The Gophers men’s basketball team renewed the maroon and gold scrimmage on Saturday at Williams Arena.

For new head coach Niko Medved, the focus was not on learning new things about his squad, but more about re-establishing fans’ connection to its hoops team. After the one-hour sessions, there was a meet-and-greet for players and fans.

“If one of these guys makes a connection with a new young Gopher fan, that can last for the rest of your life,” Medved told reporters. “That happened to us in Colorado (State). It might be an organic connection that happens right here with a family and a young kid that gets to meet a player and come watch them. (They might say:) “Mom and dad, I want to keep going to the Gopher games.”

More than 1,000 fans turned out to The Barn for the first such scrimmage since 2018, back when Richard Pitino was head coach.

Here are five takeaways:

Initial scorers

Guard Chansey Willis, a transfer from Western Michigan, and forward Cade Tyson, a transfer from North Carolina, showed some scoring touch in the two eight-minute “games.”

Willis, who is listed at 6 feet 2, was able to finish at the rim and from 3-point range. One of the biggest highlights was his steal, a reverse lay-up in transition, plus a foul.

“Chansey can get in the lane, Isaac (Asuma) can get in the lane,” Medved said. “We do have some guys with some quickness who can create, and we’ve seen that from (Chansey) every day. He is going to be a player, I think, Gopher fans will like.”

Tyson had a finish amid traffic in the paint and a trey with Jaylen Crocker-Johnson’s hand in his face.

Tyson also got a chunk of his points at the free-throw line, which was an area where the Gophers struggled mightily during the Ben Johnson era.

Winning buckets

Center Robert Vaihola, a transfer from San Jose State, and forward Bobby Durkin, a transfer from Davidson, each made scrimmage-sealing buckets at the end of the two sessions.

The 6-foot-8 Vaihola got an offensive rebound and finished through contact from Tyson. Vaihola averaged 7.5 rebounds per game last season.

“Rebounding always translates,” Medved said. “Having played against him in the Mountain West, he was one of the best offensive rebounders.”

Durkin hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key in the second segment. The 6-7 product out of the Chicago area averaged 35.5% from deep last season in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

High standard

Multiple Gophers players at the U’s media day Friday talked about Medved’s attention to detail on the practice court. That was apparent in a few areas on the offensive end Saturday, primarily in firm screens, crisp cuts and near-constant ball movement.

Annual thing

Medved started holding preseason scrimmages tied to homecoming football games when he was the head coach at Furman from 2013-17 and continued it through his seven-year tenure at Colorado State that ended last season.

Medved likes a game-like scene when the lights are on, pregame music is playing and fans are watching.

This sort of thing might be looked at helpful after both the maroon and gold sides didn’t score for the opening three minutes.

Up next

The Gophers will take the next step with their first exhibition game against North Dakota State coming to the Barn for a 7 p.m. tipoff on Thursday. North Dakota will visit Oct. 25 for the second and final exhibition.

No students were spotted at The Barn on Saturday. “They are too busy having fun down the road,” Medved said with a laugh, referencing homecoming parties on fraternity row along University Avenue.

Students will be able to get in free for the exhibition games. The season opener is Nov. 3, when Gardner-Webb comes to the Barn.

Gophers men’s basketball coach Niko Medved talks to media members during the last day of summer practice for the team at the Cunningham Basketball Performance Center at the University’s Athletes Village in Minneapolis on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

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The Gophers’ secondary continues to be the position group most-affected by injuries this season.

The U posted key cornerback Mike Gerald and safety Aidan Gousby as out on the unavailability report posted two hours before the homecoming game against Purdue at Huntington Bank Stadium.

Safety Garrison Monroe, who missed the last two games, was not listed on the report, setting up his return to play against the Boilermakers.

The U will also be without cornerback Naiim Parish, defensive lineman Theo Randle and Mo Omonode, offensive lineman DJ Shipp, receiver Cristian Driver and running back Cristian Driver.

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If the cult techno sci-fi films “Tron” (1982) and “Tron: Legacy” (2010) are about humans going into “the grid” of the digital world, then the newest installment in this franchise, “Tron: Ares,” is about the digital world invading our own. Allegorically, this feels right for our particular moment, the film depicting AI super soldiers wreaking a path of destruction through human cities, but despite the ethical questions the film presents, it still can’t shake the franchise’s enduring techno-optimism (or inevitability), even as it encourages getting “offline.”

This iteration of “Tron” is helmed by Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, with a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow. The Flynn men, Kevin (Jeff Bridges) and his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who starred in “Legacy”) are now out of the picture, and two warring tech companies are locked in an arms race for the future of artificial intelligence. The Kim sisters have taken over the Flynns’ company, ENCOM, while bratty upstart Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) runs Dillinger Systems under the watchful, but ultimately powerless, eye of his mother (Gillian Anderson).

While Eve Kim (Greta Lee) searches for a message from her late sister, an AI optimist who believed in the tech’s possibility to improve human life, Julian Dillinger is 3D-printing digital tanks and “expendable” super soldiers off his grid for investor presentations. Too bad their real-world lifespan is only 29 minutes. When he gets wind that Eve has located a “permanence code” thanks to her sister’s message, Julian sends his two best soldiers, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) to retrieve the code by any means necessary.

A scene from Disney’s “Tron: Ares.” (Disney Enterprises, Inc./TNS)

If the appeal of “Tron” was its groundbreaking computer-generated imagery and forward-thinking concept, then the appeal of “Legacy” was its sleek sci-fi design and digital disco score by Daft Punk, offering more of a vibes-based experience than absorbing narrative. “Ares” tackles more story, but the style is borrowed from “Legacy,” just in new colorways — Dillinger’s digital squadron is cloaked in menacing red neon — and Nine Inch Nails offers up a crunchy, industrial, sexy soundtrack for the action.

But the story itself is bitten from a tale over 200 years old, one that now seems a part of our primordial DNA, or at least the DNA of the stories we tell ourselves over and over again. That is, of course, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” If the themes of creating a monster that starts to think on its own weren’t clear enough, the book is directly referenced when Ares, stalking Eve, catches a glimpse of her reading it in a social media video. As he quickly processes the book’s content, a few lines make an impression. Ares is already starting to question things, like Julian’s words about his soldiers being “expendable,” and the deletion of a fellow “program” during a hacking mission in the ENCOM grid (cleverly visualized like breaking and entering). Combined with a new sensation, a “feeling” when he experiences rain, and learning about “Frankenstein,” his system is primed to go rogue.

Typically in sci-fi, artificial intelligence gaining sentience means bad things for human beings. But as Eve posits in a televised interview, “what if its major malfunction is benevolence?” Optimistic, as always. What “Tron: Ares” suggests is that independent thinking can result in benevolence and empathy. It’s following the directive, by any means necessary, that results in death and destruction.

With his searching, but empty blue eyes, Leto is physically perfect for playing a questioning AI, and Lee brings her steely presence to bear on Eve, Peters the appropriately slimy essence to Julian. Turner-Smith demonstrates her “Terminator” bona fides as well. But the problem with “Ares” is the script, which spells out everything for us. There’s no subtext, room for interpretation or ambiguity, especially as it plays out like the scene of Frankenstein’s monster discovering a daisy. Wouldn’t it be more fun if we could uncover these themes on our own, without being prompted?

Rønning, who helmed a later “Pirates of the Caribbean” film and “Young Woman and the Sea,” provides serviceable direction of the material, without offering much innovation. The film loses fidelity toward the end, as it becomes a crashy, pixelated monster movie, as the real world has no capability for hosting the sleek, bloodless appeal of the grid.

Ultimately, “Tron: Ares” grapples with questions that plague us all, like how nefarious self-sentient artificial intelligence might be. It lands on the diplomatic argument that AI is only as good as the person wielding it, but doesn’t offer answers on how to ensure that (aside from a big old battle). But furthermore, it can’t answer the question of any AI evangelist: why try to make AI more human when we can just be human ourselves?

Perhaps that’s too much to ask of a sci-fi movie that should be more about style than substance. All “Tron: Ares” needed to be was a vibe, but it delivers existential questions that are pre-chewed pablum, rather than searching moral quandaries.

‘Tron Ares’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violence/action)

Running time: 1:59

How to watch: In theaters Oct. 10

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There’s considerable throwback appeal to “Roofman,” a quirky dramedy based on an unbelievable true story that mines the same groove as films like Richard Linklater’s “Bernie” (2011) and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!” (2009), featuring a lead character you just can’t help but root for, despite the bafflingly bad choices he makes along the way.

But because this comedic crime caper is helmed and co-written by Derek Cianfrance, who is known for his melodramatic weepies “Blue Valentine,” “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “The Light Between Oceans,” the effect of “Roofman” is far more poignant and tender than wacky and wild; the material itself is mind-boggling enough.

Channing Tatum stars as Jeff Manchester, aka the Roofman, a well-meaning but savant-like career criminal who robbed upwards of 45 McDonald’s locations in the late 1990s by tearing holes in the roofs. The film follows his time living for months in a Toys R Us while on the lam in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2004.

Cianfrance doesn’t have to push the humor, which unfolds organically, due to Manchester’s reputation as an exceedingly nice and polite armed robber, an inexplicable blend of traits that happens to be the bullseye of Tatum’s skillset as a performer. As Jeff, and later, going by his alias “John Zorn,” Tatum is both easy charmer when he needs to be and weirdo loner. There’s a certain warmth, goodness and goofiness to Tatum’s persona that he and Cianfrance put to use in their portrait of Jeff. Despite his many, many crimes, we have to believe that he’s doing this for good, if misguided, reasons and that he truly doesn’t intend to hurt anyone. That’s perfectly illustrated in the opening scene where he gives his coat to a McDonald’s manager (Tony Revolori) as he locks the staff in a walk-in freezer.

But Cianfrance also brings his skill with drawing out deep emotion to bear on this story as well. In someone else’s hands, this film might tip over into slapstick territory, but Cianfrance’s tonal restraint and focus on Jeffrey’s inner turmoil — his desire to simply provide for a family — makes “Roofman” a far more moving piece than expected.

This is one of Tatum’s best and most lived-in performances to date, with Cianfrance making use of his natural appeal and physicality, but also pushing him into more complex emotional waters. (It wouldn’t be a Cianfrance movie without some tears.) He is especially potent opposite Kirsten Dunst, who plays Leigh, a Toys R Us employee with whom Jeffrey strikes up a relationship after meeting at a local church.

Separated from his own family and children, Jeffrey attempts to fill the hole in his heart with Leigh and her daughters, furnishing the girls with stolen gifts while falling for the single mom. Dunst and Tatum are terrific together, particularly in moments where things are left unsaid, unspoken confessions, apologies and forgiveness coursing between them. Cianfrance’s slow zooms on Tatum’s tormented face tell us everything we need to know.

For much of the film, Tatum’s performance is purely physical, wordless, while Jeffrey is alone, a voice-over providing context and reflection. Slimmed down and lithe, Tatum’s panther-like physicality showcases Jeffrey’s preternatural ability to master his environment through keen observation and sheer determination. One scene where he has to make a quick escape while stark naked is absolutely astonishing.

“Roofman” is predominantly a one-man showcase for the full range of Tatum’s talents, but the entire ensemble is crucial for any good caper. Dunst’s prowess pushes his own performance, while Peter Dinklage offers levity as the stern store manager Mitch. Ben Mendelsohn steps into the role of Jeff and Leigh’s chipper pastor, which requires enthusiastic hymn-singing. Mendelsohn tackles this with gusto alongside Uzo Aduba as his wife. Lakeith Stanfield plays Jeff’s one friend and confidant, a military buddy, with Juno Temple as his girlfriend.

These actors color in the world around Jeff, providing examples of how easily he is able to inveigle trusting strangers with a bit of smooth talk, slipping into normal society and evading capture. But Stanfield in particular also serves as a moral compass, or at least a dose of common sense, offering ballast to the proceedings. It would otherwise be too easy to justify Jeff’s actions, not as good choices, but the choices made by a person who desperately wants to do good, but can only achieve it in a bad way.

Jeff Manchester might have been a folk hero of the early 2000s, but his story resonates even more today, with wealth inequality and performative materialism higher than ever. An audience of 2025 will understand what Jeff does empathetically, without having too much sympathy for corporate losses or law enforcement. In this era, his bad choices, driven by desperation, make much more sense. For this moment, the “Roofman” has arrived right on time.

‘Roofman’

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language, nudity and brief sexuality)

Running time: 2:06

How to watch: In theaters Oct. 10

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