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U coaching hire expected soon with Colorado State’s Medved the favorite

The 51-year-old Roseville graduate was a Gophers student manager under Clem Haskins. Medved got his coaching start at Macalester in 1997 and first full-time Division I assistant job in 1999 at Furman in Greenville, S.C. He became a Gophers assistant during the 2006-07 season, during which head coach Dan Monson was fired and Jim Molinari took over as interim coach.

Experiencing adversity firsthand with the Gophers and as a Colorado State assistant (2007-13), Medved learned how to accomplish a tough rebuild. While first running his own program at Furman, he won 20 games total in two seasons from 2013-15. Success soon followed, though, with Furman winning a combined 42 games in the next two seasons under Medved, and a Southern Conference regular-season title in 2017.

In 2017-18, Drake saw a 10-win improvement from 7-24 to 17-17 in Medved’s one season leading the Bulldogs.

That was when Medved lured Thorson, a legendary Minnesota high school coach at DeLaSalle, to join him on Drake’s staff. They remained together at Colorado State from 2018-21 before Thorson returned to become Johnson’s assistant with the Gophers.

While at Colorado State, Medved and Thorson helped orchestrate a significant turnaround from 12 wins in Year 1 to back-to-back 20-win seasons in 2019-20 and 2020-21.

Medved was named Mountain West coach of the year by the media in 2021, and he reached his first NCAA tournament the following year.

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