With the Gophers men’s basketball team playing at Purdue on Wednesday, new head coach Niko Medved shared an old story this week about an interaction with legendary Boilermakers coach Gene Keady.
In 1994, Purdue traveled to Minneapolis on the eve of a Big Ten Conference game. A late flight and scheduling conflict kept them from practicing at Williams Arena, so Medved, then a Gopher student manager, had to open up the Bierman Athletic Building for the Boilermakers to hold a practice.
Purdue assistant coaches and players went to watch film beforehand, leaving Keady and Medved on the court alone. They started playing a game of H-O-R-S-E.
“I’m gonna say that I had the lead,” Medved shared on the KFAN coaches show recorded Monday. “… I had maybe ‘H,’ and he had, like ‘R,’ and then the team came out, so I was gonna win.”
Medved’s own coaching career wouldn’t start for a few years, while Keady was in his 14th year at Purdue and was routinely making NCAA Tournament appearances. Keady would go on to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023, but Medved said wasn’t nervous that night.
“It would have been awesome. I would have taken pride, absolutely,” Medved said, then joked. “I might have even talked a little trash.”
Medved doesn’t remember what he and Keady talked about between shots, but the experience left a lasting impression on him. He recalls how Keady might have been “grumpy” about the scheduling changes.
“I do remember that as a young guy in the business, you’re kind of starstruck,” Medved told the Pioneer Press. “He is one of the best coaches. It’s also, for me, going through the experience and getting to meet all those guys, what you really realize is people from the outside can seem larger than life, but what you really realize is they’re just human beings like everybody else.”
That Keady team in 1993-94 was led by Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, and Purdue went on that spring to win the first of three straight Big Ten regular season championships.
This year, Purdue (8-1, 1-0 Big Ten) is ranked sixth in the nation, but were No. 1 before a 81-58 home loss to then-No. 10 Iowa State on Saturday. Keady was in attendance at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, Ind.
Last Wednesday, Medved led Minnesota (5-4, 1-0) to an upset of then-22nd-ranked Indiana 73-64 for their first win in a Big Ten opener since 2017.
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