Rams coach Niko Medved to be the next coach at Minnesota

Just a day after the Colorado State Rams suffered a heartbreaking loss in the second round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the team has now lost its head coach in Niko Medved. The 51-year-old has had a lot of success in Fort Collins in recent years, including three trips to the Big Dance in the last four years.

Sources: Minnesota is expected to hire Colorado State’s Niko Medved as its next head coach.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 24, 2025

The coach was born and raised in the Twin Cities area and stayed for college to attend the University of Minnesota. He got his coaching start at nearby Macalester in Saint Paul in 1997 as an assistant. Medved worked his way through the college ranks on staff at Furman, Colorado State and Minnesota. Then he got his first head coaching opportunity in 2013 at Furman, where he led the Paladins for four years, finishing with a Southern Conference regular season championship while he was named the conference’s coach of the year. He then jumped to Drake for a season and then got the gig in Fort Collins.

The Gophers have not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2019, and have been just below .500 as a team since that season. Their previous head coach was Ben Johnson, who spent the last four years calling the shots for the program.

This news is crushing for the Rams, who established themselves as the best college basketball team in the state of Colorado with a miraculous run down the stretch this season. After starting 5-5, Medved’s team went 20-4 the rest of the way to secure the No. 2 seed in the Mountain West Tournament, where the Rams then won three more games to take the title.

In the NCAA Tournament, Colorado State pulled off a comeback victory in the first round against No. 5 seed Memphis before losing to No. 4 seed Maryland Sunday in the second round.

Medved had the Rams ranked as high as No. 13 in the AP Poll (2023) during his time in Fort Collins, and had the team ranked in the top 25 in multiple seasons. In 2023, the team made the NCAA Tournament as an at-large, where they played the Virginia Cavaliers in the First Four and put on a defensive clinic en route to a victory.

In his coaching career, Medved’s teams are 222-173, with a 143-85 record at CSU.

CSU Athletic Director John Weber announced Monday that Ali Farokhmanesh will serve as the team’s interim head coach as the search continues. The man who hit one of the most iconic shots in March Madness history has previously served as an assistant at Nebraska and Drake before coming to Fort Collins in 2018 as an assistant.

An update on our men’s basketball program pic.twitter.com/WBplKjVJPy

— John Weber (@ColoradoStateAD) March 24, 2025

Some fans are already calling for Farokhmanesh to become Medved’s successor as the team’s head coach full time, not just in an interim role. Weber said there will be no further comment on the situation until the next head coach is officially named.