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2022-23 CBB Season

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Wildnation said:


Ben Johnson needs to be fired after the season. He was supposed to be a recruiter and is following Richard Pitino where he couldn’t recruit the state of MN (which has a lot of basketball talent believe it or not). He clearly is a worse coach than Pitino. I said when he was hired that he was a cheap hire by the athletic department and it looks like I was proven right so far. It would be a cheap buyout. No point in wasting one more year, although I’m sure he will still be here next season.
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His biggest problem, by far, is roster construction. There are some good pieces to work with in the front court, but the guard play is inexcusably bad where there isn't one player on the roster that I look at and consider a power conference caliber guard.

Two straight hires where the Gophers went the inexperienced route at head coach, and the Big Ten is not the league where you can really do that unless it is a top assistant from a high level program. I know Pitino had the one year at FIU (and was with better programs as an assistant), but he still fits that mold too. Ben needed to get a MAC or Summit League type of job first. Ben's time as an assistant was largely spent under Pitino and under Steele at Xavier, and neither program was successful during those stretches outside of one decent year in 2017.

The up-and-coming coach who has established himself as a good coach at a lower program is what a school like Minnesota should target, and coaches like Craig Smith and Dennis Gates would have fit the bill (those were my top two choices at the time). If you want more experience, add Brian Dutcher to that list, and he specifically has a clause in his contract that lowers the buyout for Minnesota, and Minnesota only. But Pitino soured the local basketball scene enough that the administration was dead-set on bringing 'one of their own' in to run the program, even if he wasn't ready for the position.

While you can consider it a cheap hire (and it is to a degree), Minnesota could have at the very least gotten Smith at the same salary as Johnson, based upon what Smith is making at Utah.
 
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Charleston now 28-3 on the season, Pat Kelsey will definitely be in line to get a big time job
 
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