4 overall, 7-2 Big Ten) still had to spend this week preparing for their next challenge: A date with No. 19 Minnesota (18-3, 6-3) at 8:30 p.m. tonight at Breslin Center.

How exactly they were going to do that, however, was a question in itself.

“Most teenagers, they sit back and they reflect on what happened; it takes them a little longer to get over something,” freshman forward Delvon Roe said. “For us being a young team, that’s going to be a huge question for us going into (tonight). How can we bounce back after a loss at home?”

The Spartans will have to come up with the answer quickly, as they face a team once written off as a pretender, but has proven through close losses to MSU, Northwestern and Purdue that it belongs near the top of the Big Ten.

“They’ve been a little up and down just like everybody, except maybe Purdue lately, and yet I think they’ve improved,” Izzo said.

“I think they’ve been playing more Tubby-style (in reference to second-year head coach Tubby Smith), playing a ton of players, but they’re starting to play less of them as many minutes and they’re getting into more of an eight-man rotation.”

While the Gophers are slightly cutting the time of a few players, they still have 11 players averaging more than 10 minutes a game. None averaging more than 28.

Guard Lawrence Westbrook is the lone player averaging double figures (13.9 points per game) for the Gophers, while forward Damian Johnson — who Izzo called “their glue guy” — is averaging 9.8 points and 4.3 rebounds per game. Izzo also said 6-foot-11 freshman Ralph Sampson, who played just 10 minutes in the first meeting on Dec. 31, has vastly improved.

In that game, guard Al Nolen led Minnesota with 14 points and seven assists, while Westbrook was the lone other Gopher in double-figures. MSU sophomore guard Kalin Lucas, who had 24 points in that game, said keeping those two out of the paint would be key if the Spartans wanted a repeat of what Roe called “one
of our best games of the season.”

“Our defense was great and we knew everything they were going to do,” Roe said. “But they have a lot of players playing better than they were earlier in the year, especially their bigs … and their guards are stepping up their game to a whole other level, so it’s going to be a different team coming in here.”