Brent Yarina, BTN.com Senior Editor, January 9, 2013

Heading into Wednesday night's game at No. 13 Illinois, No. 10 Minnesota still had its doubters. This was, for the most part, the same team that missed the NCAA tournament last season. So, it was only normal that it would have naysayers despite a 14-1 record, the lone loss coming to No. 1 Duke abroad.

After the 84-67 road beatdown over a talented Illini team, well, the Gophers have their believers. And they should. Check out some of the Twitter praise for the Gophers in this post.

[ RELATED: Watch all the highlights from Minnesota's win at Illinois ]

That's a lot of praise, and from some highly respected personalities.

It's deserved, though. Few teams can match Minnesota's combination of strength, size, athleticism and depth. No, the Gophers may not be the best outside shooting team, but they get easy looks and rebound their misses better than any other team in the nation.

Simply put, Minnesota is for real. And its next test is another big one, as it visits No. 5 Indiana on Saturday on BTN/BTN2Go.

Something to keep in mind: Minnesota was the only team to go into Indiana and hand the Hoosiers a loss last season. It should be fun.

Here's our postgame interview with Joe Coleman:

About Brent Yarina 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.