Souhan: Gophers need Niko Medved as their next men’s basketball coach

Sunday night should have been intriguing for Gophers men’s basketball fans.

At 6:10 p.m., Niko Medved’s Colorado State team played in the NCAA tournament against Maryland in Seattle.

At 7:55 p.m., Richard Pitino’s New Mexico team played against Michigan State in Cleveland.

Medved is the coach the Gophers should want.

Pitino is an example of the kind of coach the Gophers have been hiring for years.

It was fitting that the leading candidate to replace Ben Johnson preceded a prime example of the Gophers’ hiring woes.

Medved would be the best hire the Gophers have made since Clem Haskins in 1986.

If you think that’s an insult to all of the coaches since Haskins, well, it’s really not.

Pitino is a quality coach, which he proved again this season.

But the Gophers didn’t hire him because he was ready to coach in the Big Ten. They hired him because the athletic director at the time misjudged the drawing power of the University of Minnesota.

Norwood Teague fired Tubby Smith, thinking he would be able to hire a great young coach. Smith was fired even though he had just won an NCAA tournament game and should be in the Hall of Fame.

Pitino was way down Teague’s list and was hired because he had only one season of head coaching experience and Teague couldn’t land any of the prime candidates whom he thought would be begging to come to Minnesota.

Current Gophers AD Mark Coyle fired Johnson at the end of this season. Johnson’s career bore some resemblance to Pitino’s, although Johnson had never been a head coach before. You can’t say that Johnson can’t coach, only that he couldn’t survive as a young coach at Minnesota.

Medved is in a different category of candidate.

If Medved didn’t exist, Coyle would have him fabricated with a 3D printer.

Medved is 51. As a coach, he’s in his prime.

He attended Roseville High School and the University of Minnesota. He was a student manager on the basketball team and an assistant coach for the Gophers in 2006-07. He coached at Drake, and he has recruited the Midwest, with two Minnesotans on the current Rams roster.

He has taken Colorado State to the NCAA tournament in three of the past four seasons.

After the 12th-seeded Rams upset fifth-seeded Memphis in the first round Friday, Medved’s team displayed a diverse, unselfish offense and a scrambling defense Sunday night before Maryland’s Derik Queen hit a last-split-second shot to lift the fourth-seeded Terrapins to a 72-71 victory.

It was the kind of game that reminds you why you spend your weekends watching March Madness.

It was the kind of game the next Gophers coach will be asked to reach and replicate.

The Gophers men’s basketball program has been riding a down escalator since the day Haskins got caught cheating.

The program’s new nadir arrived this season, with Johnson getting fired after another disappointing year precipitated by his, and the program’s, inability to accumulate and keep talent.

The performance of the program, and the Gophers’ ham-handed coaching searches, have bolstered the notion that they are incapable of hiring the right person to make Minnesota relevant again.

What we should know now is that the Gophers haven’t hired bad coaches ― rather, they’ve hired coaches at the wrong times or for the wrong reasons.

Dan Monson had led Gonzaga to prominence, and he had sporadic success at Long Beach State. He was a lousy hire because he wasn’t the driving force behind Gonzaga’s success — Mark Few was — and because Monson never liked living in Minnesota.

Jim Molinari was an interim who never had a real chance to keep the job.

Smith hired Minnesota, not the other way around, because he wanted a golden parachute job. His résumé with the Gophers doesn’t look so shoddy after watching his successors.

Pitino, like Smith, looks better when compared with his successor. Pitino went to two NCAA tournaments with the Gophers and beat Louisville in one trip.

He has taken New Mexico to two consecutive NCAA tourneys. The Lobos were ousted by Michigan State in the second round Sunday night.

Medved would be a major step up for the Gophers.

He would be the right choice to reverse the down escalator.