nooram
Leave my member out of it!
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2008
- Messages
- 2,126
- Reaction score
- 890
- Points
- 113
Three takeaways from chat with Gophers men’s basketball coach Niko Medved
The first-year coach talks roster build, summer workouts and potential games with St. Thomas.
www.twincities.com
The decor in Niko Medved’s office is still a work in progress.
The furniture is set up: desk in the back, sitting area with black leather couch and two chairs arranged in the front, overlooking the Gophers men’s basketball program’s practice courts.
But the walls are mostly bare. For instance, a framed Memphis Grizzlies jersey of David Roddy, a Minneapolis native and Medved’s best player at Colorado State, is propped up on the floor.
The Gophers men’s basketball coach can be excused for his lack of interior designing; he’s been busy the past two-plus months putting together almost an entirely new roster, amassing nine new players via the NCAA transfer portal.
“It’s obviously chaotic,” Medved told the Pioneer Press in an interview in his office on Thursday. “You’ve got so many spots to fill (on the roster) and on your (coaching) staff. Then it’s just moving. My family is still not here yet full-time. … It’s been a whirlwind, but really cool.”
Medved’s players just moved into apartments in Dinkytown and will begin summer workouts he will lead inside Athletes Village starting next week.
Here are three takeaways from Medved’s conversation with the Pioneer Press:
The roster build
“I like the (new players) that we were able to get,” Medved said. “One of the things I say is I think they’re all really good guys. I really enjoyed them as people. And now, once we all get together, it’ll be interesting to see how it meshes.”
A burning question Medved receives is how will his debut team come together. That, of course, also is a work in progress. He knows what he might want, and where, on the court, but it hasn’t been nailed down.
“Getting to put your stamp on something here, and these (players) kind of getting their chance to put a stamp on something, is going to be a fun challenge for us,” he said.
Medved is in his fourth head-coaching job since 2013, but NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) payments to players has changed the recruiting landscape, especially in the transfer portal era.
“I’d be remiss not saying one of the first things I think most schools do now is they try to figure out (NIL with transfers),” Medved said. “And once that you feel like, ‘OK, that’s something that can be in our price (range),’ ” you move forward.
Medved will have more money available to spend than predecessor Ben Johnson did, with federal Judge Claudia Wilken approving the House vs. NCAA settlement on Friday. Starting this summer, schools will have $20 million to spend on players across varying sports.
In the college basketball world, a transfer’s “market value” has been a hot topic, Medved said.
“It’s hard to understand someone’s true values when there’s not a salary cap, right?” he said. “Value is different for every program, depending on budget or what they might be willing to spend. So, that’s made it tricky this year without the House settlement happening yet. You’ve got budgets all over the place and everything like that, and so the spending has been unprecedented.”
However, some things in recruiting never change.
“There’s a certain skill level, an IQ level, and stuff like that, that we really like,” Medved said. “But then I think you’ve got to find guys that love basketball. There are ‘like it,’ ‘love it, live it’ guys. You can’t be a ‘like it’ guy (and make it in our program). You’ve got to be a ‘love it or live it’ guy.”
Medved said he and his coaches will vet prospects using their networks of contacts. They want to determine a player’s character and ability to handle the adversity that will inevitably strike.
“If money is the most important thing to you, then this isn’t the right program for you,” Medved said. “… We take care of our guys at a high level, and we want to do that, but it’s still got to be about more than that.”
Medved said the goal is to always recruit high school players, ideally bringing in two or three freshmen each year. That is already happening with East Ridge point guard Cedric Tomes committing to the U’s 2026 class on May 10.
“I do think we had proved it at our other places, that you can get high school guys, they can develop, they can stay,” Medved said. “Because I think it’s not just talent, it’s also continuity.”
Summer workout plan
After seven years at Colorado State, Medved and assistants will be teaching their style of play fresh to a new team for the first time next week.“It’s going to be like drinking out of a fire hose,” Medved said. “Whole new terminology, a whole new system. But like what I’ll tell the guys, it’s a learning process for them. It’s also a learning process for me and our staff.”
Medved will spend time early in practice on skill development and introduce the offensive system before defensive principles come in July.
“The goal, usually for me, by the end of the summer, when these guys leave at the end of July: Do they have a pretty decent overall feel of our offensive system and some of our base defense?” Medved asked.
Johnson’s offenses could stagnate, and that is one thing Medved won’t tolerate.
“It’s the ball movement, the cutting,” he said. “I think one of the things we do a really good job of, hopefully, is trying to teach guys to play without the ball, too. Everybody wants to play with the ball, but (it’s also) understanding how to play without the ball, how to space, how to cut, how to move the ball better, the pace that we play at, guys always being able to play to the next action, and just feeling comfortable and confident where they can play together that way.”
One intriguing facet of Medved’s first roster is an abundance of versatility in new players.
“I really like guys who can play multiple spots,” Medved said. “I think fans will see the way we play. There’s a lot of guys who can play interchangeably on defense and offense, guys who can shoot the ball, pass the ball, who can cut, who can play both with and without the ball.”
Rivalry with St. Thomas?
Medved said he and St. Thomas coach John Tauer had a long conversation on Wednesday, but it “wasn’t necessarily about” the two Division I teams playing each other.“I’m not opposed to doing that,” Medved said, reiterating a stance contrary to Johnson’s unwillingness to play the upstart St. Paul program.
But Medved added Thursday, “I’m not going to play St Thomas every year.”
It also appears the first match-up between the two Twin Cities teams won’t come this winter. “There will probably be a situation at some point down the road where we do play,” Medved said.
Last edited:
