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03/24 14:05 CDT Niko Medved leaves Colorado State for his native Minnesota
after an NCAA tournament run by the Rams
Niko Medved leaves Colorado State for his native Minnesota after an NCAA
tournament run by the Rams
By DAVE CAMPBELL
AP Sports Writer
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) --- Minnesota hired Colorado State's Niko Medved on Monday,
agreeing to a six-year contract with the Twin Cities-area native and former
student manager for the Gophers who had the Rams within one basket of the Sweet
16.
Medved was the front-runner from the start to succeed Ben Johnson, who was
fired on March 13 after going 56-71 overall and 22-57 in the Big Ten in four
years on the job. Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle has been eager to
revitalize a struggling program that has made the NCAA Tournament twice in the
last 12 seasons.
"This really is a dream job for me," Medved said in a statement distributed by
the university. "I loved my time at Colorado State, and I worked with
tremendous people who made a lasting impact on my life. Those are memories that
I will cherish forever. This job was too special to pass up, and when the
opportunity presented itself, I had to take it."
Colorado State went 26-10 this season, upsetting No. 5 seed Memphis 78-70 in
the first round and losing 72-71 in the second round to No. 4 seed Maryland on
a buzzer-beating bank shot. This was the third time in seven years under Medved
that the Rams hit the 25-win mark and made the NCAA Tournament out of the
Mountain West, perennially one of the strongest mid-major conferences in the
country.
"I've had as much fun and joy coaching this group as any group I've ever been a
part of, and they just keep giving us more," Medved said Sunday in Seattle
after the loss to Maryland. "It's just gut-wrenching. It's just a season you
never want to end. It's just been an incredible ride, and it goes by so fast."
The 51-year-old Medved has been a head coach for 12 seasons, including four
years at Furman and a one-year stop at Drake. He's from Roseville, a suburb
just a few miles from the Minnesota campus where he earned degrees in
kinesiology and sport management. Medved was once a team manager for the
Gophers under coach Clem Haskins, who led them to their only Final Four
appearance in 1997. He started his coaching career later that year as an
assistant at the Division III level at Macalester before assistant positions at
Furman, Minnesota and Colorado State.
Medved received a contract extension last year with a significant raise that
paid him a $1.7 million salary this season and option years that carried the
deal through the 2030-31 season. He went 143-85 with the Rams, the second-best
winning percentage in Colorado State program history. He is 222-173 in his
12-year career.
The Rams had at least one first team All-Mountain West player in each of his
seven seasons. Last year, their high-water mark of 13th in The Associated Press
college basketball poll was the highest in school history.
Minnesota bottomed out at 9-22 overall and 2-17 in the Big Ten in 2022-23,
before making strides in 2023-24 with a spot in the NIT and a 19-15 finish.
This season, the Gophers were tied for the third-worst record in the conference
and went 15-17 overall.
In 28 years since that lone trip to the Final Four, which was later vacated by
the NCAA as part of the punishment for a pattern of academic fraud revealed in
a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press,
Minnesota has made the NCAA Tournament just seven times, with only two wins. In
the last 20 seasons, the Gophers have had a winning record in Big Ten play just
once: 11-7 in 2016-17 under coach Richard Pitino.
Medved's buyout price from Colorado State is 33% of the remaining value on his
deal, about $3.7 million. Johnson, whose annual salary was $1.95 million, the
lowest in the 18-team league, had a buyout of about $2.9 million. This is an
expensive transition for Coyle, the AD, whose desire to return the program to
relevancy on the local sports scene and in the rugged, expanded Big Ten will
require a deeper financial commitment by the university with revenue-sharing
coming to college sports.
Johnson had to repeatedly rebuild rosters at his alma mater in the dawn of the
transfer portal era, with some of his best players lured elsewhere by more NIL
money. He was a Minneapolis native with strong ties to the state, but whether
he was given a fair chance or not, he wasn't able to effectively tap into local
talent as a foundation for program growth.
One of Johnson's assistants, Dave Thorson, was previously an assistant at
Colorado State under Medved and would be a natural fit on a staff that ought to
be well-positioned to productively recruit a Minnesota base that consistently
produces power conference-caliber players. Medved coached Minneapolis native
David Roddy at Colorado State. Roddy was a first-round pick in the 2023 NBA
draft who currently is on Houston's roster.
"There's no doubt we need somebody who embraces Minnesota," Coyle said after
Johnson's firing. "We need somebody who's going to generate excitement. At the
end of the day, I'm a firm believer: When you're winning games, people want to
be a part of that."
___
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