The new staff seems to be complete, here are your assistant coaches for Nike Medved and the Gophers
Last week, the University announced the final additions to Nike Medved’s coaching staff. Now that we know all of the names of the key assistant coaches, here is a brief introduction to the faces you’ll be seeing just a step below the Barn floor.
Armon Gates
Gates is the brother of Missouri head coach Dennis Gates and comes to Minnesota after spending the last two seasons at Oklahoma under Porter Moser. He is no stranger to the Big Ten having spent nine seasons between Nebraska and Northwestern.
Gates played for Kent State and has had other assistant coaching stops at Oregon, Loyola, TCU, Kent State and Western Kentucky.
He is known as a “high-energy” guy who is works his butt of in recruiting.
Brian Cooley
Cooley followed Medved from Colorado State, and this will be their fifth consecutive season together. Prior to CSU, Cooley spent five seasons at Wright State and nine seasons under Scott Nagy at South Dakota State.
While at Colorado State, Colley worked with their big men and it is probably safe to assume that he will have the same role at Minnesota.
Dave Thorson
This should be a familiar name as Thorson is the lone holdover from Ben Johnson’s staff. But prior to coming to Minnesota Thorson was on Medved’s staff at CSU.
Thorson obviously brings deep relationships to the Minnesota high school coaching community and is known as a defensive-minded coach.
Chad Warner
Warner comes to Minnesota after spending the past four seasons at Furman where he was the associate head coach this past season. Prior to Furman, Warner had 13 years of head coaching experience at the DII level at Flagler College and Shorter University, with a brief stint at Valpo as their recruiting coordinator in between. He took his Flagler team to the 2021 DII Final Four before losing to eventual champion, NW Missouri State.
He is a graduate of the University of Georgia, where he was a graduate assistant in 2002-03. And from there he had a few assistant jobs at Hampton-Sydney (DIII) and the College of William & Mary.
He has spent most of his coaching career in the south and it is probably reasonable to assume he will spend some recruiting focus in that part of the country.
Aaron Katsuma
Another former Gopher manager who worked his way up to Ast Director of Player Personnel under Richard Pitino and is now back at his alma mater. In between, Katsuma spent five seasons with Medved between Drake and Colorado State, then went to New Mexico to be an assistant under Pitino for two seasons.
He is now rejoining Medved and returning to Minnesota as an assistant.
Joe De Ciman
Named as the program’s “Chief of Staff.” De Ciman will oversee all off-court activities for the program.
He played at Colorado State and was on staff there for the past six seasons.
Rachel Herndon
Herndon is the program’s Director of Basketball Operations, she held the same title at Colorado State last season.
Anthony Holland
The team’s Director of Player Personnel. He is a former Washington Huskie basketball player and spent last year at Colorado State as their graduate assistant.
Lucas Stieber
The team’s Director of Player Development. Stieber also spent last season at Colorado State as a graduate assistant. He is the grandson of Dick Bennett and he played collegiately for UW-Green Bay and Gardner Webb.