Minnesota can’t catch a break in Big Ten play

College basketball is weird. This is a sport where Rutgers can beat Wisconsin and Duke can lose consecutive games to NC State and Miami, all in the span of three days.

But of all the teams in the college basketball, Minnesota has suffered the most from the weirdness of the sport. That is to say, the Gophers might be the unluckiest team in college basketball since the turn of the new year. Richard Pitino’s team lost its fifth straight game Tuesday night, falling 77-75 to the Iowa Hawkeyes, to drop to 0-5 in Big Ten play.

This loss might have been the most excruciating of all five losses. The Gophers came back from a 17-point second half deficit to take the lead in the final three minutes of the game, only to lose when the refs determined that DeAndre Mathieu’s game-tying lay-up came after the final buzzer. Alas, here’s how Minnesota’s first five Big Ten games have gone this year:

What’s crazy is that despite being behind some very bad teams (Northwestern and Rutgers) in the Big Ten standings, Minnesota is not actually a bad team. It’s not a particularly good team, but the Gophers are ranked 50th in the KenPom ratings, despite their poor start to conference play. They were ranked as high as 22nd in those ratings on Dec. 22.

Minnesota’s problem is that it’s just about even — or at least, roughly comparable — with a lot of the Big Ten, meaning it will play a lot of close games, just as many Big Ten teams will. Close games are supposed to be random, so if this team just had average luck, it would be 2-3 in conference play. Instead, it’s 341st nationally in luck (out of 351 teams), according to KenPom, and it’s almost certainly the unluckiest team in the country during conference play.

There’s still hope for the Gophers to turn this season around. They have a lot of work to do in order to make the NCAA Tournament (though Nebraska did it after starting 0-4 in conference play last year), but they can still have a fine season. In fact, their KenPom prediction still calls for a 7-11 finish in the conference, which isn’t bad considering the start.

The next stretch of five games offers a reasonable chance to get back to .500 very quickly, with home games against Rutgers, Illinois and Nebraska, and road games against Penn State and Nebraska. Minnesota has an 87 percent chance to win its first game of that stretch against Rutgers, according to KenPom, so maybe everything will get back to equilibrium. Because for Minnesota to show the nation it’s not a bad team, it actually has to start winning.