Tubby Smith rebuilds Minnesota basketball

"Absolutely," Smith said. "Because they're used to playing as many minutes as they want, usually, in high school and junior college. It's just a tough adjustment. When they do do that and you have that type of balance, it makes you pretty effective and a hard team to beat."

Carter admitted that it took him a while to get acclimated to the fluctuating playing time after coming in from Missouri State-West Plains.

"We were the main options, so the ball was going through us," Carter said. "It was one-on-one situations and that's how we're used to playing. In this offense, you're coming off screens, you're curling, you're popping off pick-and-rolls, so that was the only challenge for us."

Lawrence Westbrook leads the team with a modest 12.8 points per game, but it's been a different Gopher coming through nearly every night.

"They know that we trust the system. If they just move the ball and play the right way, it really doesn't matter to me who is shooting it. It's the team that wins," Smith said. "I usually tell guys, you actually just had the ball in your hand and it just so happened that it went through the hoop. But guess what? We all get credit for it because you couldn't play by yourself.

"I think we're starting to get that mentality and that attitude."

On Sunday it was Devron Bostick, who scored 11 points total in the team's previous three Big Ten games before getting 19 in a 79-59 win over the Nittany Lions.

"I think it is an advantage for us," Smith said. "How do you prepare for us? We've got about 10 guys that have ways to score and beat you."

Penn State coach Ed DeChellis didn't have the answer.

"It's hard to try and concentrate on who you're going to guard, who you're going to try and take out because they play so many guys and keep rotating them," DeChellis said.

Maturi sees the appreciation manifesting itself in the Williams Arena crowd. At its best, the rickety ol' Barn is one of college basketball's most intimidating environments.

It lay for seven years in hibernation created by a cheating scandal that brought NCAA penalties that stripped the Gophers of their only Final Four appearance.

Now, the Barn is most definitely back.

So is the hop in Smith's step. Despite all the success he enjoyed at Kentucky, that notoriously demanding Big Blue Nation always seemed to want more.

In the end, that's part of the reason Smith chose to leave the nation's premier job in the heart of basketball country for a program that lay buried under the rubble of NCAA sanctions in the snowy north.

"When we were in the process of getting him here, I told him, 'Coach you've been way too successful not to enjoy it. And I didn't think he was enjoying it," Maturi said.

"We want to win championships, too, but we're going to enjoy this journey. I do believe he's enjoying his journey here."