Up by 19 points at the half, the Gopher women’s basketball team’s third-quarter woes allowed Nebraska to get within eight points starting the fourth.

It was gut check time.

The maroon and gold scored the first seven points of the final frame to reestablish some extra breathing room, and, after the Cornhuskers got within six, Minnesota ended the game on a 13-2 run for an 84-67 win.

“I thought our young ladies showed a great deal of toughness. I thought they showed a great deal of resilience and a great deal of composure,” coach Dawn Plitzuweit said.

“At the end we came together and made those winning plays,” said Amaya Battle, who led five Gophers in double figures with 21 points.

It was the team’s seventh straight win, all in Big Ten action, and best since a 11-game stretch of conference wins from February 2003 to January 2004.

That success doesn’t surprise Plitzuweit.

“They’ve faced the highs and they faced the lows of not coming out on top in this type of an environment or a battle. Their desire is really, really high. Everybody has a desire, but then you have to put in the time. And this is a group that invests a lot of time. They invest a lot of time on the court on their own, they invest time watching film. They really lock in, they ask really intelligent questions in film and they have a lot of fun doing it.”

Mara Braun had 15 points for her third straight double-digit scoring effort, Sophie Hart 14, Grace Grocholski 12 and Tori McKinney 11 to go with a team-high five assists.

One of those helpers was a pass inside to Hart to start an eventual 3-point play that pushed the Minnesota lead to nine with 3:33 to play.

Surrounded by multiple Cornhuskers, Grocholski scored on a layup next time down the floor and Hart found Battle on a backdoor cut for a 78-65 lead.

“Those plays separate you from other teams, and especially down the line when we have to make plays. We talk about finishing the play, just finding the way, all the time, every single day, and we practice it. We’re expected to do it,” Braun said.

Unranked in either top 25 poll, Minnesota (19-6 overall, 10-4 Big Ten) entered the game 10th and Nebraska 25th in the NET rankings, the primary sorting tool for evaluating teams for the NCAA tournament. The Gophers last made the tournament in 2018.

Chalk this one up to the latest learning experience for when the calendar turns to March.

“Just cleaning up things and just knowing what that feels like to be able to bring that into a whole game,” Braun said.

A strong inside-outside game quickly led to a double-digit lead.

Ten of the first 15 points came in the paint — Minnesota outscored Nebraska 52-22 there in the game — and back-to-back 3-pointers by Braun gave Minnesota a 26-11 lead late in the first quarter.

Back-to-back 3-point plays by Battle made it 40-19 midway through the second quarter. Minnesota’s lead was 49-30 at the break.

Nebraska outscored Minnesota 22-11 in the third quarter.

“We made rush decisions … We passed on the run a couple different times. We threw it to kids that weren’t open,” Plitzuweit said.

“That was AI; it wasn’t us,” Battle said as she and Braun broke into laughter.

Britt Prince led Nebraska with 15 points and Jessica Petrie added 14, but the Cornhuskers (16-9, 5-9) lost for the seventh time in nine games.

With the win, the Gophers remained in fifth place in the Big Ten standings, one-half game behind Iowa in conference play. Next up for Minnesota is a trip across the border to face Wisconsin in Madison at 5 p.m. Sunday.

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