MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The new job at Minnesota is all-consuming for Niko Medved like any major college basketball coach, with his mission to lift a long-languishing program back into the upper level of the Big Ten at a time of unprecedented transformation in the sport leaving little time for reflection.
Every once in a while, though, he'll see a familiar face from the past, walk past a certain place on campus, or roam through the cramped subterranean
corridors at Williams Arena and find himself flashing back to a brief time when the Gophers were the hottest ticket in town and The Barn, as the 97-year-old building has long been called, was as tough of a place to play for opponents as anywhere in the conference.
Medved would know, of course, because he was a part of it.
“There have been moments that really excite me where I still feel like there is that underlying support of people who love the ‘U’ and love Gopher basketball. It’s still there somewhere. I can feel it,” said Medved, who was hired by his alma mater seven months ago after a seven-season run at Colorado State. “It’s kind of dormant right now. How do we bring that back and help it grow? That’s really our challenge. But for me that’s a personal challenge. I feel like this is home. I want nothing more than to find a way to build this program back.”
Athletic director Mark Coyle has long had that in mind, too, stating as much when he fired Ben Johnson after the Minnesota native and former Gophers player and assistant went 22-57 in Big Ten play over four seasons.
Success has come in waves at Minnesota, with a consistently strong stretch in the 1950s under Ozzie Cowles and several stacked teams in the 1970s under Bill Musselman and Jim Dutcher before Clem Haskins revived the Gophers again with a trip to the Sweet 16 in 1989.
In a conference that was as loaded as ever, Minnesota finished with a winning record in Big Ten play for four straight seasons from 1993-94 through 1996-97, matching the longest such streak in program history (1951-52 through 1954-55). The Gophers went to their only Final Four in 1997, a feat that was later vacated by the NCAA as part of the widespread punishment for an academic fraud scandal.
Minnesota was between NHL teams then. The Timberwolves were a relatively new — and floundering — team in the NBA. There was less competition for winter attention in a major metro area and more people around who grew up with The Barn's uniquely raised floor as the premier stage for sports in the region.
“The enthusiasm was great," Medved said. "The brand of Gopher basketball was strong.”
Behind the scenes, helping Haskins and his staff from everything from scouting reports to sweat towels, the seeds of a future coaching career were planted for a former high school point guard whose father bought season tickets for the Gophers before he was born.
“You kind of get to see how every part of the program works, and then when you then have the opportunity to be in charge, you kind of have an understanding of what everyone’s doing,” said Medved, who got his first coaching job in 1997 at the NCAA Division III level as an assistant at Macalester, a few miles from the Minnesota campus.
From there, he landed at Furman as an assistant for seven seasons, made a one-year stop at Minnesota, and went to Colorado State for six more seasons before breaking into the head coaching circle. He started at Furman in 2013 for four years, spent one season at Drake, and then pivoted to Colorado State for the next seven years before getting the chance to come home. The Rams hit the 25-win mark and made the NCAA Tournament in three of the last four seasons, finishing one basket short of the Sweet 16 last spring.
One of four new head coaches in the Big Ten this season, three of which spent time at Drake, Medved had to bring in 10 transfers and inherited only one returning player, sophomore guard Isaac Asuma, who was on the court last season. The revenue sharing era has also created another challenge to navigate as he and his staff try to build a winner. But the timing might also be a benefit, with every other program that's not one of the traditional blue bloods entering a similar unknown. Coyle has said Minnesota's goal is to spend on men's basketball at a level that matches its peers.
“If not now, then when?” Medved said.
Players have raved during the preseason about how strong the chemistry on and off the court is, despite few prior relationships within this patchwork roster that's become more and more commonplace across the game. Medved's offense is built around cutting, spacing and ball movement, tenets that tend to dovetail with players recruited whose priorities aren't necessarily big NIL money or NBA draft status.
“I think the secret sauce to us turning programs around has been the people who are like-minded with the same values who want to be part of a team, who love basketball,” Medved said.
Forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson followed Medved from Colorado State and said he knew “right then and there” when Medved got the Minnesota job that he wanted to go, too.
“He’s really emphasizing building good relationships with his players for sure,” Crocker-Johnson said.
Guard Langston Reynolds, who came from Northern Colorado and played against Medved's team twice, was drawn to the genuine demeanor.
“He tells you what you need to be doing and what you need to be focused on. If you do the right things, then everything else will work out. I think just how he is on camera is exactly how he is off camera,” Reynolds said. “That’s just how he is as a coach and as a person.”
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