Niko Medved leaves Colorado State for his native Minnesota after an NCAA tournament run by the Rams

Minnesota hired Colorado State’s Niko Medved on Monday, agreeing to a six-year contract with the Twin Cities-area native and former student manager for the Gophers who had the Rams within one basket of the Sweet 16.

Medved was the front-runner from the start to succeed Ben Johnson, who was fired on March 13 after going 56-71 overall and 22-57 in the Big Ten in four years on the job. Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle has been eager to revitalize a struggling program that has made the NCAA Tournament twice in the last 12 seasons.

“This really is a dream job for me,” Medved said in a statement distributed by the university. “I loved my time at Colorado State, and I worked with tremendous people who made a lasting impact on my life. Those are memories that I will cherish forever. This job was too special to pass up, and when the opportunity presented itself, I had to take it.”

Colorado State went 26-10 this season, upsetting No. 5 seed Memphis 78-70 in the first round and losing 72-71 in the second round to No. 4 seed Maryland on a buzzer-beating bank shot. This was the third time in seven years under Medved that the Rams hit the 25-win mark and made the NCAA Tournament out of the Mountain West, perennially one of the strongest mid-major conferences in the country.

“I’ve had as much fun and joy coaching this group as any group I’ve ever been a part of, and they just keep giving us more,” Medved said Sunday in Seattle after the loss to Maryland. “It’s just gut-wrenching. It’s just a season you never want to end. It’s just been an incredible ride, and it goes by so fast.”

The 51-year-old Medved has been a head coach for 12 seasons, including four years at Furman and a one-year stop at Drake. He’s from Roseville, a suburb just a few miles from the Minnesota campus where he earned degrees in kinesiology and sport management. Medved was once a team manager for the Gophers under coach Clem Haskins, who led them to their only Final Four appearance in 1997. He started his coaching career later that year as an assistant at the Division III level at Macalester before assistant positions at Furman, Minnesota and Colorado State.

Medved received a contract extension last year with a significant raise that paid him a $1.7 million salary this season and option years that carried the deal through the 2030-31 season. He went 143-85 with the Rams, the second-best winning percentage in Colorado State program history. He is 222-173 in his 12-year career.

The Rams had at least one first team All-Mountain West player in each of his seven seasons. Last year, their high-water mark of 13th in The Associated Press college basketball poll was the highest in school history.

Minnesota bottomed out at 9-22 overall and 2-17 in the Big Ten in 2022-23, before making strides in 2023-24 with a spot in the NIT and a 19-15 finish. This season, the Gophers were tied for the third-worst record in the conference and went 15-17 overall.

In 28 years since that lone trip to the Final Four, which was later vacated by the NCAA as part of the punishment for a pattern of academic fraud revealed in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota has made the NCAA Tournament just seven times, with only two wins. In the last 20 seasons, the Gophers have had a winning record in Big Ten play just once: 11-7 in 2016-17 under coach Richard Pitino.

Medved’s buyout price from Colorado State is 33% of the remaining value on his deal, about $3.7 million. Johnson, whose annual salary was $1.95 million, the lowest in the 18-team league, had a buyout of about $2.9 million. This is an expensive transition for Coyle, the AD, whose desire to return the program to relevancy on the local sports scene and in the rugged, expanded Big Ten will require a deeper financial commitment by the university with revenue-sharing coming to college sports.

Johnson had to repeatedly rebuild rosters at his alma mater in the dawn of the transfer portal era, with some of his best players lured elsewhere by more NIL money. He was a Minneapolis native with strong ties to the state, but whether he was given a fair chance or not, he wasn’t able to effectively tap into local talent as a foundation for program growth.

One of Johnson’s assistants, Dave Thorson, was previously an assistant at Colorado State under Medved and would be a natural fit on a staff that ought to be well-positioned to productively recruit a Minnesota base that consistently produces power conference-caliber players. Medved coached Minneapolis native David Roddy at Colorado State. Roddy was a first-round pick in the 2023 NBA draft who currently is on Houston’s roster.

“There’s no doubt we need somebody who embraces Minnesota,” Coyle said after Johnson’s firing. “We need somebody who’s going to generate excitement. At the end of the day, I’m a firm believer: When you’re winning games, people want to be a part of that.”

___

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here.