What grade would you give Mark Coyle's hire of Niko Medved?

What grade would you give Mark Coyle's hire of Niko Medved?

  • A

    Votes: 123 62.8%

  • B

    Votes: 67 34.2%

  • C

    Votes: 6 3.1%

  • D

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • F

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    196
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matt said:
You give the Ben Johnson hire a D and the Niko Medved hire a C?
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Yeah, I think that is about right.

I gave him a “D” for Ben instead of an F simply because I figured someone told him to do it.

As for now,
An A would have been for something monumental, like getting Dutcher out of San Diego, Shaka, or like hiring Bobby Knight the day after Indiana fired him! Something more seismic!

A B grade would have been pulling a DeVries, Wade, or even a Musselman like hire. Something a more blue chip school would be up to.

The C grade is appropriate because it’s just so freaking obvious. Like having the test answers and filling them out correctly. This would have been an A or B had he made it four years ago by hiring Dutcher or Musselman which were obvious choices at the time which would have made their hiring a B-.

Anyway, he made a good, but obvious choice.
 

B+

I’m on-board with this hire and ready to see what he can do. He clearly has an eye for under-the-radar talent and has a proven track record of players improving under his guidance. Now can he consistently recruit at a power conference level? And will the administration finally care about men’s basketball? Hopefully this hire is only step 1 regarding that last question.
 

A

This is one of the guys that a lot of us had on our short list.
 


After some thought, I "settled" on a B.

Not bad. Absolutely better than Johnson.

But not an A.
 



I would have given an A-. Good hire. Despite the delusional crowd that thinks we could bring in a can’t miss guy from the south with a history of corruption, really tough to do much better than a guy on the way up, instant credibility, and still in the prime of his career who has proven he can evaluate and develop talent. A coherent modern offensive system really helps too. Lack of Power 5 experience is only ding.
 


I gave an A for two reasons:

1. Niko can coach, recruit players and puts some in the NBA. He built winning programs at Furman and Colorado State without controversy.

2. Coyle picked a successful coach he thought he could get to Minnesota and he got him without drama despite some political proclamations from the community.

We’ll see how Medved does, but he will need lots of NIL dollars to run a stable program. Not what I want, but it’s the current state of big time college basketball.
 



A for the hire but I don’t credit Coyle with it. It was too obvious to give Coyle credit.
 








Dave H said:
Yep. The deal was agreed to it was the worst kept secret in basketball.
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Coyle was smart. He signed Niko before his stock rose these past two weeks and before other jobs opened (like WV). It is impossible to keep a secret like that for nearly 2 weeks but the early move by Coyle probably saved the U several million from what I hear.
 


Not saying Niko is the Messiah or anything, but definitely A+ hire. I think he is better than anything we have shown we can get in recent history. If Medved didn’t have ties to Minnesota, would he have even been an option for us this time around? Or would he have been too established a bigger program would’ve hired him?
 

GopherHole Staff said:
What grade would you give Mark Coyle's hire of Niko Medved?
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6.02 times 10 to the 23rd. On a 1-100 scale.

Letter grade - A+ obviously, though probably the easiest test you're ever gonna get as an AD. Could hardly have screwed this up.
 
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Dave H said:
I find it convenient that every time Coyle makes a good hire people find ways to not give him credit because it was the "obvious" pick., it’s because I just don’t like him, and used an excuse
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Dave H said:
I find it convenient that every time Coyle makes a good hire people find ways to not give him credit because it was the "obvious" pick.
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You are not wrong. I just don’t like Coyle so I made an excuse not to give him credit.
 


I went with a B (would have been B+ if an option), but I am not sure if anyone I would have considered an A was actually possible. If DeVries (who would have been great for Iowa or Minnesota) is the hire at Indiana and Villanova seems to be struggling to get a big name as well, then I don't think we were ever getting a big name sitting head coach to jump. I just worry that the state of the program requires something seismic (to use another posters term) and Coyle and the regents deserve a lot of blame for putting us in the position to possibly need a coach that was impossible to attain.

For what it's worth I was listening to the CurryHicksSage (on Twitter/X) spaces tonight (he's sort of an off shoot of Trilly Donovan for those who are unaware) and he called Medved possibly the only A+ hire of this cycle in his opinion. He stated that he's a guy (along with McCollum) who is transcendent enough to win without great NIL in this era (lets not test that theory and have great NIL). He was talking about how Villanova should have went hard after Medved and conceded that maybe they just found out quickly that he wanted to coach back home. Probably the most encouraging thing he said was that he was talking to a guy who attends 70 plus college practices a year and he said Nikos practice from an offensive perspective was the best of all of them...by far. Said Niko continuously adds to his offense throughout the season and also praised him as an elite developer of talent.
 

Dave H said:
I find it convenient that every time Coyle makes a good hire people find ways to not give him credit because it was the "obvious" pick.
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Yeah....there are some posters with a real vendetta against Coyle who seem to take issue with whatever he does. These were the same people accusing him of starting the media blitz in some desperation to keep Ben as the coach....and then they were certain he wouldn't be able to land Niko.

Coyle isn't good in front of the cameras but he isn't the complete mess some make him out to be either.
 

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