The Gophers men’s basketball team was effectively eliminated from the NCAA Tournament at-large conversation after a rough first half of the campaign, low-lighted by an 0-5 start in Big Ten Conference play.

In the past, once you were sunk, there was not much left for which to play. Sure, everyone likes getting their hacks at taking down Goliaths, particularly at home with a potential court storming on the line. But a square-off between two cellar dwellers on a random Tuesday evening in Happy Valley – who cared?

There wasn’t any reason to. It didn’t matter if you finished in the basement of the regular season standings, or slightly above it.

It does now.

Not everyone is a fan of the Big Ten Tournament format change amid the conference’s continued expansion. Starting this season, only the top 15 teams in the 18-team conference will qualify for the conference tournament.

There is an old-school belief that every team should automatically gain entry into the field and retain that slim – very, very slim – chance come March of winning the national title. The conference’s coaches are among them, per Gophers bench boss Ben Johnson.

“I can tell you, there was no coach that was in favor of it. But it’s out of our control,” Johnson said via phone on Monday. “The thing about the tournament that every coach preaches and every team believes is you’re never out of it until you’re out of it. So it gives you an opportunity one last time to try to get on a run and try to make (the) postseason, try to make the NCAA Tournament. With that is an opportunity.”

But as everyone wrings their hands over preserving the value of the regular season in college football as a playoff expands to let more teams in, the Big Ten has found a way to increase the importance of February basketball bouts between teams that may not otherwise be all that intriguing.

This year, it matters that Minnesota has rebounded to win five of its last nine games, where in the past it wouldn’t have. The Gophers have won their way into a current position to play in Indianapolis next month.

Johnson wants his team to have a singular focus on what’s in front of it. Right now, that’s a road game Tuesday against UCLA. That’s all that’s currently in the Gophers’ control.

“Any team that’s trying to make the NCAA Tournament, the best thing you can do is just keep winning,” Johnson said.

Because so many other results aren’t in your hands. But should Minnesota continue to win at a high rate, it will secure a spot in the Big Ten tourney and potentially even make a push for a Round 1 bye. The Gophers are currently two games back of a top-nine seed with six games to play. They have valuable tiebreakers over the likes of USC and Oregon. They still have yet to play Nebraska.

“I think we’re two wins away from, all of a sudden now, you can make this huge jump. … If you own a tiebreaker, you can take a crazy jump, and all of a sudden you can go from 15, 16 to nine, eight or seven,” Johnson said. “I get the intrigue on that, for sure. That also is a motivator for guys. Either way, you’ve got to keep winning. But also, the way it is, it’s so jumbled, that if you do win, you could drastically jump where you’re at positioning-wise in all that stuff. I totally get it from a fan’s standpoint. I know they look at that stuff and it’s cool to see where you could possibly be at with a win or two here. But for me and my guys, I just want them to have that singular focus.”

If the Gophers stumble too frequently over the next couple of weeks, there’s a chance Minnesota’s duel with Rutgers in its regular-season finale could be a de facto play-in game for the conference tournament.

That would be high-level drama in what previously would’ve probably been a meaningless game.

It’s obviously not the position a program wants to find itself in, but it’s intriguing for fans, and incentivizing for players. From a broader perspective, that’s a win for the league. And it’s nothing if not fair.

Postseason hopes still are very much alive for everyone in the conference. The truest Cinderellas just need to start winning a little earlier to earn them.

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