At his introductory news conference Tuesday, Ben Johnson addressed in-state recruiting less like a daunting challenge and more like a kid walking into Hub Hobby with a handful of gift cards.
Endless possibilities, all of them good.
“I wish we could take them all,” Johnson told a small gathering of boosters, educators and reporters on Tuesday. “We can’t. But we’ve just got to make sure we take the right ones.”
Talk about optimism. Minnesota basketball players are making their marks all around the nation; unfortunately, few of them are doing it in a Gophers uniform. Changing this is Johnson’s primary objective as the new men’s basketball coach.
When Minnesota’s season ended with a 14-15 record, and Richard Pitino high-tailed it to New Mexico, the Gophers had only three Minnesota players on the roster, which would be low for any in-state school but is particularly woeful given the surfeit of talent grown in the shadow of Minnesota.
Tyus Jones (Duke), Tre Jones (Duke), Jalen Suggs (Gonzaga), McKinley Wright (Colorado) and Brad Davison (Wisconsin) are just a few of the big-time talents who have made a major impact elsewhere. The No. 1 recruit in the nation this year is Chet Holmgren, a 7-foot senior from Minnehaha Academy leaning toward following former teammate Suggs to Gonzaga.
That’s top-ranked, unbeaten Gonzaga that just waltzed into the Sweet 16.
Johnson is undaunted. Hired after three seasons as a top assistant at Xavier, he has connections all over the country, especially in Minnesota, where he played in high school (DeLaSalle), college (Minnesota) and worked as an assistant coach.
When he was hired, Johnson said, he was bombarded with calls and text messages from local high school and AAU coaches.
“I’m going to lean on them,” he said. “Like any coach, I can’t do it by myself. I’ve never. I didn’t get Amir Coffey by myself, Gabe Kalscheur by myself, Daniel Oturu by myself. It takes help.”
Now, there’s a humble brag. Coffey and Oturu were the highest-profile in-state recruits Pitino managed to nab in his eight seasons; both are playing in the NBA. Kalscheur, who will be a senior next season, is a three-year starter,
When word leaked Monday that Johnson had been hired, Amir Coffey’s father, former Gophers and Timberwolves player Richard Coffey, tweeted, “This man is the reason my son played for the home team.”
There will be X’s and O’s to consider, no doubt, and Johnson has never been a head coach. But rest assured, he knows more about basketball than 99.9 percent of the people reading, and writing, this. Recruiting is the lifeblood of any program and the Gophers' failure to capture its best local players is so conspicuous, it came up when athletics director Mark Coyle was tapping his resources during his coaching search.
“Not only did they talk about the importance of recruiting, but they talked about the importance of recruiting in the State of Minnesota,” he said.
There has been some fan blowback on this hire, ostensibly because a Big Ten school should hire someone who already has been a head coach, that Coyle should have spent more money for a proven entity like, you know, Tubby Smith. It’s probably because Johnson isn’t Eric Musselman or some other legacy to former Gophers glory. It’s a bad take.
Johnson is a legacy, as a player and coach, and his contacts in one of the nation’s hottest recruiting beds are extensive, if not unparalleled. He’s young, 39, but not too young.
You want Minnesota to be a men’s hoops power? So does Johnson, and as it is for you, it is for him — personal. He hit the ground running. Asked Tuesday when he planned to make his first recruiting calls, he said, “As soon as the plane was able to land and we got some reception, we made those.”
We don’t know how this will turn out. No one does. In some way it seems like a leap of faith, maybe more than usual; in another, Johnson seems to be the perfect fit. The wind didn’t just blow the guy into the Athletes Village; he worked hard for this opportunity and made his case.
From here, it’s a good case.
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