The visiting locker room at Pauley Pavilion briefly resembled a water park on Tuesday night as Gophers men’s basketball players doused head coach Ben Johnson with water after their dig-deep, 64-61 comeback win over UCLA.

“These guys got me,” a still-wet Johnson said on the KFXN-FM postgame interview. “I’m freezing right now. But I’ll take it any day.”

After an 0-6 start to Big Ten play, the Gophers are 6-3 in their last nine conference games, and in the process, Johnson has also turned down the temperature on his coaching hot seat. His team has four Quad 1 wins and is now 4-4 on the road.

Minnesota (14-12, 6-9 Big Ten) was in danger of finishing in the bottom three in the conference standings and being left out of the postseason tournament as recently as last week. But now if the U can keep climbing and finish in the top nine, it would receive a first-round bye during the tourney in Indianapolis in mid-March. It’s feasible.

The Gophers host last-place Penn State (13-13, 3-12) at Williams Arena on Saturday, followed by 17th-place Northwestern (13-13, 4-11) at The Barn on Tuesday. The Nittany Lions have lost seven straight, including to Minnesota on Feb. 4, while the Wildcats have dropped six of seven.

Minnesota’s regular season finishes up at Nebraska (19-9, 7-8) on March 1; home versus No. 11 Wisconsin (21-5, 11-4) on March 5; and at Rutgers (12-14, 5-10) on March 9.

The Gophers had a difficult schedule to start Big Ten play and a new transfer-filled roster that needed time to figure out how to play together. And Johnson has acknowledged he needed to tinker with ways to get the best out of his new squad.

After the celebratory shower Tuesday, Johnson danced amid his players and then got serious, immediately addressing the mindset they need for what comes next. “A mature team handles success the right way,” he relayed on the radio. “There have been times when we haven’t handled success the right way.”

The Gophers’ home loss to then-last place Washington on Feb. 1, which came after ranked home wins over Michigan and Oregon, is at the top of the list of letdowns.

Johnson said his team would enjoy the sweep of the Big Ten’s new California members — which includes a 69-66 win over Southern California on Saturday — on the flight back to Minnesota, then rest up Wednesday and turn the page to preparing for Penn State.

“If we are going to be a mature team that turns it,” Johnson said, “we’ve got to be able to do that stuff to take steps to put us in position at home now.”

FS1 commentator Don MacLean passed along praise of Johnson during Tuesday’s game. MacLean, a member of the Bruins hall of fame, shared how opposing coaches in pregame meetings have said Johnson’s teams are “well-coached and play hard.”

That was evident on UCLA’s final play Tuesday. The Gophers knew Bruins guard Sebastian Mack wanted a right-handed drive to the basket. That was communicated to U guard Lu’Cye Patterson, who drew a charging foul on Mack.

“We had talked about that in scouting,” Johnson said on the radio. “(Mack) is so good getting to that right hand and he’s done it numerous times. You knew it was coming. (Patterson) was able to sit on it. It was such a heads-up play because (Mack) is a really good player. If (Patterson) doesn’t do that, (Mack) is probably at the rim. Just a big-time effort by (Patterson) on scouting report.”

The Bruins tried to take away Dawson Garcia with multiple double teams in the first half. He went 2 of 5 from the field for five points but stacked up 27 points on 7 of 10 shooting in the second half.

“We were able to get him the ball in his spots,” Johnson said of Garcia. “He took his time. I don’t think he settled very often. He attacked the rim a couple of times on the left wing and got downhill, which got him going. Then he made a couple of big threes.”

Effort was apparent as the Gophers kept fighting when they trailed UCLA by 17 with five minutes to go in the first half, 11 at halftime and by eight with four minutes left.

The Gophers only led for 26 seconds on Tuesday and for 2:46 against USC on Saturday. Minnesota kept playing hard when they started 0-6 in Big Ten play and when they trailed for 77 of 80 minutes in Los Angeles in the previous five days.