How would you grade the 2025-26 Gophers basketball season?

How would you grade the 2025-26 Gophers basketball season?

  • A

    Votes: 5 4.9%

  • B

    Votes: 63 61.8%

  • C

    Votes: 31 30.4%

  • D

    Votes: 3 2.9%

  • F

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    102
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How would you grade the 2025-26 Gophers basketball season?
 


A 15-17 can't be better than average for me. We lost a crap ton of guys, but we still didn't win a game in the B1G tournament. Saying that result is above average doesn't equate for me.
 





I may have weighted the grade too heavily on the final exam, but that was a major buzzkill of a game for me tonight losing to a lower seed. Ask me in a couple days, and I’d probably upgrade to a B.
 

Gave it a C which was a whole lot better than I expected.
 

C. I like Niko. The games are generally fun to watch. Let's start winning somewhat constantly before we start thinking this is the second coming of Clem. Based on all the positivity around here and for how great everyone says 8 Big Ten wins was this year then I fully expect we pick up the 4 we lost to teams that finished below us next year. 12-8 or better in the Big Ten next year or bust. Go Gophers.
 



Really easy B for me.

Asuma and Grove were the two returners and both got improved from their freshman year (As person who has watched a lot of Grove I didn’t think he was P4 player and I was wrong)

Tyson moved from a non impact P4 player to a Honorable Mention B10 player

Durkin massively improved throughout the season.

JCJ and Reynolds both did good moving up from mid majors to power 4 competition.

I don’t think there was a single player who played was worse than expectations outside of Turner and that is massive credit to Niko.

I think people are underestimating only playing 6 guys thing. Players have bad games and with all of the injuries we had no other options to replace a bad game. Like Reynolds was bad tonight but he had to play every minute because they don’t have another option. It’s crazy how Niko won so many games with so little room for error.

Also they started the year playing man and was able to switch to zone and be relatively effective based on the circumstances, that is what I call great coaching.

They played a fun brand a basketball, they said before the game 72% of the gophers basketball came from asts this season and no team in the last 10 years in the NCAA had a season over 70%. In today’s era Niko got one of the best team basketball systems ever.

Great year 1, I really enjoyed watching this year, excited for year 2 with expectations raised. I will say my overall grade on this season will go down if they don’t retain at least 3 of 4 of the core 4 because if they don’t the gophers really didn’t build anything it was just fun watching. So retain your players please.
 

Gold Vision said:
I may have weighted the grade too heavily on the final exam, but that was a major buzzkill of a game for me tonight losing to a lower seed. Ask me in a couple days, and I’d probably upgrade to a B.
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I am like that too, the beatdown stings. I am one of those, gets too high, gets too low guys. My motto is: If some is good, more is better, and way too much is best of all.
 

C
Before "grade inflation," a C meant satisfactory.
Gopher basketball was fun to watch this year, unlike the previous several years.
Some great wins, some disappointing losses.
Looking forward to next year (unlike previous several years).
 
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Gave it a B, despite all the injuries they over performed the expectation I had for them in big ten play, they went 8-12 and I thought they would go 7-13. Talent wise by the end they were really two win team so hats off to the staff for the improvement throughout the year and to the players for their resilience
 



I gave it an A based on the fact that, basically from the jump, we were thin up front. Vaihola being our only legit big, then him going out, Willis going out, Omot and Stephens not even playing, the fact we were 12-4 at home, including ranked wins against Iowa, Indiana, Michigan State, an upset over UCLA, two annoyingly-heartbreaking losses to Wiscy and keeping the Michigan game close ON THE ROAD, all with 6 players playing and one healthy post player, I'd say that, pound for pound, an A. Yes, we struggled early in the season, but the improvement from every starter was vast and noticeable.
Would I have liked to have seen a post season run? Absolutely. But to ask that was already a big ask. And we could tell the tank was on fumes in the ladder part of the second half, but overall this team is on an upward trajectory, exceeding a ton of people's expectations for this season.
 

The Gophers are like a student who did very C work but had all sorts of trauma and disruption in their homelife. As a teacher I’d likely be sympathetic but I can’t go higher than C here. Fun to see the ever-shrinking undermanned crew overachieve, fun to see great improvement from a few guys, fun to see a well-conceived offense, but 15-17 is 15-17. While we had an ungodly number of injuries, I’m not convinced the record would be much better without them. Omot and Stephens never played and I believe both had injuries issues coming in, so it’s unreasonable to include them in whatifs. JCJ was a key player, but the team adapted well when he went down and played at about the same level. Vaihola and Willis going down were clear blows to the expected rotation, but the reality is that we played some terrible ball with them both healthy, the improvement basically coincided with Willis going out and Reynolds playing more, and it’s tough to see how Vaihola fits in with Niko’s offense. And who knows, maybe the massive improvement from Reynolds, Durkin, et al doesn’t happen without the massive uptick in playing time. At the end of the day I’m giving out a C adorned with many gold stars and encouraging notes, but it’s still a C.
 

went C, but if you're grading on potential its a B. Some good wins, some rough losses (especially early). Another year with no tournament (NCAA) and no BTT wins. Excited for the future for the first time in awhile

To me, there's no bonus points for roster construction/being thin in places. It is what it is and there's no bonus for injuries happening.
Niko can clearly coach basketball and there is a system with the team getting better over the year. Just needs to assemble the horses and the ceiling is clearly the highest its been in a very long time
 

JZABR said:
I gave it an A based on the fact that, basically from the jump, we were thin up front. Vaihola being our only legit big, then him going out, Willis going out, Omot and Stephens not even playing, the fact we were 12-4 at home, including ranked wins against Iowa, Indiana, Michigan State, an upset over UCLA, two annoyingly-heartbreaking losses to Wiscy and keeping the Michigan game close ON THE ROAD, all with 6 players playing and one healthy post player, I'd say that, pound for pound, an A. Yes, we struggled early in the season, but the improvement from every starter was vast and noticeable.
Would I have liked to have seen a post season run? Absolutely. But to ask that was already a big ask. And we could tell the tank was on fumes in the ladder part of the second half, but overall this team is on an upward trajectory, exceeding a ton of people's expectations for this season.
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There in person it was clear they were out of gas in the last eight minutes of the game last night. While I saw fewer games this year than I have in years so have a small sample size, I haven’t seen that much exhaustion this year. The short bench grind caught up to them.

I’ll give a B which is fair, but the need to reload rosters every year has me tempering my hope for the future more than most. Niko has to get a 5 that can compete with other bigs in this conference. Grayson over performs his talent, but his lack of size was exposed twice in the last three games. JCJ is more suited to the 4 I think.

Hit the portal recruiting trail now!
 

I went with B. The roster we were rolling out there during the second half should not have been as successful as it was. Every team deals with injuries but what we dealt with was at a whole different level and should have tanked the season.

Hopefully the players who can return (and the staff wants) decide to and Niko is able to keep building on this year. Will be interesting to see what he is able to bring in from the portal in this cycle now that he has been here a year.
 


Hard for me to grade TBH

In terms of win/loss, D.
In terms of optimism and liking progress, A

I think we got right coach, he just needs to get his bodies. Few more healthy dudes and we probably have 2-3 more wins

So I went with C. Passing, but not great, but I really want to asterisk with it I'm very excited for future.
 

C. Some good moments and showed some promise from the coach. Roster needs a serious upgrade to compete on a season long basis.
 

A solid B that I moved to an A.

Starts at a B based on what the new coach brought in. A solid B for getting those players to buy in to Niko's offense and the way to run it. I move it to an A because of the adversity as the year went on. With the changes they had to make going to a full blown zone D for the last few games and playing it pretty darn well. I think Jim Boehiem would have been proud of the way they played the zone.

I think really good things are coming for the Gopher program and Niko. AWESOME to go into the off season with higher hopes than far many years of the past coaching staffs.

ROW THE BOAT
SKI-U-MAH
GO GOPHER
 

Frankly, it was kind of a weird season. We had as many conference wins over teams with 10+ wins (3) as we did losses against teams with 14+ losses. I guess that speaks to our extremely short bench, but we had the talent to beat top-third level teams, while also inexplicably losing to some really bad teams.
 


GophersInIowa said:
Depends on how you want to interpret the question. The record and results on their own are no better than a C.

But if you factor in a new coach, all the injuries, etc then it's a B+ IMO.
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Yes, the record is mediocre, but the injury circumstances make this season remarkable that the Gophers even got to near .500. Most coaches would not have been able to be as competitive as these Gophers were.
So, I agree. The record is a C-, but the coaching was an A. The effort of the iron 5.5 was an A. The results was a C.
All I can say is that I really enjoyed the overall effort these kids gave us.
 


Holy Man said:
In this world it’s never too late or too early!
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I saw someone from Auburn was (allegedly) scouting the Atlantic Sun championship game because they were interested in someone from Queens College
 


Ski-U-Ham said:
I saw someone from Auburn was (allegedly) scouting the Atlantic Sun championship game because they were interested in someone from Queens College
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Not surprising. Remember that the Rutgers player who torched us for 29 points last night was playing for New Jersey Institute of Technology last season.
 

GophersInIowa said:
Depends on how you want to interpret the question. The record and results on their own are no better than a C.

But if you factor in a new coach, all the injuries, etc then it's a B+ IMO.
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Yeah, agreed
 

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