Gophers’ Niko Medved: Portal prices are ‘outrageous,’ change needed

“Some people are spending a lot; I think we’ve made a lot of progress (at Minnesota), but I think we need to continue to make more,” Medved said. “We need to keep looking at it like, ‘Hey, if the market’s going up, we have to continue to make those adjustments.’ ”

The Gophers were obviously not shopping at the top end of the market and instead sought value elsewhere. Medved called it a “demographic.” All five new additions played sparingly on teams that reached the NCAA tournament last season, and all five have more upside.

“It’s not that they can’t do it,” Medved said. “It’s just they haven’t quite had the opportunity to do that. And so I think sometimes there is a really good fit there.”

“Plus, sometimes those guys are hungry,” he added. “They’ve got a kind of a chip on their shoulder.”

The Gophers had success in this category last year when Cade Tyson transferred in from North Carolina. With the Tar Heels, he averaged 2.6 points in eight minutes per game; at Minnesota that skyrocketed to 19.6 points in 37 minutes per game — seventh-best in the Big Ten.

Medved coached Evans for two seasons at Colorado State, but UNC forked out a massive payday for him to transfer to Chapel Hill. He went from 10.6 points and 3.1 assists in 28 minutes for Medved at Colorado State in 2024-25, to 4.0 and 17.7 for the Tar Heels.

Medved saw Evans turn it on at the end of his sophomore season with the Rams, including a 23-point performance in an NCAA tournament first-round win over Memphis. He also had some good games for UNC at the beginning of last season, including 12 points against Kansas in November and 15 versus Florida State in the ACC opener in December.

Medved wants to inject confidence back into Evans.

“Sometimes I think, too, it’s just having a coach and staff who believes in him and knows what he can do,” he said.

Medved said it is “pretty easy” to see why Grady and Kordel didn’t play very much as freshman for a Wolverines squad that won the national championship.

“I know how (the Wolverines) do it every day,” Medved said. “So, when they come in here, they’ve been around it at the highest level.”

Medved thanked Gophers leadership for making a financial commitment to be successful in men’s basketball, but he sees the price for players continuing to rise. Drastic change is needed, he said, and he doesn’t see it coming in the proposed intervention from the federal government or an antitrust exemption.

Medved said he supports paying players, but the unwieldy prices need a framework.

“I may be unpopular by saying this, but I feel like at some point we’re going to have to get to some sort of collectively bargained model,” he said.

Collective bargaining would be a way to reign in the increasingly high prices currently needed to sign players. A bargaining unit would represent the schools and conferences, and another unit would represent the players in order to come up with a payment structure.

Medved sees men’s basketball having a collective bargaining agreement and football having a separate one.

“I just feel like we’re kicking the can down the road,” he said, “until we can be honest about where we’re at and figure that out.”

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