Gophers savor breakthrough game with upset of Spartans, as coach Niko Medved's impact begins to show

MINNEAPOLIS — Niko Medved bounced into the Minnesota locker room after his team's overdue victory, pumping his arms and initiating a celebratory scream. He paused upon realizing the players were still sitting stone-faced in their chairs.

The Gophers only stuck with the ruse for a second, too excited to take the gotcha moment any further as they formed a joyous circle around their coach and doused him with water to salute their upset of 10th-ranked Michigan State.

Following seven straight losses, most of them in crushing fashion after late-game falters, the Gophers got to savor their progress again.

“We’ve got unbelievably high character guys. I just keep telling them, ‘You can’t get tired of doing the right thing. You can’t get tired of getting better,’” Medved said. “There’s proof that the process works. It’s up to them. They buy in.”

The Gophers (11-12, 4-8) have beaten three ranked Big Ten teams in Medved's first season, prompting a court swarm by the modest Williams Arena crowd after each one, Indiana on Dec. 3, Iowa on Jan. 6, and on Wednesday, Michigan State.

“It kind of reassures us that what we’re doing is good, it’s right,” leading scorer Cade Tyson said. “We’ve just got to stay consistent and not get too high or too low no matter what the circumstance is.”

The Gophers were overdue for a breakthrough, with three losses by three points or less during the skid. They were tied or leading in the final minute of regulation in five of them, losing to Wisconsin and Penn State on buzzer-beaters.

“It’s been a crazy season so far being in these close games, but we all agree: Moral victories, we can’t stand for it no more,” forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson said after Minnesota's first win over a top-10 team in the AP poll in more than five years.

After the Iowa game, Medved gave an impassioned endorsement of the program he grew up rooting for and started in as a student manager: “I just refuse to say that we can’t build this thing back. College basketball matters in the Twin Cities. It really does. It’s our job to make it matter.”

It's a long road back to relevance. All three of the court-storm wins were played in front of announced crowds under 9,000 fans, about 60% capacity of the 98-year-old arena.

The Gophers this season also face a tall task of posting a winning record in conference play, a feat accomplished only once in the last 20 years, but they have only one regular-season game left against a team in the top six of the current standings, a trip to No. 2 Michigan. Four remain against the bottom five: Maryland, Oregon, Rutgers and Northwestern. Those teams were a combined 7-49 in Big Ten play entering games on Thursday.

The Gophers, according to statistics researcher Opta, became on Wednesday the only NCAA Division I team in the last 30 seasons to win a game with no bench points, a double-digit rebounding margin against them, and 50-plus points allowed in the second half. The previous 25 teams to check those boxes in a game over that span lost by an average of nearly 22 points.

Crocker-Johnson and Tyson are rarely getting a rest, with injuries depleting the depth down to just two usable reserves, but they've been performing like all-conference players. Langston Reynolds, whose role was elevated after a season-ending knee injury to starting point guard Chansey Willis, went toe-to-toe with Spartans star Jeremy Fears and provided inspiring leadership. Isaac Asuma and Bobby Durkin were all-around contributors again.

“They just keep coming back with a great spirit, so what you want from them is you want them to be rewarded. What does that do? It creates belief. I hope for us that we’re creating belief with those guys and we’re creating belief in our program that, ‘Hey, we’re on the right track, We’re doing the right things. Our culture is good,’” Medved said. "If we keep staying with it and keep going, we can win this way.”