State of the Hoops Program: Minnesota starts over with a new nucleus

CHICAGO, IL - MARCH 16: Minnesota Golden Gophers center Daniel Oturu (25) battles with Michigan State Spartans forward Thomas Kithier (15) for a rebound during a Big Ten Tournament semifinal game between the Michigan Wolverines and the Minnesota Golden Gophers on March 16, 2019, at the United Center in Chicago, IL. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By Dustin Dopirak
Aug 23, 2019

Richard Pitino entered the 2018-19 season like a poker player down to his last chips. He needed to win just to keep playing.

The 37-year-old son of the exiled Hall of Famer had won an NIT in his first year at Minnesota in 2013-14 but had been to just one NCAA Tournament before last season, taking a first-round exit in 2017. The 2017-18 season was a disaster thanks to injuries and other personnel issues, as the Gophers started the season ranked in the top 15 but lost 14 of their last 16 games to finish 15-17 and out of the postseason. That put Pitino squarely on the hot seat.

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But Pitino had good enough cards to play with size across the board and forward Jordan Murphy returning. The Golden Gophers won just enough for Pitino to play on, earning a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament with a seventh-place Big Ten finish, a 21-13 record on Selection Sunday and knocking off Louisville to claim Minnesota’s first NCAA win since 2013 and its second since the vacated Final Four run of 1997. The Gophers got slammed 70-50 by Michigan State in the second round, but getting back to the Big Dance and winning earned Pitino a two-year contract extension that gives him a modest $200,000 raise from about $2.2 million and keeps him under contract through the 2023-24 season.

Winning a tournament game means more to the Golden Gophers than just allowing them to keep their coach. It served as a reminder that they still matter.

“It gives us a good outlook for our future but also for recruiting,” senior forward Michael Hurt said. “It shows this is a place you can win consistently, and we can get to the tournament and make some noise.”

The future starts, however, with a team that doesn’t look anything like the one that won that tournament game.

Murphy graduated as the No. 2 scorer in Minnesota history (1,802 points) and the No. 2 all-time rebounder in Big Ten history (1,307 rebounds). Amir Coffey, the 6-foot-8, 210-pounder who operated as the Golden Gophers point guard down the stretch, left for the NBA after averaging 16.6 points per game in his junior season. He wasn’t drafted but signed a two-way contract with the Clippers.

Guard and 1,000-point scorer Dupree McBrayer also graduated along with reserves Matz Stockman and Brock Stull. Backup guard Isaiah Washington opted to transfer to Howard, which leaves the Golden Gophers with just three of the nine players who averaged at least 10 minutes per game last season.

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Taking their place on the roster are four freshmen, a graduate transfer, and two more traditional transfers who are eligible this season after sitting out last year. The Golden Gophers went on a foreign tour to Italy this month, winning all three games they played, in part because they needed to do something to get this team used to playing together.

“It’s probably the most different team I’ve been a part of from year to year,” Hurt said. “It’s definitely a really, really different feel.”

But the new additions are talented, and talented in ways that last year’s group was not. For that reason, Pitino thinks it’s entirely possible the Golden Gophers could find themselves back in the tournament by taking a much different path.

“It feels like a brand new team,” Pitino said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t win.”

The big question

What will this team even look like?

The toughest thing about dealing with the Golden Gophers last season was they forced the Big Ten to remember what it was like to have to guard two post players at once.

At 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds, Murphy cut the figure of an old-school power forward. There wasn’t much stretch about him. He took 30 3-pointers and made eight of them, but he was generally operating out of the high or low post.

The Golden Gophers might have considered moving him to the center spot, but 6-foot-10 center Daniel Oturu was clearly one of their five best players as well, so they opted to help take attention off Murphy with more size inside.

“Any time you have a player like Jordan Murphy, you kind of have to give him the ball in spots and just let him go figure it out,” Pitino said. “Just because he’s such a good offensive rebounder and was really good at getting fouled. Last year, it kind of evolved into a high-low basketball type team. We were just a power team, either get fouled or make a play.”

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That allowed the Gophers to outmuscle some teams that weren’t built to deal with two big men, but it was only so effective. Minnesota got a lot of its points in the paint, Murphy led the Big Ten in rebounding and Oturu finished in the top 15 in the category, but as a team, the Golden Gophers were a middle-of-the-pack rebounding squad by every measure.

And they were hurt by what they traded off. They made just 31.7 percent of their 3-point shots, which put them 11th in the Big Ten and 300th nationally. Their 5.3 3-pointers per game were last in the Big Ten. No team in major-conference basketball took a lower percentage of its shots from beyond the arc than Minnesota’s 29.6 percent.

“We were a bad, bad shooting team,” Pitino said. “We had to be one of the worst in the country, and we were still able to make the tournament.”

Oturu is back for his sophomore year, but with Murphy gone, Pitino expects to run a four-out, one-in offense with shooters at every position other than center, taking to what has become a much more standard approach nationwide.

The only other returning starter other than Oturu is sophomore guard Gabe Kalscheur. He was the only Minnesota player who took at least 30 3-pointers last season and made at least 31 percent of his shots, leading the squad at 41.0 percent. His 77 3-pointers were almost 40 percent of Minnesota’s season total of 191. He can obviously shoot it, and this season, he won’t be the only player who can.

Marcus Carr, a transfer point guard from Pitt, hit 36 3s as a freshman in 2017-18. Fellow transfer Payton Willis hit 63 3-pointers in two seasons at Vanderbilt. Power forward Alihan Demir, a graduate transfer from Drexel, hit more than 20 3-pointers in each of his two seasons with the Dragons and is a legitimate pick-and-pop option. Each of them hit at least 33 percent from that distance.

Those numbers don’t suggest that Minnesota will live by the 3, but it does suggest that unlike last season, the floor will actually be spread. The Golden Gophers focused on the 3 in Italy, averaging 11.3 makes on 33.7 attempts, more than doubling their average makes from last season.

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“We weren’t a big shooting team last year, but I think you’re going to see more of that this year,” Pitino said. “Maybe more so like a Purdue or a Michigan, the way they would shoot the ball, I hope at least. It’s going to be totally different, but they’re very capable of scoring. We’re going to have hopefully, at times, four guys if not five who can stretch the defense on the court, and I think that will be fun to coach. It’s going to take some time to evolve, but I think we’re going to have some good offensive talent.”

Roster analysis

Guards: Marcus Carr pushed for a hardship waiver when he transferred from Pitt after the firing of coach Kevin Stallings and didn’t get it, but he appears to have a clear path to being the Golden Gophers starting point guard now that he’s arrived. He played for one of the worst teams in Pitt history, but he still averaged 10 points and four assists and was the Panthers starting point guard for 27 of the 32 games in which he played. He’s steady with the ball, a good distributor, he can get to the rim and hit the jumpers the offense creates for him.

Payton Willis, the 6-foot-4, 182-pound redshirt junior transfer from Vanderbilt, could win a starting job as a shooting guard and move Gabe Kalscheur to the small forward spot, or Willis could operate as a combo guard off the bench, spelling Carr at the point and Kalscheur at the 2.

The most important skill he brings, though, is shooting. He shot around 45 percent as a high school junior in Fayetteville, Ark. His percentages went down at Vanderbilt, but he was clearly focused on making 3s. Thirty-eight of his 48 makes as a sophomore came from beyond the arc.

“Payton is a guy who can play multiple positions, guard multiple positions,” Hurt said. “He shoots the ball exceptionally well.”

Willis was arguably the Gophers’ top performer in Italy, averaging 11.3 points, 5.3 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 2.3 steals. He shot just 29 percent from beyond the 3-point arc but posted 16 assists against two turnovers.

The Gophers were in need of another ball-handler late in the recruiting cycle and signed Bryan Greenlee, a 6-foot-3, 175-pound point guard from Gainesville, Fla., in June. He wasn’t that highly sought-after, but Pitino has been impressed by what he’s seen so far.

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“What’s been good is he’s been going at Marcus Carr every day,” Pitino said. “Really good footspeed. Very, very tough. Great defender. Great on-ball defender. Can be a pest on the ball. When he first got here, he was very, very turnover prone. He’s done a really good job of understanding that as a point guard in the Big Ten, you can’t do that. His shooting has improved. He’s in great shape. He’s a tough kid.”

Wings: Kalscheur was arguably the most under-appreciated freshman in a loaded 2018 class in the Big Ten. He was left off the conference’s all-freshman squad by both the coaches and the media, but he was one of Minnesota’s most important players and will be even more critical with Murphy and Coffey departed.

The 6-foot-4, 200-pound Kalscheur was by far the best shooter on last season’s squad, and his performance from long range was one of the biggest reasons the Gophers beat Louisville in the NCAA Tournament. He hit five 3-pointers and scored 24 points in that game.

Beyond that, though, he was also the team’s best perimeter defender. He was the primary defender against Purdue’s Carsen Edwards in the Golden Gophers’ two wins against them in March that helped solidify their tournament resumé. Edwards scored 22 points in the first game but shot 7 of 31 from the field. He scored just 11 in Minnesota’s win over the Boilermakers in the Big Ten Tournament.

“He’s one of the more underrated players in our league,” Pitino said. “He’s a terrific shooter and a terrific defender. He did a great job on some of the better players in the league, and he wanted to do that, which is kind of rare. Not a lot of freshmen are that confident to do that, and Gabe did that. He does a really good job of not getting screened. He’s fundamentally sound, always in a stance, always near his guy. He’s not going to put luck into play. He’s going to make it as hard as possible for his guy to get the ball.”

Kalscheur can handle either shooting guard or small forward, so if Willis comes off the bench, Minnesota will likely be deciding between two very talented freshmen at the wing spots.

Tre Williams, a 6-foot-4, 180-pounder, averaged 15.7 points and 3.7 assists at Wasatch Academy in Utah last season, drastically improving his recruiting stock after he’d already committed to Minnesota. Williams also can play the 2 or the 3 and can score from either spot. He averaged a team-best 15 points in Italy.

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“He’s got size, he’s got versatility, he’s very, very confident,” Pitino said. “Works his butt off. Can get to the basket, can hit shots. I think he’s going to be a terrific player for us. He fits exactly what we’re looking for.”

Isaiah Ihnen is another potential diamond in the rough in the freshman class. The 6-foot-9, 190-pounder from Germany averaged 12.5 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists last season at the International Basketball Academy in Munich. He played for Germany’s under-20 team in the FIBA European Championships in July, so he got a later start than the rest of the freshmen on Minnesota’s roster, but he made an immediate impression. He has enough size to play as a stretch-4 and has a 7-foot-5 wingspan, but he’s also skilled enough on the perimeter to handle the ball out there and guard a wing.

He scored 19 points in one of the Gophers’ games during the foreign tour.

“He’s so big, but he’s also so skilled,” Hurt said. “Defensively, he’ll be a force almost immediately. He’s really good at driving. He gets to a lot of Euro-steps because he’s able to use that length and finish at the rim. He also can shoot the ball and handle it a decent amount and go off pick-and-roll situations. If he can improve in all of those areas, he’ll be a lethal scorer.”

Michael Hurt could be a functional backup at either forward position, especially if he can improve as a shooter. The 6-foot-7, 220-pounder hit 9 of his 21 attempts as a sophomore and got to start 14 games that season. Last year, he had less time and had less success, averaging fewer than eight minutes per game and making just one of his 13 3-point tries. He connected on three of his four attempts in Italy, however.

“Being able to pop and space the floor and knowing how to move around the perimeter is huge,” Hurt said. “If I can space, it stretches out the defenders and helps guys like Marcus and Payton to drive. Just trying to be a threat out there is really huge.”

Alihan Demir, the 6-foot-9, 230-pound graduate transfer from Drexel, has the skill set to be a more modern style of power forward. The native of Ankara, Turkey, averaged 14.8 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.9 assists with the Dragons last season, knocked down 43 3-pointers in two seasons at Drexel and shot better than 71 percent from the free-throw line.

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Demir averaged 9.7 points and 6.0 rebounds in three games in Italy, posting a 13-point, 10-rebound double-double against Stella Azurra.

“He was a really, really important get for us late,” Pitino said. “We needed to add a frontcourt guy with some size and some skill and Alihan’s got that. He really, really fits what we’re trying to do from an offensive standpoint. He’s good out on the perimeter, really good passer, really good shooter. Good driver, gets to the basket, really skilled. As we’re transitioning to a four-out, one-in team instead of a high-low team, I think he really fits that.”

Bigs: Daniel Oturu got to learn a lot as a freshman, not only by playing alongside Murphy but also by dealing with some of the Big Ten’s toughest centers. The 6-foot-10, 225-pounder averaged 10.8 points and 7.0 rebounds per game, made 55.1 percent of his shots and registered 46 blocks on the other end.

Oturu added 15 pounds of muscle over the offseason, and he was dominant in Italy in modest minutes, averaging 11.3 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.3 blocks in 14 minutes per game.

“I still think that he can drastically improve in a lot of areas,” Pitino said. “He shot 61.5 percent from the free-throw line. That goes up, that’s a couple more points right there. I think that just little things that freshmen don’t necessarily know how to do, I think he learned playing against guys like Nick Ward from Michigan State or Matt Haarms from Purdue or Juwan Morgan from Indiana. Daniel can learn from those guys. He’s got the raw talent and he’s productive.”

Eric Curry could give the Gophers an experienced option behind him who could also play power forward if he’s healthy. The 6-foot-9, 240-pounder missed time with a knee injury at the beginning of the season and the foot injury at the end of it and is still recovering from the latter. However, Curry has averaged 5.1 points and 4.6 rebounds as a collegian, so he has the capacity to contribute.

“We’re just getting him confident again,” Pitino said. “He’s missed a lot of time. We have to make sure that when we get him back out there, he can just go play. His freshman year, he did a lot of good things for an NCAA Tournament team. If he gets healthy, I think he can really help us.”

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Jarvis Omersa, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound sophomore, gives them another tough physical player who can play the 4 or the 5, and freshman Sam Freeman gives them another true 5. He might not get a ton of playing time immediately, but Pitino likes his upside.

“He’s improved already,” Pitino said. “It’s going to take some time, but that’s fine. We want him to evolve into a really good player down the road. He’s got a big frame, he’s tall, he can rebound the basketball. It’s just a matter of developing.”

Carr, left, will be Minnesota’s starting point guard this season after sitting out 2018-19. (Brad Penner / USA Today)

Spotlight on: Marcus Carr

Carr was supposed to be one of the centerpieces of Kevin Stallings’ attempt to rebuild the program at Pitt.

The Toronto native led his high school program to an Ontario provincial championship as a sophomore, then transferred to Monteverde Academy in Florida and helped that powerhouse to a runner-up finish in the Dick’s High School Nationals as a senior. He was a top-150 recruit, and he immediately won the starting job as Pitt’s point guard.

The problem was the Panthers didn’t have much else going for them and finished 2017-18 with an 8-24 overall record and zero wins in 18 ACC games. Pitt decided not to give Stallings even a third season to continue his rebuild and Carr decided to go elsewhere. His hope was that the NCAA might approve a hardship waiver, but that didn’t happen so Carr had to spend last season as a practice player running Minnesota’s scout team.

Pitino said he handled that well and made the most of pushing the first team and giving those players good looks heading into games.

“He’s a mature kid,” Pitino said. “It was one of those that when he got the role, he accepted it and moved on. To his credit, he moved on. Sitting out is not easy for any player. It can be kind of lonely. You’re trying to help your team from a preparation standpoint but you’re probably not getting the attention the other guys are getting just because you’re locked into the season. You gotta be really self-motivated and he was that.”

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Now Carr goes straight from the scout team to getting the keys. With Coffey and McBrayer both gone, the point guard job is his to lose, and it will be his job to run an offense that will operate entirely differently than the one the Golden Gophers had last season. He’ll have to score himself but also learn how to set up a collection of teammates that will be a work in progress in terms of chemistry.

Pitino thinks he’s built for it just fine.

“He’s more of that pure point guard-type guy,” Pitino said. “He can score the basketball, though, and he’s tough. I think he can be one of the better guards in the league. He can shoot it from 3. He can get to the rim. He’s explosive. He’s got a really good shot-fake, jab step. He’s physically strong to where he can take hits. He can get to the basket. He’s not going to shy away from contact. He’s pretty good at everything.”

His teammates can tell that already as well.

“Marcus is an exceptional point guard,” Hurt said. “He just knows how to command an offense and lead his team on defense. He has that mentality that I want to win at all costs.”

Recruiting

Much of Pitino’s recruiting strategy in this class was driven by need. With Murphy gone and Curry dealing with injury issues, he needed a power forward type who could make an immediate impact, so he pursued Demir from Drexel. There wasn’t a lot of depth behind Oturu or Carr, especially once Coffey decided to stay in the draft, so Freeman and Greenlee were musts. It didn’t matter that neither of them is ranked in the top 350 of the 247Sports composite rankings.

But in Tre Williams and Isaiah Ihnen, he got a pair of sleepers that have drawn more attention by the end of their senior years.

Williams wasn’t even ranked by 247Sports when he signed with the Golden Gophers in mid-November, but recruiting services noticed him quickly when the season started and he ended his career ranked No. 130. The 6-4, 180-pounder has a chance to land a starting job with Gabe Kalscheur on the wing

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“A lot of people were like, ‘Who’s that?’ Is that a reach?'” Pitino said. “‘But he played some national tournaments and he shot up from maybe a two-star kid to a four-star kid. He’s every bit that good.”

Ihnen meanwhile, was limited in terms of exposure in Germany but is still the No. 93 player in the class. At 6-9 with skill, he has a chance to make an immediate impact as well.

“Really, really talented,” Pitino said. “He’s long, he can shoot the basketball, he’s extremely talented, and in my opinion, if he was playing in the United States, he’d be a top 75 player in the country.”

The Gophers class is ranked fourth in the Big Ten and 34th nationally. With as many players as Minnesota lost, the Gophers had to recruit that well.

“We lost a lot, but I think we did a good job of making sure we could replenish that roster,” Pitino said.

Gabe Kalscheur, with ball, is vital to the Gophers’ hopes of reaching the NCAA Tournament again in 2020. (Steven Branscombe / USA Today)

Schedule analysis

The Golden Gophers’ bubble case was buoyed by wins over Utah, Texas A&M, Washington and Oklahoma State in non-conference play, so they approached this season’s schedule with that in mind.

Their involvement in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and the Gavitt Games got them a home game against Clemson and a road game at Butler. They will also play Oklahoma in a neutral-site game in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Nov. 9 and Oklahoma State in Tulsa, Okla., on Dec. 21 after hosting the Cowboys in U.S. Bank Stadium last season, and they play at Utah in a return game after having them at home last season. Pitino said two more contracts still need to be signed to fill out the schedule.

“I think the days of scheduling easy are over,” Pitino said. “Playing a tough schedule doesn’t hurt you at all, even if you lose.”

Ceiling 

The losses of Coffey, Murphy and McBrayer make for a complete overhaul, but the transfers could make for a much softer landing. There’s even more potential if Williams and Ihnen can produce right away. If Carr performs like an All-Big Ten guard, Oturu is an All-Big Ten big and Kalscheur keeps shooting as well as he has and becomes an All-Big Ten defender, the Gophers could sneak into the Big Ten’s top half and earn another NCAA bid.

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Floor 

If Kalscheur and Oturu stagnate, Carr is just average and the other newcomers don’t produce right away, things could easily go sideways. There’s enough talent and enough experience returning to assure they won’t be a bottom-of-the-league team, but it is possible they finish 10th or worse and find themselves in danger of missing not only the NCAA Tournament but the NIT.

Final analysis

Reconstructing this roster might be fun for Pitino now, but life without Murphy won’t be easy to get used to. The good news for the Gophers is that they won’t take nearly as big of a roster hit this season as they did last season, and they’ll have a chance to build from whatever growing pains they suffer through this season. There’s a chance they make the NCAA Tournament again. But thanks to last year’s performance, Pitino can go into this season knowing that whatever happens, he’ll get to play on.

(Top photo of Daniel Oturu: Robin Alam / Getty Images)

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