Niko Medved hopes to enact his program-building prowess at Drake

On Monday afternoon, Niko Medved stood at a podium inside the Knapp Center and told a story.

When he first made contact with Drake about the men’s basketball coaching job, he struck up a conversation with university president Marty Martin. Medved knew Martin was a basketball guy, having come from Gonzaga, but their chat revealed Martin to be more than just a casual fan.

“I knew he was from Kentucky, and we were talking about the Kentucky-Wichita State game,” Medved said. “I could tell he was locked in, because then he was talking about the loss to Duke back in 1992, and how (then-Wildcats coach Rick) Pitino didn’t put Aminu Timberlake over the ball, and then (Christian) Laettner hit that shot.

“And I was like, 'Wow, this guy is a huge basketball fan.' … Right away, I could tell their passion for their vision for Drake and this program. That was really, really neat.”

The knowledge intrigued Medved, then the leader of a turnaround project at Furman University. As the process unfolded, he felt he could do the same at Drake, a school starving for a winner on the court.

Medved's next task is to turn around a program that’s 23-70 over the past three seasons.

“I’m here to win,” said Medved, 43. “I’m here to build a program that all of you can be proud of. We’re here to win. We’re here to build a great program. This is a perfect time for Drake. We play in a great league. We have a brand-new facility. We have great leadership.

“Now, I believe this is the time to take off and do great things. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be standing in front of you today.”

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Before him, inside the Courtside Clubhouse, reporters waited to ask questions while alumni sat nearby. On the back wall, his picture was already hanging alongside the school’s previous coaching greats. In the front row, his parents gave him a thumbs-up. They drove close to four hours south on Monday morning to watch the Minneapolis native take the next step in his coaching career, a journey that began back at home.

After the press conference, his father, Miro, told the story of how Medved first got into basketball. Miro’s long had season tickets for the Minnesota men’s basketball team, but Medved grew up playing hockey. In eighth grade, he was asked to join a travel team.

Miro balked.

“(Niko) was one of the better hockey players in school,” Miro said. “He was a tremendous skater, but I nixed it. I said no. The time commitment is unbelievable. I told him, 'There’s five members in this family, and we can’t dedicate 90 percent of our time to one member of the family.'

“He was a little upset, but then he picked up basketball.”

The underlying lesson helped shape Medved’s coaching philosophy: that no one player is more important than the whole team. He kept it in mind as he earned four letters at Roseville High School as a point guard. He also played golf and competed with the high school math team.

Medved didn’t play in college, instead becoming the head manager and a student assistant for the Golden Gophers. He broke down film for coach Clem Haskins. He watched Haskins rebuild Minnesota into an NCAA regular from the ashes of sexual assault allegations (before Haskins’ final few years were waylaid by an academic fraud scandal).

It would be the first reconstruction Medved watched unfold.

The next was at Furman, where he went in 1999 and spent seven years as an assistant to coach Larry Davis. Medved helped Davis guide the Paladins to a 17-14 mark in 2001-02, their first winning season in a decade. It was the first of four winning seasons in five years for Furman.

The third was at Colorado State, where he was hired as an assistant by coach Tim Miles, five days after Miles was formally introduced as the new coach. In their first season together, the Rams went 7-25 overall and 0-16 in Mountain West Conference play.

“We had 13 scholarships accounted for, and within two months, 10 of them were gone,” said Miles, who is now the Nebraska coach. “They either quit, got kicked off or worse. We had APR issues, where we were docked scholarships in consecutive years. We were going up against a brutal league.

"Frankly, we were starting over.”

Medved helped lighten the mood of those first couple of trying seasons with his Haskins impersonation, something Miles said still makes him crack up. But they also stuck to their plan. Within two years, Colorado State was back to .500. In 2010-11, the Rams went 19-13, followed by back-to-back 20-win seasons with NCAA Tournament appearances.

“The recipe works,” Miles said. “If you just give it time to grow, whether it’s a drought or a scorching sun or whatever tribulations you might be going through, if you just hang in there and do what you’re supposed to do, that program will blossom. The dream will come to life.”

During his time Fort Collins, Medved proved to be a savvy recruiter, flashing the ability to relate easily to recruits. In high school, Medved spent hours on the phone talking to friends who came to him with problems, his father remembered. They called Medved “the rock.”

Medved’s ability to recruit and develop players led him back at Furman in 2013, this time as the head coach. His experience in those rebuilding projects was crucial as he revitalized a program that had been near the basement of the Southern Conference after Davis' departure.

“With him, it was the everyday reinforcement of what you want your program to be about and the way you want your players to play,” said Dorian Green, who played for Medved at Colorado State and then followed him to Furman, where he spent a year as an assistant coach.

“It was every day, man. ‘This is what we are, this is who we are, and this is how we do it.’ And when you do that for a while, it just becomes natural.”

Such are some of the first steps Medved plans on taking at Drake. Even more, he said rebuilding the fan base is just as important as rebuilding the on-court product. He wants to get out and sell his vision to both the Drake and Des Moines communities.

He wants people to understand his plan.

“The biggest obstacle we face is apathy,” Medved said. “You have apathy in your fan base, apathy in your alumni, apathy in your team of just — when you’ve lost for a long time, it’s 'Here we go again,' right? Every time you have a little bit of success, and then you lose, it’s 'Here we go again.'

“Even within a game, you’re up six on the road and the team makes an 8-0 run right away. Here we go again. Big deal. It’s just a game, and you move on and make the next run. Getting over that mindset takes time, and we need to stay positive and stay focused.

“It’s not easy, but it’s something that we’ll do. When you turn that mentality in your approach, along with recruiting good players and hiring good coaches, that’s when it starts to change.”

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Many coaches have attempted — and few have overcome — the Drake challenge. Since 1960, the Bulldogs have just five 20-win seasons in program history. Four of them belong to the great Maury John, who coached from 1958-1971 and took Drake to two Elite Eights and the 1969 Final Four.

The banner of that accomplishment hangs in the Knapp Center. It was one of the first things Medved saw when he arrived on Monday. Shortly after, he got his hands on a blue Adidas jacket, his first piece of Drake gear. He immediately threw it on while taking his initial tour of the team’s facilities.

Medved walked through the locker room with athletics director Sandy Hatfield Clubb. He went and saw the Shivers Basketball Practice Facility. He met Jennie Baranczyk, the women’s head coach, who took Medved’s parents on a tour shortly after the press conference concluded.

Then, Medved met his new team. A handful of players said there was initial apprehension, but Medved spoke with an honesty that surprised them. He said this process won’t be easy, that it’ll take time and work to build something sustainable.

All he asked for was a chance.

“We have everything right here in front of us,” Medved said, “and so much to look forward to.”

Cody Goodwin covers high school sports, college basketball recruiting and Drake athletics for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.