Gophers are hiring while Big Ten men’s basketball has zero Black head coaches again

Four years ago, the Big Ten had five Black men’s basketball head coaches and was a model for diversity at the highest level of college basketball.

After that season, Danny Manning didn’t get the full-time job at Maryland after his interim tag expired. Micah Shrewsberry left Penn State to take over Notre Dame’s program in 2023. And Juwan Howard was fired last year at Michigan.

This year, Ben Johnson was fired by the Gophers. Mike Woodson stepped down at Indiana. And just like that, the Big Ten dropped to zero Black men’s head coaches for the first time since 2016-17. Back then, the conference had 14 teams. Now it has 18.

Indiana, Iowa and the Gophers had openings until the Hoosiers announced West Virginia’s Darian DeVries as their next coach Monday.

The Gophers are preparing to hire someone soon, with Colorado State’s Niko Medved the favorite, and the Hawkeyes have been linked to Drake’s Ben McCollum. Both are coaching in the NCAA tournament first round, which starts Thursday. Neither is Black.

So there’s a strong chance the Big Ten will enter next season with no head coaches of color in men’s basketball, the only major conference with that distinction.

That’s a statement in itself. Probably something Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti will address at some point, as his predecessor Kevin Warren did when it happened in the past.

Petitti addressed diversity at Big Ten media days in October, including that Rutgers' Coquese Washington and Wisconsin’s Marisa Moseley were the only Black head coaches in Big Ten women’s basketball. Moseley has since resigned.

“I will say that some of this is cyclical,” Petitti told the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder in October. “I think it’s partly [the] pipeline, developing assistance, opportunity. … It’s being honest about the results we’re seeing. If it’s a trend going in a different direction, you want to make sure you are paying attention.”

The Gophers are among the Big Ten programs that have taken diversity more seriously than others with recent hires. They are tied with Indiana and Michigan for the lead in the Big Ten with three Black men’s basketball head coaches in their history — Clem Haskins, Tubby Smith and Johnson. Jimmy Williams became the U’s first Black men’s basketball coach in 1986, but he served only as an interim coach. Rutgers has also had three Black coaches, but not all when part of the Big Ten.

But the Gophers also went eight years without a Black head coach anywhere in their athletic department before hiring Johnson in 2021. They now have a Black women’s tennis coach, Lois Arterberry, and an Asian American women’s golf coach, Matt Higgins. Their head diving coach, Wenbo Chen, is also Asian American, though he reports to Kelly Kremer, who is the director of men’s and women’s swimming and diving.

In an era when the federal government and private companies are pulling back on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, Coyle was asked immediately after Johnson’s dismissal if diversity would play into the interview process this time.

“One of our core values we talk about is being inclusive,” Coyle told the Star Tribune. “We talk about the importance of that to our department. We want to cast a wide net. We want to make sure we have role models for our student-athletes in all sports.

“We have a very diverse student-athlete population. So that’s something we look at and focus on. Obviously, we want to find the right person to lead Minnesota basketball and hopefully get more wins in a very competitive conference.”

The week before Johnson coached his last game, he talked about his appreciation for being one of the few Black head coaches in the Big Ten.

Only days earlier, Kevin Keatts, a Black coach who led North Carolina State to the Final Four last season, had been fired.

“I have some personal pride,” Johnson said March 8. “I take that with a badge of honor. If I can continue to push and do a good job, hopefully continue to open the narratives and doors for other guys. It all goes hand in hand.”