Minnesota and St. Thomas start a new rivalry. Proximity doesn't mean they'll see each other often

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The novelty of the first men's basketball matchup in 92 years between Minnesota and St. Thomas, two schools a mere 3 miles apart along the winding Mississippi River, will give the Gophers a rare attendance boost during the first week of the season.

That doesn't mean this game will become a regular occurrence. Extra ticket sales don't factor into NCAA Tournament selection criteria.

“If you take the name off the jersey or that they were local, there’s no upside to us playing them,” Minnesota coach Niko Medved said.

The Gophers were expecting around 10,000 fans, Medved said, for the game on Friday night. They only topped that mark last season twice, against rival Wisconsin and Nebraska, another nearby Big Ten foe.

The 14,000-seat arena — now officially called The Barn by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota — will be livelier than it's been for any nonconference game in years. St. Thomas, in its sixth year as a Division I program after making an unprecedented jump directly from Division III, will undoubtedly bring its best for the biggest crowd it'll likely play in front of all season.

But despite the fact the Tommies won 48 games over the last two years, their place in the Summit League simply means they won't boost Minnesota's strength of schedule. The NCAA's quadrant system — ranking all 365 team and sorting them into four groups to categorize the quality of each win and loss — that provides the framework for at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament will likely label this as a ho-hum third-tier game for the Gophers once the committee convenes in March. St. Thomas ranked 113th last season, and Minnesota was 82nd.

Other public-private nonconference rivalries between intrastate schools like Cincinnati-Xavier, Wisconsin-Marquette or Nebraska-Creighton almost always present both teams a “Quad 1” game.

“Taking emotion out of it, it doesn’t always make a lot of sense. I’m doing it right now because I think it’s great for basketball in the Twin Cities,” Medved said.

For teams like St. Thomas somewhere between the low and mid majors, the reluctance of power conference teams to play them underscores the perpetual uphill challenge to the get the big-stage games.

“There’s no doubt one team typically has more risk than another,” St. Thomas coach Johnny Tauer said. ”Even though they may be the Goliath versus the David, the way it’s set up, there are incentives to play teams that you’re likely to beat by a significant amount.”

Even with an expanded field , reaching the NCAA Tournament has never been harder for about four-fifths of the programs.

“A lot of mid-majors would love it if there was a path to an at-large bid for really, really great seasons,” Tauer said. “It takes two to tango. We all sit in our seat of what is the best thing for our program.”

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