When is Ben Johnson announcing his coaching staff?

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hungan1

hungan1

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What is taking so long?
 

hungan1 said:
What is taking so long?
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Much like the rumored candidates for the HC before BJ got the job, it looks like we will get mainly curveballs for the possible exception of a Sam Mitchell and the video guy.
 

He said they were wrapping things up and should be announced this week yesterday on KFAN.
 




Ozzy&Ray said:
August? Let’s really panic.

It will be fine.
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I agree. The transfer portal is going to be even more packed when they announce the passing of the one time transfer officially. Just get the coaches in over the next couple of days, and let's get the whole crew to work on that portal! We need it.
 

Ozzy&Ray said:
August? Let’s really panic.

It will be fine.
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Better things to panic about than basketball coaches but any objective observer has to realize that something went wrong in the process and it is highly likely whatever plan was in place was a dream and not a real plan. This has been a disastrous start by any measure.
 

Found this while searching rumors. its from 3/28 and some of the names on here are gone already. I have no idea aside from possible Sam Mitchell who might be on his radar now. :(​

TWO ASSISTANT COACH CANDIDATES BEN JOHNSON MIGHT BE WAITING FOR​

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Eric Strack

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The Minnesota Gophers men’s basketball program had a lot of momentum on its side after hiring new head coach, Ben Johnson early last week. Alumni, especially former players, and the local recruiting circuit were all celebrating and slapping each other on the back publicly at every opportunity.
A partial list of ex-#Gophers players to touch base w/ new coach Ben Johnson in the last few days: McHale, Mychal Thompson, Bobby Jackson, Saunders, Bickerstaff, Orr, Randy Carter, Mbakwe, Hoffarber, Coffey, Oturu, Austin Hollins, Mo Walker, Ohnstad. So many are fired up for Ben.
— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) March 28, 2021
Click to expand...
Then, the flame died as the week turned into the weekend and father time pushed us into Sunday. Instead of a snowball effect that led to some good assistant coaching hires and climaxed in some early commitments out of the transfer portal, the Gopher MBB chatter has gone silent.
There’s only one logical explanation for such a hard stop. The next step for Ben and his new basketball program is to find his assistant coaching staff. But if your most prized candidates for hire are currently unavailable to interview because they are still finishing their 2020-21 coaching commitments elsewhere… then what’s a new head coach to do but…. wait?

PATIENTLY WAITING, WAITING ON YOU..​

And if you look through some of the names in Ben Johnson’s (rumored) pool of assistant coaching candidates, testing this theory becomes an interesting experiment. Why? Because two of the top candidates start to look even more obvious.

DAVE THORSON | ASSISTANT COACH – COLORADO STATE: NIT – 3RD PLACE GAME​

This is the hire that seems most inevitable. Dave Thorson is Minnesota basketball HOF and he coached Ben Johnson when Ben played at DeLaSalle. Their relationship is already one of the mentor/mentee ilk. In 2018, Thorson even told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “I told (Ben’s) dad the year he was a senior in high school, I said, ‘Someday, I’ll probably work for Ben.’ It wouldn’t shock me at all if that happened.”
Partnering Dave and Ben together would also unify two of the best Minnesota high school recruiters in the country. Thorson helped land David Roddy at CSU, who flew under Pitino’s radar until it was too late. Now, Roddy’s averaging 16 points and 9 rebounds as a sophomore for the Rams.
Colorado State’s season will come to an end today, after they play in the 3rd place NIT Tournament game (starts at 2PM). If Dave is indeed the guy Ben is waiting for, then we should know very soon.

JARED NUNESS | SPECIAL ASSISTANT – BAYLOR: NCAA’S – ELITE 8​

Nuness is from Eden Prairie and actually won Minnesota Gatorade Player of the Year in 1997. Before Jared landed at Baylor, where he’s been for the last 11 years, he was a high school coach in the Twin Cities. Nuness was an assistant at Hopkins before head coaching at Park Center and Bloomington Kennedy.
He played college ball at Valparaiso, under Homer Drew and Scott Drew. Scott is now the head coach at Baylor. If Ben Johnson wants to bring Nuness back, an assistant job offer should do the trick because that’d be a promotion from the title Jared Nuness holds at Baylor (Special Assistant and Director of Player Development).

Baylor won their Sweet 16 matchup this weekend and advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite 8. If Johnson is waiting for Nuness then we could be looking at another week or two of patience.
Could Ben Johnson be waiting for both Dave and Jared to finish their seasons? It’s certainly plausible. In fact, I’m not sure that waiting for just one hire would hold up the entire process like the Gophers’ coaching search is being stalled right now.

OTHERS​

There are plenty of other candidates rumored to be interested in the Minnesota assistant jobs. Here are some of the other names that have been floated. But if these were the targets, what would stop Johnson from hiring them and hitting the recruiting trail already?
 




Holy Man said:
Better things to panic about than basketball coaches but any objective observer has to realize that something went wrong in the process and it is highly likely whatever plan was in place was a dream and not a real plan. This has been a disastrous start by any measure.
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A person has to really reach and stretch to not see this as the obvious fact of the matter.

I have no doubt in my mind that BJ was not the original choice.
 

SanDiegoGopherFan said:

Found this while searching rumors. its from 3/28 and some of the names on here are gone already. I have no idea aside from possible Sam Mitchell who might be on his radar now. :(​

TWO ASSISTANT COACH CANDIDATES BEN JOHNSON MIGHT BE WAITING FOR​

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Eric Strack

45
SHARES
ShareTweet


The Minnesota Gophers men’s basketball program had a lot of momentum on its side after hiring new head coach, Ben Johnson early last week. Alumni, especially former players, and the local recruiting circuit were all celebrating and slapping each other on the back publicly at every opportunity.

Then, the flame died as the week turned into the weekend and father time pushed us into Sunday. Instead of a snowball effect that led to some good assistant coaching hires and climaxed in some early commitments out of the transfer portal, the Gopher MBB chatter has gone silent.
There’s only one logical explanation for such a hard stop. The next step for Ben and his new basketball program is to find his assistant coaching staff. But if your most prized candidates for hire are currently unavailable to interview because they are still finishing their 2020-21 coaching commitments elsewhere… then what’s a new head coach to do but…. wait?

PATIENTLY WAITING, WAITING ON YOU..​

And if you look through some of the names in Ben Johnson’s (rumored) pool of assistant coaching candidates, testing this theory becomes an interesting experiment. Why? Because two of the top candidates start to look even more obvious.

DAVE THORSON | ASSISTANT COACH – COLORADO STATE: NIT – 3RD PLACE GAME​

This is the hire that seems most inevitable. Dave Thorson is Minnesota basketball HOF and he coached Ben Johnson when Ben played at DeLaSalle. Their relationship is already one of the mentor/mentee ilk. In 2018, Thorson even told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “I told (Ben’s) dad the year he was a senior in high school, I said, ‘Someday, I’ll probably work for Ben.’ It wouldn’t shock me at all if that happened.”
Partnering Dave and Ben together would also unify two of the best Minnesota high school recruiters in the country. Thorson helped land David Roddy at CSU, who flew under Pitino’s radar until it was too late. Now, Roddy’s averaging 16 points and 9 rebounds as a sophomore for the Rams.
Colorado State’s season will come to an end today, after they play in the 3rd place NIT Tournament game (starts at 2PM). If Dave is indeed the guy Ben is waiting for, then we should know very soon.

JARED NUNESS | SPECIAL ASSISTANT – BAYLOR: NCAA’S – ELITE 8​

Nuness is from Eden Prairie and actually won Minnesota Gatorade Player of the Year in 1997. Before Jared landed at Baylor, where he’s been for the last 11 years, he was a high school coach in the Twin Cities. Nuness was an assistant at Hopkins before head coaching at Park Center and Bloomington Kennedy.
He played college ball at Valparaiso, under Homer Drew and Scott Drew. Scott is now the head coach at Baylor. If Ben Johnson wants to bring Nuness back, an assistant job offer should do the trick because that’d be a promotion from the title Jared Nuness holds at Baylor (Special Assistant and Director of Player Development).

Baylor won their Sweet 16 matchup this weekend and advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite 8. If Johnson is waiting for Nuness then we could be looking at another week or two of patience.
Could Ben Johnson be waiting for both Dave and Jared to finish their seasons? It’s certainly plausible. In fact, I’m not sure that waiting for just one hire would hold up the entire process like the Gophers’ coaching search is being stalled right now.

OTHERS​

There are plenty of other candidates rumored to be interested in the Minnesota assistant jobs. Here are some of the other names that have been floated. But if these were the targets, what would stop Johnson from hiring them and hitting the recruiting trail already?
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I realize this post is dated, and not a huge deal, but Molinari was (and at least for the time being still) an assistant at OU as opposed to N. Iowa. With Lon Kruger retiring, who knows if that will be the case moving forward.
 

SanDiegoGopherFan said:
Much like the rumored candidates for the HC before BJ got the job, it looks like we will get mainly curveballs for the possible exception of a Sam Mitchell and the video guy.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you should publish a list of coaching candidates that are straight balls from your perspective. That way, we have established criteria that we can evaluate your whether they meet your preapproval.
 

MplsGopher said:
A person has to really reach and stretch to not see this as the obvious fact of the matter.

I have no doubt in my mind that BJ was not the original choice.
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He may have been the original choice, but whatever plan or vision connected with assistant coaches he presented had to have been half baked. To not be able to gather a team of coaches relatively quickly suggests he may have been flying by the seat of his pants and maybe didn't think he would get the job, and now has to put something together on the fly.
 



Holy Man said:
He may have been the original choice, but whatever plan or vision connected with assistant coaches he presented had to have been half baked. To not be able to gather a team of coaches relatively quickly suggests he may have been flying by the seat of his pants and maybe didn't think he would get the job, and now has to put something together on the fly.
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Maybe he said that he would land Nuness and Thorson no problem, and then bring on the third assistant as some young, up and coming Black coach from somewhere.

Obviously Nuness thought about it, and said sorry.

Wild guessing.
 

MplsGopher said:
Maybe he said that he would land Nuness and Thorson no problem, and then bring on the third assistant as some young, up and coming Black coach from somewhere.

Obviously Nuness thought about it, and said sorry.

Wild guessing.
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Lets be real most of your posts involve wild guessing....
 

whalenfan said:
Lets be real most of your posts involve wild guessing....
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As opposed to whom?? 😏

At least I say it. Just trying to provoke conversation. That's the only point in coming here.

If you just want news, then stick to following blue official symbol folks on Twitter, or wait for it to come out in the paper.
 

MplsGopher said:
Maybe he said that he would land Nuness and Thorson no problem, and then bring on the third assistant as some young, up and coming Black coach from somewhere.

Obviously Nuness thought about it, and said sorry.

Wild guessing.
Click to expand...

Let’s see who we hire. If we hire a low level D1 assistant is that better than Nuness who technically isn’t one of the three main assistants? In Ben’s case it may be better IMO as he doesn’t have a ton of time to be mentoring. Just speculating as well
 

Likely was not the first choice but Coyle handled it perfectly so it can be presented as the first choice. He could frame questions such as "is your client interested in this job" without ever offering. So it certainly can be presented as though that Ben was the first choice. Unlike Teague who was so pathetically unprofessional in every way.
 

manderson1984 said:
Let’s see who we hire. If we hire a low level D1 assistant is that better than Nuness who technically isn’t one of the three main assistants? In Ben’s case it may be better IMO as he doesn’t have a ton of time to be mentoring. Just speculating as well
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We are all speculating . Ben could hire someone that most people have not heard of and that person may be great.
 

builtbadgers said:
We are all speculating . Ben could hire someone that most people have not heard of and that person may be great.
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That could be true and I hope it is. But there is no question that so far, the assistant coach hiring process has been a disaster. If there were a solid plan in place that was executed, we would not be having these virtual conversations now. A more stable environment or sense of who is coming to coach may have prevented serviceable players from jumping ship. This simply does not look good, and isn't good for a guy who needed to hit the ground running and give the fan base something to be encouraged about.

Some names thrown around by people who are more connected than most of us sound like good resumes, but are not names that most of us will recognize and don't seem likely to inspire the all important class of 22. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to a low level mid-major coach, but I'll still be skeptical. OJT in the Big Ten is not a great idea and that's what it looks like now.

I wonder how many coaches hired at the same time don't have even one assistant named yet. Probably none but I'm not sure. This is not the optics of someone who has a plan and is in control.
 

I realized that we have to wait until the tournaments are over. The sooner that BJ can announce, the better it will to try to convince some of the Gopher players in the Transfer Portal that they want back to come back.

Patience is scarce in GH Land. We want immediate action so then we can react by cheering or booing the hires...
 

hungan1 said:
I realized that we have to wait until the tournaments are over. The sooner that BJ can announce, the better it will to try to convince some of the Gopher players in the Transfer Portal that they want back to come back.

Patience is scarce in GH Land. We want immediate action so then we can react by cheering or booing the hires...
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And season ticket holders.
 

If they can persuade Chet Holmgren to sign with the Gophers (teenie weenie chance) given the right assistant coaching hires, we can see The Barn rocking again.

Message to Chet Holmgren, you are an NBA first rounder. That is regardless of where you land. It might as well be with the home team. Your family can share in the joy of watching you live at every game.
 

hungan1 said:
If they can persuade Chet Holmgren to sign with the Gophers (teenie weenie chance) given the right assistant coaching hires, we can see The Barn rocking again.

Message to Chet Holmgren, you are an NBA first rounder. That is regardless of where you land. It might as well be with the home team. Your family can share in the joy of watching you live at every game.
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I thought at the time Matthew Hurt going to Duke would be best for his future. But had he gone to Minnesota and played well with Oturu and Carr, he probably would have been a one and done
 

Spottedmuskie said:
I thought at the time Matthew Hurt going to Duke would be best for his future. But had he gone to Minnesota and played well with Oturu and Carr, he probably would have been a one and done
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I can imagine him taking all of Demir's shots... how did we win more conference games last season than this season lol Peyton Willis must have been the glue guy
 




Ding Ding! Dave Thorson is a Gopher Assistant Coach.
 

hungan1 said:
If they can persuade Chet Holmgren to sign with the Gophers (teenie weenie chance) given the right assistant coaching hires, we can see The Barn rocking again.

Message to Chet Holmgren, you are an NBA first rounder. That is regardless of where you land. It might as well be with the home team. Your family can share in the joy of watching you live at every game.
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I don't know do you want to gamble being a lottery pick with a first time head coach. A system and players being uncertain. OR do you want to go to a system that is proven so it might not risk your lottery pick status. We know what the smart/safe pick is. But if you go with the dumb/uncertain pick you could reach legend status and never be forgotten in the state of MN.
 

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