Minnesota Basketball: What has gone wrong?

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This is starting to feel a little too familiar. Gopher basketball is opening the season with a new coaching staff and in today’s college basketball landscape, that means we are essentially starting with a new roster.

An offseason with a coaching change is nothing new for Gopher basketball. This program has not had sustained success since Clem Haskins. And it is debatable if you would call that sustained when it might just be a case of glorifying the past. But the lack of success over the last 25 years is undeniable.

As I was putting together the ranking of each team over the first 25 years of this century, I was a little shocked at just how talented a few of those teams were. It felt like under Tubby Smith and Richard Pitino there were times when we were right on the cusp of having teams capable of making runs in the NCAA Tournament and perhaps even sustaining that level of success. But, for various reasons, it just never worked. Monson was fired during his 7th season. Tubby was fired following an NCAA Tournament win in his 6th season, Pitino was let go after eight seasons and Ben Johnson lasted only four.

Reflecting back on each of these coaching tenures, I wondered what went wrong. Obviously, it was different for each coach, but here is what kept each coach from achieving greater success at The Barn.

Clem Haskins – Cheaters Never Prosper

Clem has had the most success in both the regular season and in the NCAA Tournament. The Final Four run in the 97 tournament was incredible. But Clem was also a missed Kevin Lynch three from upsetting Georgia Tech and advancing to the Final Four in 1990. And in the ‘89 tourney, they advanced to the Sweet 16. Things were rolling under Clem, but he got caught. And it all came crashing down.

Were other programs cheating? For sure. Was Minnesota being used as an example? Probably. But that ‘97 roster was loaded with talent and the hope was this was going to be a catalyst for more. Even before the Pioneer Press article exposed the scandal, it should be noted that the season after the Final Four run, the Gophers missed the NCAA Tournament in ‘98.

It doesn’t matter. He was caught. He lost his job. The program was hit with significant penalties.

Dan Monson – Sins of The Father?

Following Gonzaga’s run to the regional final in 1999, the hottest mid-major name was Dan Monson. Monson accepted the Gopher job, despite the losses of scholarships and postseason ban. His assistant coach, Mark Few took over the Gonzaga program.

The penalties stemming from Clem Haskins were initially challenging, but Monson had eight seasons to get the Gophers back on track, which he never managed to accomplish. He did manage to land some elite, local talent. Perhaps it was luck that he landed a couple of five-star recruits, but Rick Rickert and Kris Humphries both ended up playing for Monson and both were NBA lottery picks.

He had two decent teams. The 2004-05 team made the NCAA Tournament on the back of Vincent Grier and assistant coach Jim Molinari, who taught this team how to play defense. And the 2001-02 team which was Rickert’s first season, but the team missed the NCAA Tournament.

So what was the primary reason that success evaded Monson? It would be easy to blame it on Clem and the sanctions put on the program. But more likely it was a situation where the stage was just a little too big for Monson. That, and not having the right people around him. One could easily make the assumption that Gonzaga’s initial success may have been as much (or more) because Monson had an elite assistant coach. When Few didn’t come with him to Minnesota, there really was very little chance that Monson was going to achieve sustained success here.

WHAT IF? – What if Monson had been able to put more talent around Rickert? Not sure it would have mattered, his teams were never on the verge of doing anything special.

Tubby Smith – Riding off into the sunset, are we?

Tubby was really very close to breaking through. Looking at all of the coaches since Haskins, Smith is the one who may be able to chalk up his shortened tenure to bad luck.

Al Nolen’s suspension and Royce White’s mental breakdown thwarted what was a very talented 2009-10 team.
Al Nolen’s broken foot and the loss of Devoe Joseph could have changed things for the 2010-11 team that was ranked as high as 14th.
Legal troubles for Trevor Mbakwe the following season.
The 2012-13 team was also talented, ranked as high as #8 early in the season and was derailed by…well that was just a late-season swoon after starting 15-1.

But maybe it wasn’t just bad luck with Tubby. He left Kentucky when the temperature on his job status was continuing to heat up. This very much felt like Tubby was coming here to finish out his career at an institution that was just happy to have him. He hired his son to be on the coaching staff and the rest of the staff felt like old coaching buddies, more than hiring the best and brightest.

On top of all that, Tubby is a stubborn individual. When people started to question if his lack of any breakthrough success was due to more than just bad luck, he seemed to double down on doing things his way. His luck never seemed to change.

WHAT IF? The 2009-10 team had remained healthy and Royce White played in more than one game…that team could easily have been playing on the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

Richard Pitino – Recruiting swings and misses

Early on in Pitino’s tenure at Minnesota, he was able to land some outstanding talent. His first full recruiting class included Nate Mason and his second class brought in Jordan Murphy. These two are two of the best players to play on The Barn floor and led a couple of fantastic teams.

His 2016-17 squad had Mason as a senior, Murphy as a junior, Amir Coffey was a freshman and they added a couple of transfers in Reggie Lynch and Akeem Springs to fill in the gaps. This team was very good.

But despite hitting home runs on a few recruits, there were so many misses. And by misses, I don’t mean that they didn’t turn into stars; I mean, they never contributed in any way. The Nate Mason class also included Josh Martin, Gaston Diedhiou, Bakary Konate and Carlos Morris. The Jordan Murphy class had Dupree McBrayer (who was good), but the rest were Kevin Dorsey, Jarvis Johnson and Ahmad Gilbert.

The list of recruits who never saw any meaningful time on the floor is long. And this played out with teams that lacked depth, especially at point guard. But the real miss came in the 2017 class. And this was the critical inflection point for Pitino’s tenure.

Pitino had a verbal commitment from McKinley Wright, a point guard from Champlin Park. But Pitino was also flirting with a 4-star point guard from New York City, named Isaiah Washington. After Wright’s verbal commitment, Pitino (allegedly) told him he wasn’t going to pursue Washington any longer. But then he brought Washington in for an official visit. Washington committed to Pitino, and Wright decommitted. Washington never became more than a YouTube sensation, while Wright went on to be a first-team All-Pac-12 player and is still playing professionally.

The decision to pursue Washington backfired on the floor as well as off, where the Minnesota traveling basketball community did not like how Pitino treated Wright in the recruiting process. Pitino managed to land a great 2018 class of mostly local recruits. But beginning in 2019, Pitino was fighting an uphill battle to recruit any of the top players from Minnesota. Matthew Hurt (despite his brother playing for the Gophers and his family being long-time season ticket holders) chose Duke and Pitino also missed out on Zeke Nnaji, Tyler Wahl and Tyrell Terry to other Power Five programs. He missed out on Dawson Garcia, Kerwin Walton and Dain Dainja in 2020.

Pitino started out recruiting well, and he also ended up having great coaches around him. But there were way too many misses in recruiting, leading to a lack of depth at key positions, and creating his own strained relationships with local recruiting.

WHAT IF? Pitino stuck with Wright instead of Washington? The 2018-19 team would have paired Wright with Murphy, Coffey, McBrayer and talented freshmen Gabe Kalscheur and Daniel Orturu. Wright would have bridged the gap at point guard, where Pitino really struggled after Mason graduated. Had Wright played in a Gopher uniform, Pitino would still be our coach.

Ben Johnson – Culture matters when storms hit

Johnson was hired during the perfect storm of the college basketball landscape shifting dramatically. Maybe it wasn’t really a perfect storm; it was more of an earthquake. Johnson was hired to run a Big Ten program without any head coaching experience. But he was able to convince Dave Thorson to join him on staff and the hope was that they would start rebuilding the program and the relationships with coaches around the state. The returning roster was also very strong.

But this was when the combination of NIL resources, free transfers and the extra year of eligibility due to Covid all converged. The entire roster transferred and Johnson had to piece together an entirely new roster from the transfer portal.

This is understandable when you first take over a program. In fact, it is becoming common. But the problem is that Johnson had to do this more than once. Johnson’s most successful season came when he had the most returning production. In year three, Johnson was returning a solid core of recruits who were now going to be sophomores in Pharrell Payne, Braedon Carrington and Josh Ola-Joseph to go along with Dawson Garcia. He added Elijah Hawkins and Mike Mitchell Jr from the transfer portal and he was bringing in Cam Christie, an elite freshman.

This roster was talented and they battled in the Big Ten, falling short of the NCAA Tournament. It was a roster that was eligible to return for one more run until Christie entered the draft, the sophomores all transferred along with Hawkins and it was basically just Garcia remaining. Johnson was forced to start over again.

Ultimately, it was bad timing for Johnson, paired with his lack of experience. PJ Fleck has managed to navigate these tricking NIL/Portal waters, largely because he has created a culture with his program. A culture that players buy into and want to be a part of. Johnson never found that. It felt like he was treading water, trying to keep his head above the surface from day one.

WHAT IF? All of those key pieces returned for the 2024-25 season. I’m not sure if more success would have followed. It feels like it might have bought Johnson another year or two, but this ending was inevitable.

Niko Medved – Building the program, brick by brick

In each of the last two coaching hires for basketball, Medved’s name has always been a part of the conversation. And frankly, I had always been unconvinced he would be the right guy.

Since he was hired, I have been impressed and believe that he will quickly return the program to a level of competence and stability. This feels very much like the early seasons of Jerry Kill, building the program back brick by brick to put it on a solid foundation. This is not meant to be insulting to Medved, nor is it presuming that his ceiling is getting back to mediocrity. I think is the worst-case scenario for Medved and the program.

They are recruiting players who are the right fit for what they want to do and they have already demonstrated a track record of being able to teach their system.

Perhaps it has been bad luck or just a couple of missteps with prior Gopher coaches that have thwarted any sustained success with the Gopher program. But can Medved get a little luck? A little momentum that turns into a trip to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament? Is that too much to ask?

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