2022-2023 SEASON PREVIEW
By Barry Foote
Minneapolis Star-Tribune Gophers Basketball Beat Writer
October 1st, 2022
MINNEAPOLIS -- Coming off a rough season in which they won just thirteen games and failed to make the postseason of any kind, Minnesota will now look to try and reverse their fortunes in former Golden Gopher player Ben Johnson's second season at the helm. It's also going to be the year of massive roster turnover as Johnson brought in more of his own players to the program. With seven seniors and transfer Parker Fox lost from last year's 13-17 squad, he managed to bring in eight newcomers to replace them, including seven underclassmen (five freshmen).
That said, there are some bright spots returning -- junior forward Jamison Battle led the Gophers in scoring at a 17 ppg clip, and was a 36% three-point shooter. He should be the main focus of the offense, along with sophomore big man Dawson Garcia, another floor-stretcher that has range extending out to the arc. The 6-foot-11 Garcia has been at two different schools through his first two years in school, dealing with personal and off-court issues that have hampered his play, including not playing at all last season with North Carolina. But with those behind him and back in his home state of Minnesota, Johnson and his assistant coaches feel he's ready to live up to his lofty top-40 ranking from out of high school.
With lead guard Peyton Willis now gone, Minnesota’s backcourt has changed completely. Ta’lon Cooper, a 6-foot-4 guard transfer from Morehead State, is a likely starter. Cooper will bring a lot of experience as he started 52 games for the Eagles. The junior is a pass-first guard who earned first team All-Ohio Valley conference honors last season. His 202 assists last season rank second-most in Morehead State history. Cooper isn’t a great shooter, but he makes the right read and can use his size to his advantage. Backing him up will be another transfer, Taurus Samuels from Dartmouth. Samuels averaged 9.4 points last season in the Ivy League for the Big Green, and will be the only senior on this year's team.
Sophomore guard Abdoulaye Thiam also returns, having played in all thirty-one games a year ago. He shot 36% from three-point range, but played just seven minutes per game. He figures to get first crack at a more prominent role with the seven seniors now no longer in the program. Another sophomore, seven-footer Treyton Thompson, also should see an uptick in his playing time after playing in nineteen games a year ago. He adds some size to the rotation, but is much more of a stretch four than a true big, in the Garcia mold.
The five freshmen brought in by the staff aren't the Fab Five, but they landed the top recruit in the state in guard Braeden Carrington, and forward Pharrel Payne should also play a prominent role. Both are Minnesota natives, with other freshmen such as Jadyn Henley, Kadyn Betts, and Joshua Ola-Joseph hailing from Minnesota, Colorado, and California respectively. Payne was a high-three star recruit by all the services, and is the closest thing they have to a true back-to-the-basket player. Ola-Joseph and Betts are swing-type players that can defend multiple spots, while Henley is what is commonly known today as a "3-and-D" kind of athlete.
“We’re going to have three core values this summer: physicality, mentality and edge. That’s going to be huge. We’ve got to be a much more physical team, because we have the ability to be," Johnson told the Athletic back in May. "I keep hitting it, but we’re going to have the measurables that make us more physical. We have to have that mentality of being downhill dudes. We have to have the mentality of, we’re going to keep coming at you, every single play. That mentality of we’re going to bend but not break. That tough, hard-nosed, blue-collar mindset.”
Even with all of the newcomers and the ability to change the fortunes of a program in one season, this is still an unlikely NCAA Tournament team -- they'll likely have a ceiling of one of the other postseason tournaments, unfortunately. The defense was the worst in the conference a season ago, and the losses of Willis and fellow sharpshooting guard E.J. Stephens will need to be overcome with some combination of the newcomers and returnees. But the ceiling of this team is certainly high, as Garcia should open up even more looks for Battle to improve on his numbers from a season ago, and the experience added in the backcourt with a well-known developer of guards in Johnson could certainly bode well down the road.
