The Gophers have developed a fairly clear path to victory: slowing the game down.

Minnesota is the sixth-slowest out of the 364 Division-I basketball teams, per KenPom.com’s adjusted tempo metric, averaging just 61.7 possessions per 40 minutes.

When the game is played on the Gophers’ terms, they’ve proven capable of going toe to toe with their opponents.

Iowa, Penn State and Michigan are all in the top 55 in the country in adjusted tempo. Minnesota — which plays at Southern Cal on Saturday — successfully took those foes out of their games by grinding it to a screeching halt. It slowed down Maryland en route to a near upset of the Terrapins.

Slow and steady often wins the Gophers the race.

“That’s been a huge key for us all year,” Gophers coach Ben Johnson said. “It’s just kind of how we’re built.”

Johnson noted Minnesota is better defensively when the game is played in the halfcourt and the Gophers can exhibit a certain toughness on that end. Offensively, the Gophers aren’t built to out-score teams. Dawson Garcia leads the Big Ten in points per game (19.9), but outside of him, Minnesota isn’t flush with prolific scorers.

“We’re a team that wants to wear a defense down,” Johnson said. “Not saying you want to play in low shot clock every time, but when our assists are up because the ball is moving and it gets reversed from second to third to fourth side, we’ve seen our numbers go up in our shooting percentages and our assists.”

The Gophers tallied north of 20 assists in both of their wins over ranked opponents last month over Michigan and Oregon.

“That ball is moving. And we’re passing up sometimes a good (shot) for a great one, and our shooting numbers go up drastically,” Johnson said. “We’re not a team that’s just going to come down and have a lot of success on the first side with one pass or no pass and just go get it and make a play.

“We’ve got to wear the defense down. We’ve got to screen, we’ve got to move, we’ve got to cut, get the ball moving.”

Essentially, the Gophers have to be deliberate in everything they do. It’s one of the things they’ve discovered as the season has progressed, and led to some success after an uninspiring start to the campaign.

Johnson noted Minnesota also changed its offensive approach for its game against Maryland because of the way the Terrapins defend. And the Gophers have stuck with the tactic since, with success, winning four of their past eight games.

Johnson is an adaptable coach willing and able to pivot when something new is discovered that can deliver results. But those discoveries generally take time, and time isn’t on the side of college coaches at many programs on a year-to-year basis. Not given the way rosters turn over these days.

The annual freshness of personnel leads to an effectively brand-new puzzle each season that must be solved. How do the pieces fit? It’s hard to know that at the campaign’s outset. Just look at the NBA, where teams that make major trades require months before establishing synergy within a reconstructed roster.

And the level of turnover in college lineups these days can far exceed that created in one NBA offseason.

“If you have a lot of guys coming back, it’s a lot easier. You’re able to find that out, figure that out quicker,” Johnson said. “The way with the portal and the way our roster is built now, I knew it. I told our guys, ‘We’re not going to know our identity on either side of the ball until you go through some stuff.’

“You’ve got to go through some tough losses, some tight games. You’ve got to go through some success where you feel and understand what got you wins. So for us, I knew it wouldn’t be until January or February.”

It’s certainly a positive that Minnesota is playing better basketball now. But the answers this season came too late in the eyes of many. The Gophers dug themselves a deep hole, dropping their first five conference bouts, and now find themselves scratching and clawing for a spot in the Big Ten Tournament.

Johnson noted it didn’t help that point guard Mike Mitchell Jr. missed a month early in the season. That was another curveball.

The time to expedite the learning curve, Johnson said, is over the summer. He tried to have his guys play and compete against one another as much as possible as a way to generate adversity. In that same vein, Johnson insinuated Minnesota may up the difficulty of its nonconference schedule moving forward.

“To see like, ‘OK, now that we’ve got some good stuff and you’ve got a handle of what you want to do, alright, now let’s throw it against some high-level competition a little bit earlier,’ ” he said. “So, there’s that angle of it.”

“I think what we did this year can apply to a lot of teams, and just forcing it early as best as you can, and creating adversity early, because that’s the true test. It’s easy when it’s easy, but a lot of questions can get answered through adversity. So, it’s trying to find ways to put guys in practice or in games in adversity, so you can figure out quickly what works and how they respond.”