The start couldn’t have been much better for Minnesota; the finish was exhilarating. Amaya Battle scored a career-high 35 points, including four free throws late in overtime, and the Gophers beat Gonzaga 82-77 in a Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament quarterfinal on Thursday at Williams A rena. Under coach Dawn Plitzuweit, the Gophers have three pillars in the program: toughness, togetherness and find a way. “Today was a game where we had to demonstrate all three of those qualities,” she said. Staying with the three theme, Battle, Grace Grocholski and Tori McKinney accounted for 74 of the 82 Minnesota points. Grocholski finished with 20 and McKinney had 19. “I haven’t seen a stat sheet that looks quite like that, where those three players had almost all of their points,” Gonzaga coach Lisa Fortier said. “They did a really nice job, and we didn’t make quite enough adjustments on our end.” The Gophers (23-11) advance to the WBIT semifinals against Florida at 4 p.m. Monday at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The title game is Wednesday. Minnesota lost to St. Louis in last year’s lower-tier WNIT championship. Grocholski scored on a jumper with 2:09 left in the extra session for a 75-72 lead. Yvonne Ejim scored to get the Bulldogs within one, but Battle made a pair of free throws with 1:28 left. Battle also tied a career high with 10 assists. Two more free throws by Battle, one by Kennedy Klick and two from Grocholski finished off the Bulldogs. Confident her final free throws were going to go in, Battle sung a song in her head while at the line: “The Spins” by Mac Miller. “One of my coaches freshman year was like, ‘Your muscle memory knows what to do, but when you think too much it can trip you out,’ so she said you could sing a song in your head,” Battle said with a laugh. Both teams had a chance to win in the final minute of regulation. Tied at 70 coming out of a timeout with 40.5 seconds left, Battle missed a jumper with 31 seconds left. Gonzaga got the ball and called a timeout. As they did most of the game, the Bulldogs patiently worked their offense. But Ejim was forced into a low-chance, off-balance desperation jumper by Battle and the game went to overtime. Ejim, the player of the year in the West Coast Conference, led the Bulldogs (24-11) with 27 points and 15 rebounds, including nine offensive. Battle had 13 points and McKinney 10, and Minnesota shot 71.4% in the opening quarter for a 25-16 lead. But the Gophers made an offensive U-turn in the second quarter, being outscored 19-9. Minnesota made just 3 of 16 shots, missed all six attempts from deep and found themselves down 35-34 at the break. Down by six after three quarters, back-to-back layups by Grocholski and Battle — on a feed from Grocholski — got Minnesota within 56-54 early in the fourth quarter, but Gonzaga scored nine of the next 12 points for an eight-point lead with 5 minutes left. Down 67-61, the Gophers outscored Gonzaga 21-10 in the final 8 1-2 minutes of the game. “Every huddle we were like, ‘We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna get that shot, we’re gonna get that stop.’ That’s just what helped us stay together and make those things happen,” Grocholski said. Related Articles Women’s basketball: Gophers hold off late Missouri State run to win second WBIT game WBIT: Gophers hold off Toledo to advance to second round Women’s basketball: High school tournament puts crimp in Gophers’ WBIT plans Women’s basketball: Left out of NCAA, Gophers snapped up by WBIT Gophers knocked out of Big Ten tournament, now await NCAA tournament fate ...read more read less