March Madness isn't quite over for the maroon and gold as the Minnesota Gopher Men's Basketball managers are competing for a chance to play in Phoenix as part of the NCAA Men's Final Four Fan Fest and the Manager Games National Championship.
Most days you would find Nicholas Gag and the team of Gopher men's basketball graduate assistants doing behind-the-scenes work for the team such as helping with scouting reports, practicing with the team, ordering food, or even doing laundry.
"It's pretty much a lot of the behind-the-scenes sort-of work," Gag said. "It's a really cool opportunity to build some skills and qualities when you're trying to go into the coaching atmosphere. It's been a really cool opportunity where you get to learn a lot about what happens behind-the-scenes."
The group can also be found working and perfecting their own skills on the court as they take part in Manager Games throughout the season.
Games between the Gopher managers and managers from visiting teams typically take place in Williams Arena the night before the Gopher men's team takes the court against their own opponents.
"We set up a time to play at the arena and it's a pretty cool system where we play a 40 minute game with two 20 minutes halves, just like they do the next day in the real game," Gag said. "We keep score, take fouls, and then when we win or lose, we post it and send it into the Manager Games account."
A system keeps track of the rankings throughout the regular season, which culminates with a postseason tournament featuring 64 selected teams. Teams advance through the postseason through both fan votes and competition.
Minnesota was chosen as the top overall seed in the tournament. They're currently matched up with 12-seed Tennessee in the Sweet 16.
"The top 64 teams get to play in a Twitter/X poll tournament modeled exactly like the NCAA tournament. The top tier teams get the benefit when it comes to voting."
Gopher Managers need only 44 percent of the vote to advance to Phoenix.
Fans can vote for Minnesota here.
"The final eight teams get the opportunity to go to the Final Four to play at the Fan Fest in front of a crowd of people," Gag said. "You play until they crown a winner."
Votes can be cast until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday.
Gag says the team's felt support from a number of people including media members, athletes, and fans.
"We got to launch our own Dinkytown Manager Games shirt with our collective," he said. "Also our team support. We work with them every day and the players and staff have reached to use their connections to help us."
This season's success was something Gag saw building early on as the team realized how far they could go as the season progressed.
"We definitely have some guys who really, really love the game of basketball. We have guys whether they're doing a late night run after practice gathering as many managers as they can, or getting up as many shots as possible, the guys have really bought in," Gag said. "Once we were ranked at the start of the year, the guys really bought into trying to be the best team in the country. Our managers have worked really hard on their game throughout the year."
Gag says former Xavier walk-on and current GA Spencer Cody has been a big reason for why the manager's on-court performance has taken a positive step forward.
"He kind of took this as his personal mission to make sure we got to play down at the Final Four. It's not your normal pick-up game where it doesn't mean anything after it's done. It truly means a lot to the guys. They've been prepping each and every day, trying to get out there on the court to get extra shots up."
The full Manager Games bracket can be found here.