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Many couldn’t understand the NCAA Tournament committee’s decision to give Minnesota a No. 5 seed, and the Golden Gophers showed why in their first-round loss to Middle Tennessee.

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MILWAUKEE — Blame it on Nate Mason’s in-game hip issue. Blame it on Reggie Lynch being in foul trouble. Heck, throw some blame on Akeem Springs suffering a season-ending injury, if you must.

None of those are valid excuses, though. More descriptive, they exposed Minnesota’s flaws in its 81-72 first-round loss to No. 12 seed Middle Tennessee on Thursday in Milwaukee.

Mason having to gut out the injury he suffered in the second half is admirable, and there’s no denying that. But Mason playing 38 minutes? Psh. Been there, done that – seven other times this season, to be exact.

Why? No depth. And that goes for the Gophers not being able to compensate for Springs’ absence, too. They got away with it for the most part throughout the season because of their defense, which held opponents to a Big Ten-low 39.8 percent shooting.

Not going to work against an explosive Middle Tennessee team that can score almost at will against most teams in the country.

Lynch being in foul trouble? Nothing new. The Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year fouled out eight times this season and finished 10 more with four fouls, including Thursday. Lynch was upset with the officiating, but those calls weren’t made because of his reputation – and they’re not the reason Minnesota lost.

Eric Curry scored 11 points in 21 minutes off the bench. The other three Gophers’ reserves – Stephon Sharp, Bakary Konate and Michael Hurt – played a combined nine minutes. Curry was the only one of the four who scored a point.

In Minnesota’s Big Ten semifinal loss to Michigan, Curry accounted for 19 of the 20 team minutes off the bench. Even when Springs was healthy, coach Richard Pitino couldn’t trust a good portion of those players who didn’t start.

The Gophers finished 259th in the nation in combined minutes off the bench per game with an average of 56.2. That screams of Minnesota not having enough depth, and it came back to bite them against a very deep and talented Middle Tennessee team.

Maybe the committee ignored that and got caught up in the story. And it’s a pretty good little story.

The Gophers won only eight games last season and made a significant turnaround to finish 24-10 in 2016-17. Pitino deserved and won Big Ten Coach of the Year. Those accomplishments can’t be ignored, because Minnesota fought and clawed its way to a school record for victories in a season that hasn’t been vacated.

But that No. 5 seed? Woof.

No matter how proud Pitino is of this group – and he should be, considering how it got so much out of so little to make it even this far – doesn’t take away from the fact that the Gophers were over-seeded. If it wasn’t Middle Tennessee exposing their flaws, it would’ve been another team.

“To flip it like we did (from last season), our players deserve a lot of credit to be able to do that,” Pitino said. “They raised the expectations so quickly. And next year it’s going to be even more, obviously when you have almost everybody back and you got some exciting recruits coming in.

This just wasn’t the year. At the very least, the committee should’ve seen that.

MORE: Cinderella? Middle Tennessee Was The Better Team All Along