Niko Medved was born into a family of Gophers basketball fans. Now he’s their head coach
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The gravitation toward the Gophers for Niko Medved began even before he was born, when his father bought the season tickets that would soon spark his young son’s passion for college basketball.
With that kind of initiation, becoming the coach at Minnesota might well have been inevitable — even if part of him was still having a hard time believing the job he left Colorado State to accept was his.
“If you really believe in something and you stick with it and you get the right people who support you, anything can happen,” Medved said Tuesday at his introductory news conference packed with family members, current players, program boosters, other Gophers coaches and cheerleaders in maroon and gold.
Medved, who was hired on a six-year contract that starts at $3 million annually, couldn’t have fathomed such compensation when he enrolled at Minnesota in 1992 and became a student manager on the staff under coach Clem Haskins.
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Those were the days when Williams Arena was a much harder place for opponents to leave the raised floor with a win, when Gophers basketball was one of the hottest tickets in town.
“It’s just a magical place,” Medved said.
The Barn, as it's colloquially known, is 97 years old with an uncertain future. Followers of the Gophers are frequently divided over whether it should be demolished and replaced or just renovated to enhance the fan experience, but Medved made clear that he's far more focused on recruiting, staff and community support than the age of the main stage. The Gophers, after all, have a sparkling practice facility that opened in 2018.
“When that place is packed, there’s a certain energy in there that’s different than anywhere you go,” Medved said. “There’s ghosts in Williams Arena. Do you know what I mean? In a good way. I want that to be a strength of our program.”
Terms of his agreement, made public by the university on Tuesday, include annual $100,000 raises and automatic one-year extensions for each NCAA Tournament invitation. The deal is subject to a standard background check completion and formal approval by the Board of Regents, which must occur within two weeks.
Athletic director Mark Coyle has signaled that boosting men’s basketball is a priority, a commitment that comes at an expensive juncture. Colorado State is owed a buyout for Medved at one-third of the remaining value on his contract, and Minnesota has a buyout of about $2.9 million to pay his predecessor Ben Johnson. Factor in the $1 million raise in salary from Johnson to Medved and the revenue sharing coming to college sports, and the commencement of this goal of being a Big Ten contender essentially equates to a startup cost beyond $10 million even if the money comes from different buckets.
Coyle said the athletic department's operating budget can cover it without taking on debt, with reserve funds earmarked for Medved's buyout. He said his goal is for the men's basketball team to be compensated — including revenue sharing and NIL money — at total amount that would rank in the top one-third of the Big Ten.
That's one of several areas where more filled seats at Williams Arena would help. The average over 19 home games of announced attendance figures this season was 8,923 per game, about 61 percent of the arena’s current capacity.
“Our crowds weren’t what we hoped they would be. When the fans did show up, they were awesome and they were loud, but there’s no doubt we need that energy, that excitement,” Coyle said, adding: “That’s no disrespect to anybody before, but we needed something different.”
Johnson was a native of the Twin Cities area who'd previously been an assistant with the program, like Medved, but his successor comes with 12 years of experience as a head coach over stops at Furman, Drake and Colorado State. Medved made a point to praise Johnson at the beginning of his remarks, a sign of respect of their friendship within the cutthroat profession.
The Gophers never made the NCAA Tournament in four years under Johnson as the game rapidly changed, and they've been there only twice in the past 12 years. That's as good of a place as any to start.
“I just feel like now is a time,” Medved said. “We’ve went through this transition in college athletics, and now is the time more than ever that Minnesota is poised to take the next step forward.”
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