The University of Minnesota Golden Gophers men’s basketball team welcomed a new head coach, Niko Medved, a U of M alumnus, on Tuesday. The announcement came just 48 hours after Medved’s previous team, the Colorado State Rams, suffered a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Maryland via a last-second shot.
Medved steps in to replace Ben Johnson, who was let go after four seasons leading the Gophers. Johnson’s tenure ended with a 56-71 record, marking the lowest winning percentage (.441) for any Minnesota men’s basketball coach lasting more than one season since Carl Nordly’s 17-23 record during World War II (1943-1944).
Before Johnson, the Gophers were under the guidance of Richard Pitino, a young coach in his 30s and son of a legendary basketball figure, for eight years. Pitino’s record at Minnesota was 141-123, though his final two seasons saw the team miss the NCAA Tournament. This extends the Gophers’ absence from March Madness to six seasons. Meanwhile, after leaving Minnesota, Pitino took the reins at New Mexico in the Mountain West Conference, where he’s flourished.
With the Lobos, he’s achieved an 88-49 record, including three consecutive 20+ win seasons and back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths. In the 2024-25 season, New Mexico finished 27-8, defeating Marquette 75-66 in the first round before bowing out to Michigan State in the second.
On the same Tuesday that Medved’s hiring was announced, Richard Pitino earned a new role as head coach of Xavier University, a testament to his success in New Mexico. Interestingly, Xavier is where Ben Johnson served as an assistant coach from 2018 to 2021 before taking the Minnesota job. Medved, a familiar face to Gophers fans, now looks to turn around a program that has struggled in recent years.
Sources: Xavier will hire New Mexico's Richard Pitino as its next head basketball coach.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 26, 2025
Let’s dive deeper into the tangled web of basketball connections. Before Ben Johnson joined Xavier as an assistant coach, he was part of Richard Pitino’s staff at Minnesota, serving as an assistant during Pitino’s tenure with the Golden Gophers. It’s a classic case of basketball’s tight-knit world, where paths crisscross like a well-run play.
Richard Pitino’s time at Minnesota might deserve a second look. From the moment he was hired, he faced skepticism, with local media painting him as a last-minute pick by then-athletic director Norwood Teague, a hire supposedly fueled more by his famous last name than merit.
Yet, Pitino hit the ground running, winning the NIT Tournament in his debut season and steering the Gophers to two NCAA Tournament appearances between 2016 and 2019. Despite those achievements, he never shook the nepotism narrative, and the perception lingered that he wasn’t the right fit. By the time he left in 2021, his 141-123 record was overshadowed by a late slump and the sense that he’d been fighting an uphill battle from day one.
Fast forward four years, and the irony is thick: the same critics who ushered Pitino out of Minnesota are now pinning their hopes on Niko Medved to restore the program to the level Pitino once reached—and maybe push it further. Meanwhile, Pitino has landed at Xavier in the Big East, a conference steeped in basketball tradition, giving him a fresh stage to step out from his father’s legacy once and for all. With Johnson’s prior ties to both Pitino and Xavier, and Medved now inheriting the Gophers’ reins, the basketball world feels smaller—and weirder—than ever.
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