Dawn Plitzuweit made her pitch for an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament for her team prior to the Gophers’ a few days before the Gophers started the Big Ten conference tournament.

The Big Ten has never been better, or bigger, she said, so limiting the conference to a certain amount of NCAA tournament invitations doesn’t make the same sense that it used to. The conference comprised 18 teams, and two of them — UCLA and Southern Cal — were consistent top five teams all season, and Minnesota played many of the first-tier teams tough.

But the Gophers didn’t beat any of them, and it cost them.

The metrics, particularly the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings, didn’t favor Minnesota, and the Gophers on Sunday found themselves outside looking in at 68 teams that were invited to the Big Dance. Soon after that field was completed, the Gophers (20-10) were invited to the 32-team Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament.

The WBIT started last season and has replaced the WNIT, which the Gophers nearly won last season, advancing to the championship before losing to St. Louis. That field is being set tonight. Illinois, an NCAA team this season, won last year’s inaugural WBIT.

Invitations were announced on X.com and the bracket hadn’t been set. It also wasn’t immediately clear whether Minnesota would accept the invite. The highest-seeded teams would host early games.

Playing without returning leading scorer Mara Braun (broken foot) for most of the season, as well as transfer Taylor Woodson, the Gophers (20-10) were a good team but not above-average Big Ten team, finishing behind the 11 programs that made the NCAA tournament in the final standings.

The Gophers were 0-8 in Quad 1 wins and because of that were unlikely to make its first NCAA tournament field since 2018. If it wasn’t entirely clear after Minnesota’s first-round loss to Washington in the first round of the Big Ten tournament on March 5, it was when, about halfway through the tournament field reveal, the Huskies were given a play-in game as a No. 16 seed.

The Huskies were the only team Minnesota lost to twice this season.

Gophers men shut out of postseason tournaments

The Gophers men’s team, who were 7-8 in Quad 1 games and beat a handful of NCAA tournament teams, were left out of the postseason.

Head coach Ben Johnson was fired early Thursday morning.