The Minnesota Golden Gophers took a 5-2 lead at the 16:50 mark in the first half of Wednesday night's game against Oral Roberts and never looked back, cruising to a 80-57 win over the Golden Eagles.

The Gophers in the win were led by star forward Dawson Garcia who was dominant with 30 on 11-of-14 shooting including 4-of-5 from three-point range. He also had eight rebounds in the win.

Parker Fox had a strong night of his own with 13 points on a perfect night from the field while Mike Mitchell Jr contributed seven points and nine assists.

After a slow first three opening minutes of actions, a Dawson Garica three-pointer that gave the Gophers a 5-2 lead would spark a 10-0 run, establishing a double-digit lead for Minnesota on Tuesday.

Oral Roberts would begin the game struggling to get anything going from the field, missing 18 of their first 22 attempts. It was an overall tough night shooting for Oral Roberts, as the Golden Eagles made just 20-of-58 attempts from the floor including 7-of-23 attempts from three-point range.

The Gophers, however, were taking advantage of easy buckets while dabbling in a few three points, making 11 of their first 14 shots, establishing a 27-8 lead with just under 10 minutes to go in the first half. The Gophers for the game were 30-for-52 from the floor including 11-of-18 from three-point range.

One area that Minnesota did struggle shooting from on Wednesday was at the free-throw line, the Gophers made just 9-of-17 attempts in the game. The struggles at the charity stripe for Ben Johnson's program are nothing new as the Gophers have been among the nation's worst free throw shooting teams each of the last two seasons.

The Gophers would eventually slow down after the hot start, missing six straight buckets at one point over a four minute span. The Golden Eagles were able to diminish the Gophers lead from 19-points to 14-points heading into halftime.

Coming out of the break, Oral Roberts was able to get a quick 5-0 run to narrow the deficit to single digits but Minnesota would quickly answer that run with a 7-0 run of their own to grow their lead back to 16.

A few minutes later, the Gophers would put any sort of comeback effort by Oral Roberts to bed by going on a 20-7 run, growing their lead to 65-39 with under eight minutes to play. The lead for Minnesota would grow to as large as 28-points in the second half before ultimately ending up at the final score of 80-57.

The Golden Gophers return to action on Saturday afternoon against the Omaha Mavericks. Omaha opened up their season on Monday night with a 85-69 win over Mid-America Christian, an NAIA program. Omaha will travel to Florida for a matchup against Stetson on Thursday before making the trip to Minneapolis for Saturday's matchup. Tip-off is scheduled for 3:30 p.m.

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