MINNEAPOLIS — Carlos Morris scored a season-high 19 points, Mo Walker had 15 points and six rebounds and Minnesota romped past Seattle 92-57 Friday for its sixth straight victory.
Andre Hollins and Nate Mason each added 15 points for the Gophers (9-2), who returned from an eight-day game break for final exams with another noncompetitive nonconference tuneup.
Bakary Konate pitched in nine points and eight rebounds, both career highs for the freshman, and DeAndre Mathieu had nine assists and six steals. The Gophers scored 80-plus points for the fifth straight game, matching their December streak from 2009. They had seven in a row in 1966.
With most students at home for the holidays, the crowd was thinner and quieter than usual. Mathieu gave the fans plenty to enjoy, though the 5-foot-9 sparkplug had trouble finishing his signature waterbug-like drives and went 1 for 6 from the floor for just two points.
Mathieu led the relentless full-court press by the Gophers that decided the game before halftime, swiping the ball from Isiah Umipig in the backcourt and feeding Joey King for a dunk as he cut through the lane for a 12-2 lead. Mathieu had four steals less than five minutes in.
Later, he set up Morris for a transition 3-pointer. Then there was the cross-court pass ahead to Mason, who fed Charles Buggs for a reverse dunk and a 35-15 lead.
Jadon Cohee scored 14 points and Umipig added 13 points the Redhawks (5-6), who took their first flight to face a major-conference foe in more than two years. They stayed in town to play Washington on Nov. 21, losing 63-48 to the Huskies.
Umipig went 3 for 8 from 3-point range. He came into the game ranked second in NCAA Division I with an average of 4.2 made 3-pointers per game. His 17.2 points-per-game mark entered the weekend second in the Western Athletic Conference.
The Gophers had 12 of their 16 steals in the first half on their way to a 43-21 lead.
For Seattle, this was the program’s first game against a team in the Big Ten. The Redhawks have played Maryland, Penn State and Rutgers in the past, but not when any of them were members.
Long before coach Cameron Dollar was born, let alone any of his players, Seattle often took on some of the nation’s best: most memorably when the Elgin Baylor-led squad reached the NCAA championship game in 1958 and lost to Kentucky. The small Jesuit school dropped NCAA Division I sports in 1980 only to return five years ago as Dollar was hired to guide the transition.
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