Scoggins: Hiring of Niko Medved proves Mark Coyle is serious about fixing a problem

Mark Coyle was sitting courtside at the NCAA Tournament games in Milwaukee on Sunday evening when Colorado State’s Jalen Lake made a three-pointer in the closing seconds against Maryland in the second round in Seattle.

As a member of the tournament selection committee, Coyle had more than a passing interest in the outcome halfway across the country. The Gophers athletic director was waiting to hire Colorado State coach Niko Medved whenever his team lost.

Coyle walked to a meeting room in the arena after Lake made that shot. Coyle met up with his daughter Grace, a law school student at Marquette.

“She was looking at me like, ‘What are we going to do?‘” Coyle recalled.

Both knew the answer.

Coyle was prepared to wait for as long as it took to get his guy.

Had Maryland’s Derik Queen missed his shot at the buzzer — or if the officials had called a traveling — the wait for a new Gophers men’s basketball coach would have remained ongoing.

Alas, Queen’s shot went in, Maryland advanced and Minnesota hosted a welcome home party/news conference for Medved on Tuesday. It served as an exclamation point on what might have been the most seamless coaching search an athletic director can oversee.

Sometimes the first choice is the obvious choice, and nothing derails it.

“We zeroed in really quickly,” Coyle said.

Coyle keeps lists of coaches in different sports that he might be interested in hiring in case he has an opening. Coyle noted that he began tidying his list for men’s basketball in early March as he contemplated Ben Johnson’s future.

Based on the expedited nature of Medved’s hire and lack of buzz about other candidates, it seems clear that he was No. 1 on the list.

Coyle said Tuesday that he received messages from agents for coaches in the first few hours after the school announced Johnson’s dismissal. Coyle had contact with Medved early in the process and felt “we were in a really good spot” so he could afford to wait until Colorado State’s postseason run ended.

The AD and coach didn’t waste time getting to the No. 1 topic in college athletics in their conversations: revenue sharing.

“That was the very first thing we talked about,” Coyle said.

Coyle confirmed to reporters that his goal is to rank in the top third of the Big Ten in revenue sharing distribution for men’s basketball. Once revenue sharing is approved by a judge in April, schools will be permitted to spend $20.5 million to pay athletes directly.

Coyle revealed publicly for the first time that his department will revenue share in five programs. He didn’t list which ones, but sources say football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s hockey and volleyball will be the recipients.

Sources also indicated the Gophers hope to allocate at least $5 million to men’s basketball for roster payments when combining revenue sharing and Name, Image and Likeness contributions through the Dinkytown Athletes collective.

That scale of financial commitment underscores the urgency Coyle faces to put basketball on a new trajectory. Football and men’s basketball coaching hires always feel like seminal moments, because those two sports serve as primary revenue drivers for the entire athletic department. Revenue sharing and NIL have made these moments even more defining for schools and ADs.

Coyle used the term “shake the tree” in making a coaching change in football that landed P.J. Fleck. This situation is similar. Gophers basketball needs a jolt to awaken from a long slumber.

“There’s no doubt we need that energy, that excitement,” Coyle said. “We needed something different.”

Medved is a smart hire for many reasons. Coyle and his senior staff focused on the main one: He’s won as a head coach at different schools.

Coyle noted repeatedly that a track record of success mirrors a template of other coaches he has hired, including Fleck, women’s basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit, men’s hockey coach Bob Motzko and volleyball coach Keegan Cook.

“We were very intentional,” he said.

The blueprint makes sense on paper. Medved is a proven winner as a head coach at multiple Division I schools for more than a decade. His ties to Minnesota and the university along with his résumé should excite fans and therefore jumpstart NIL donations. Coyle is on record saying the program plans to be “very, very competitive” in revenue sharing.

Expectations should rise accordingly.

“Being relevant in men’s basketball is getting to March Madness,” Coyle said. “We strongly feel that Minnesota is one of those programs.”

For far too long, the conversation around Gophers basketball has focused on why the program can’t win. If accompanied by music, it would be nothing but a sad trombone echoing inside the Barn.

Enough of that.

This moment of change gives the impression that Coyle and the university are serious about fixing a problem. They hired the right coach. They are committed to spending money on the product. It’s time for Gophers basketball to become relevant again.