Brent Yarina, BTN.com Senior Editor, November 3, 2012

Trevor Mbakwe is very confident in his team, to the point that he's making a guarantee. The Minnesota power forward tweeted Saturday night that he'll pay back this season's scholarship if the Gophers don't make the NCAA tournament. See the tweet in this post, plus a couple follow up ones.

https://twitter.com/TMbakwe32/status/264973948125581312

Mbakwe followed up with these tweets:

https://twitter.com/TMbakwe32/status/264974693801529344

https://twitter.com/TMbakwe32/status/264977912720154624

Mbakwe missed all but seven games last year after suffering a season-ending ACL injury. The Gophers survived without their best player, making the NIT and advancing all the way to the NIT finals in New York City. With Mbakwe set to join the core of last year's team, including Joe Coleman, Andre Hollins and Rodney Williams, among others, the senior has plenty of reason for optimism.

But Minnesota hasn't made the NCAA tourney in each of last two seasons. Will this year be different? Clearly, Minnesota's best player thinks so.

BTN.com web editor Brent Yarina covers football and men's basketball for BTN.com. He writes the popular uniform feature "Clothes Call," which also focuses on the latest cosmetic changes across Big Ten arenas and stadiums. Read all of his work here. You can subscribe to Yarina's RSS feed and follow him on Twitter @BTNBrentYarina.