***OFFICIAL NIKO MEDVED OPENING PRESS CONFERENCE THREAD!!!***

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goldenboy said:
One wonders if he will retain Thorson as an assistant? Would that continuity be beneficial with the HS commits?
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This deal with Niko has been in the works for quite some time. No secret Thorson was was put in charge after Ben was let go. He’ll be on the bench next season.
 
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So who will Niko bring with him other than his family?

Someone on GI who claims to have the inside poop says some CSU players are tagging along.
 

jamiche said:
You run a business. Putting any employee in a highly competitive, resource poor environment and telling him he better hit his numbers without any of the tools of his competitors is going to be a disaster.
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This just isn't true. No one expected Ben to hit the same numbers as the teams with the highest resources. But Ben's resources were still better than 80% of the country. But I'm not going to continue to beat this dead horse because it has been discussed enough the last 4 years. Ben was a disaster because he's not good at this job. Time to move on.

Niko is not going to suddenly get blank checkbook to buy whoever. He will still have to build this program the same way he had to build Colorado St's, just with a bigger budget. But it's still going to be bottom half of the B1G. But that's also where Wisconsin, Purdue, Iowa, etc lie.

Good coaches, and good leaders of successful businesses generate success by maximizing the budgets they are given. Not necesarily because they start with the highest budget compared to their peers. Otherwise big companies would never fail and startups would never succeed.
 

jamiche said:
As you know, not a chance Johnson left himself an empty cupboard last year. I shouldn't have to restate the obvious, but evidently I do. Christie left for the NBA. Not Ben's fault. Payne and Hawkins left for much bigger paydays. Again, not Ben's fault. JOJ didn't play defense and Carrington didn't play offense. Their new coaches didn't get any more out of them than Ben did. Ben didn't choose to get rid of those key contributors.

Firing Ben was the right decision. He was dogged by too much failure at this point to have any chance at success.

You run a business. Putting any employee in a highly competitive, resource poor environment and telling him he better hit his numbers without any of the tools of his competitors is going to be a disaster.

If Medved took the job without a contractual guarantee of sufficient money for the program to compete at a high level he's made a big career mistake.
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Ben recruited both JOJ and Carrington (as well as a bunch of other duds). Every program loses players. I suppose in your world, we should credit Ben for Dawson Garcia and Hawkins, but not blame him for the departures? Funny how that works.

As to the bold, when you pay people millions of dollars, you expect them to work as essentially a CEO of the program. The failure to drive money into the basketball program is, at least partially, due to the vacuum of excitement around the program. The program hired a person for reasons completely unrelated to basketball and then expected the basketball fans to be thrilled while we were the worst program in the conference. The purple haired lunatics and race hustlin' journalists that they appeased with Ben's hire were never going to drop a dime in any sort of NIL fund.

We all love basketball. If we have a competent program the fund will grow. Is it enough to compete with the top of the conference? No, we won't. Is it enough to not be the worst program in the Big 10, absolutely.
 






Holy Man said:
Big difference is Niko has a foundation to build on in his own career that Ben didn’t. He’s miles ahead of where Ben was at the beginning, even with a pretty empty roster. I’m confident he can bring in guys who can compete right away.
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I see it similarly. It's not so critical that 3 or 4 from CSU transfer. If a couple of them do, great. But Niko will sign guys that will contribute. The portal is wide open, he has an established brand that will attract in the way the Gophers seemed behind the 8 ball on the portal front. And prep-wise, he'll do well. I think it's all signs positive.
 




dlnavra said:
I see it similarly. It's not so critical that 3 or 4 from CSU transfer. If a couple of them do, great. But Niko will sign guys that will contribute. The portal is wide open, he has an established brand that will attract in the way the Gophers seemed behind the 8 ball on the portal front. And prep-wise, he'll do well. I think it's all signs positive.
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Still would benefit from some CSU players that know the culture and can lead.
 





GopherWeatherGuy said:
This just isn't true. No one expected Ben to hit the same numbers as the teams with the highest resources. But Ben's resources were still better than 80% of the country. But I'm not going to continue to beat this dead horse because it has been discussed enough the last 4 years. Ben was a disaster because he's not good at this job. Time to move on.

Niko is not going to suddenly get blank checkbook to buy whoever. He will still have to build this program the same way he had to build Colorado St's, just with a bigger budget. But it's still going to be bottom half of the B1G. But that's also where Wisconsin, Purdue, Iowa, etc lie.

Good coaches, and good leaders of successful businesses generate success by maximizing the budgets they are given. Not necesarily because they start with the highest budget compared to their peers. Otherwise big companies would never fail and startups would never succeed.
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Pretty much agree with this. But something that Kill said during his tenure also rings true IMHO. The Gophers (football and basketball) have a very small margin for error. They have to be super consistent/fundamental and have a bit of luck vs. top tier competition, or they will end up on the short end of things. At least for a whle, they are not going to "out-talent" many teams. Go Gophers!
 

wdgold said:
I've been following this program since the 70s and have never felt so down about this program since the 97 mess with Clem. Always hopeful when a new coach comes in and hope he does well here.
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I believe if Niko coached this years team they would have made the tourney. Hard to beat (at home even) the lower teams if you don’t run some sort of offense.
 

Bayfieldgopher said:
So who will Niko bring with him other than his family?

Someone on GI who claims to have the inside poop says some CSU players are tagging along.
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I think he had a gardener named Jose, I'm told he may bring him with to Minnesota.
 




I think this press conference is incredibly important for the future of the program. It's a topic for another time, but one thing Coyle didn't get enough heat for was not promoting Ben Johnson enough early in his tenure. There was zero excitement from the jump.

1. State a vision- Let us know how you are going to play, what type of skills you value in players, and what type of environment you want the Barn to be.

2. No built in excuses- I don't want to hear Medved or Coyle start any sentence with "at Minnesota..." or emphasize doing things "the right way". I also don't want to hear the word "culture" unless it's in reference to a very specific aspect of the program.

3. An NIL push- Make this press conference exciting and lay out a vision for the program, but don't shy away from the NIL component. Come out and ask the fans/businesses to get behind you. If you've already had a great donation from an individual or business name them (if they are comfortable with that) and thank them.

This can't be a message of "x" years to be competitive. It's been 6 years since the last NCAA tournament and 8 since we've had a winning conference record. The fans are starving for a product to get behind and the fans that left aren't coming back unless the product improves. Neither Coyle or Medved needs to come out like Brewster, but this press conference should be the start of a completely new energy complete with new expectations for this basketball program.
 

EG#9 said:
I think this press conference is incredibly important for the future of the program. It's a topic for another time, but one thing Coyle didn't get enough heat for was not promoting Ben Johnson enough early in his tenure. There was zero excitement from the jump.
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The press conference is irrelevant to the future of the program.

Jack jones said:
Oh, heaven forbid, a white male. Who would have thought?
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Haskins -> Monson -> Smith -> Pitino -> Johnson -> Medved

It was the white man's turn.
 

MilosRevenge said:
The press conference is irrelevant to the future of the program.



Haskins -> Monson -> Smith -> Pitino -> Johnson -> Medved

It was the white man's turn.
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Was there a black coach with similar success to Medved who was a realistic target? Does this also mean every coach since Clem was hired based on skin color?
 


I've read about his mega wealthy father in law here on gopher hole. Maybe Medved starts off by flipping his Father in Law and getting his first big gopher booster!
 

MilosRevenge said:
The press conference is irrelevant to the future of the program.



Haskins -> Monson -> Smith -> Pitino -> Johnson -> Medved

It was the white man's turn.
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Please use the sarcasm emoji here please. If it’s not sarcastic, it’s insane.
 





It will be interesting to see if there will be any current players at the press conference? If Garcia is there could be very telling. 🤷‍♀️
 

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