La Velle Neal: The up-and-comer. The hometown guy. Maybe a little local flavoring is what this program needs right now.

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Neal:

And don't go cheap on the assistant coaches, Mr. AD. It's part of the support package.

A program that sustains success needs a pipeline that doesn't run dry. There were recruiting misses with area prospects here that, fair or unfair, will be part of Pitino's legacy. Would Jalen Suggs have committed to the Gophers if they had recruited him earlier and harder? We will never know.

But it is time for another approach. Coyle has decided to go with Big Ten Ben. The up-and-comer. The hometown guy. Maybe a little local flavoring is what this program needs right now.

www.startribune.com

Ben Johnson is Mark Coyle's latest attempt at drawing from Gophers' past to build for future

The new Gophers coach has plenty of experience as an assistant, but he will have to learn on the fly against Big Ten competiton.
www.startribune.com www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!
 



He was never an up and comer

Marcus R. Fuller

@Marcus_R_Fuller
·
4h

Former Nebraska coach Tim Miles who had new #Gophers coach Ben Johnson on staff: "He is excellent with the recruiting process and relatable to the players ... He's been at the U as a player and coach and is a Minnesota guy. He wants to do well for the school and the state."


and I want to win the powerball. so dumb
 



The “one of us” provincialism of Minnesota, especially with basketball, is just dumbfounding.That Mark Coyle based a major hire on it (hiring one of us to keep more of us at home, regardless if he has actual game coaching skills) is stunning.
 

SanDiegoGopherFan said:
He was never an up and comer

Marcus R. Fuller
@Marcus_R_Fuller
·
4h

Former Nebraska coach Tim Miles who had new #Gophers coach Ben Johnson on staff: "He is excellent with the recruiting process and relatable to the players ... He's been at the U as a player and coach and is a Minnesota guy. He wants to do well for the school and the state."


and I want to win the powerball. so dumb
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Reminds me of when the Wild hired a GM and the owner said “I hired him because he wants to win a Stanley Cup” as if all the other candidates interviewed were like “no, I don’t want to achieve the top goal of every team”

The GM who wanted to win? Paul Fenton. It went very well for him.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Reminds me of when the Wild hired a GM and the owner said “I hired him because he wants to win a Stanley Cup” as if all the other candidates interviewed were like “no, I don’t want to achieve the top goal of every team”

The GM who wanted to win? Paul Fenton. It went very well for him.
Click to expand...

I don’t know, a lot of Fenton’s moves are paying off now. Fenton signed Zuccarello, traded for Fiala, signed Ryan Hartman, Rask has been pretty solid, drafted Matt Boldy who’s a Hobey Baker finalist, drafted Vladislav Firstov who’s looked good at UCONN, and drafted Adam Beckman who was the WHL MVP.

maybe Ben’s a genius like Fenton 😉
 

WindyCityGopher said:
The “one of us” provincialism of Minnesota, especially with basketball, is just dumbfounding.That Mark Coyle based a major hire on it (hiring one of us to keep more of us at home, regardless if he has actual game coaching skills) is stunning.
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A little bit. But I think he in part probably hired him because he knows him and thinks he can be successful.
 





I kind of agree with Neal. We tried the big name hire with Tubby, we tried the up & comer with Monson, we tried pedigree with Pitino. None of it worked. May as well try the homegrown hire. There's certainly plenty of talent in the state and then pull in some national recruits through the AAU circuit. Sort of a lite version of Doug Woog's closed borders.
 

GopherNuts said:
I don’t know, a lot of Fenton’s moves are paying off now. Fenton signed Zuccarello, traded for Fiala, signed Ryan Hartman, Rask has been pretty solid, drafted Matt Boldy who’s a Hobey Baker finalist, drafted Vladislav Firstov who’s looked good at UCONN, and drafted Adam Beckman who was the WHL MVP.

maybe Ben’s a genius like Fenton 😉
Click to expand...
Fenton got fired in a year. Maybe Ben will too? Haha.
 



UpAndUnder43 said:
Fenton got fired in a year. Maybe Ben will too? Haha.
Click to expand...

Fenton got fired because the Wild have a reactionary owner. Some of the moves Fenton made in a year have set the Wild up to have success this year and beyond. Maybe that's something we should take a lesson from.
 

GopherNuts said:
Fenton got fired because the Wild have a reactionary owner. Some of the moves Fenton made in a year have set the Wild up to have success this year and beyond. Maybe that's something we should take a lesson from.
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Well BJ will get 5+ years barring a serious scandal. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.
 

BleedGopher said:
per Neal:

Would Jalen Suggs have committed to the Gophers if they had recruited him earlier and harder? We will never know.
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This is comical when you hear the story from the Zags side during a recent tourney game. They take about how Suggs is not the typical recruit that the Zags go after. They said that Suggs went after the Zags. It was not about following him when he was a kid.
 

alchemy2u said:
This is comical when you hear the story from the Zags side during a recent tourney game. They take about how Suggs is not the typical recruit that the Zags go after. They said that Suggs went after the Zags. It was not about following him when he was a kid
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Larry Suggs has even said he reached out to Gonzaga first because he liked their wide open style of play and felt it would fit Jalen's game. Money quote:

"Suggs had recruited them in a sense, with his father reaching out because he appreciated Gonzaga’s fast-paced style and the fact his son would be surrounded by a core of veterans."

 

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