The only recognizable things about the new Gophers men’s basketball team early this season will be its maroon-and-gold jerseys and guard Isaac Asuma.

Asuma, a sophomore from Cherry, Minn., is the only returning player who got any playing time in Ben Johnson’s final year as head coach in 2024-25.

New head coach Niko Medved has brought in nine players from the NCAA transfer portal and retained one of three members in Johnson’s class of high school additions. Asuma and Grayson Grove, a forward from Alexandria who redshirted a season ago, are the only carryovers.

“Hello, my name is …” tags might be necessary when the Gophers start summer workouts next week.

“It will be interesting that we’ll only have one player on our team who will have any idea what I’m talking about when we start on Monday,” Medved joked to the Pioneer Press on Thursday. That is Jaylen Crocker-Johnson, a senior forward who followed Medved over from Colorado State via the portal.

The Gophers’ roster top to bottom appears to be more talented than last year’s team, which went 15-17 overall, 7-13 in the Big Ten, but it seems to lack the clear all-conference-type player it had a year ago in 6-foot-10 forward Dawson Garcia.

Western Michigan transfer guard Chansey Willis Jr. might be the closest No. 1 option in the group. The 6-foot-2 guard from Detroit led the Mid-American Conference in per-game points (16.8) and rebounds (5.8) last season. When the U needs a bucket or a distributor next season, the ball will likely be in his hands.

Asuma is also a presumed starter, giving the U a pair of point guards in the lineup. As a freshman, he averaged 5.6 points, 2.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.2 turnovers in 25 minutes a game. How much he can break out as a true sophomore will help determine the team’s ceiling next winter.

Given its disparate parts, leadership will be needed even more. Asuma and Crocker-Johnson and perhaps Willis are on the short list of players who will be called in to provide it.

Medved’s first team at the U has a handful of guys who can play multiple positions and have different skill sets. One example is a subset of 6-7 or 6-8 wings in Bobby Durkin (Davidson), Cade Tyson (North Carolina) and BJ Omot (California).

Heading into his first practice, Medved was contemplating how certain mixes of guys might play together. “I kind of like having some of that feeling,” he said.

The Gophers were 15th in the 18-team Big Ten in 3-point shooting last season (32%), but Medved feels like they might have improved on that, too. Tyson is a career 42% shooter, primarily at his first stop (Belmont) and Durkin at 35%.

“We found a mix of some guys who can shoot the ball and some guys who can attack the lane, too, so I like that,” Medved said.

Instead of the senior-dominant roster Johnson had a year ago, Minnesota has only three players — Tyson, Reynolds and 6-8 center Robert Vaihola — who are expected to run out of eligibility at the end of next season.

“There’s a little bit more balance in classes (and) there is some opportunity to create some continuity moving forward,” Medved said. “I think that’s important, too.”

BREAKDOWN

The Pioneer Press’ early breakdown of Niko Medved’s first men’s basketball roster

Projected starting five

G — Isaac Asuma
G — Chansey Willis
F — Jaylen Crocker-Johnson
F — Bobby Durkin
C — Robert Vaihola

Sixth man candidates

G — Langston Reynolds
F — Cade Tyson

Potential rotation players

F — BJ Omot
C — Nehemiah Turner

Rest of roster

G — Chance Stephens
F — Grayson Grove
G — Kai Shinholster
F — Erick Reader

Related Articles

Three takeaways from chat with Gophers men’s basketball coach Niko Medved

Gophers forward B.J. Omot to miss summer workouts with leg injury

Men’s basketball: North Carolina transfer Cade Tyson commits to Gophers

Men’s basketball: Gophers add East Ridge guard Cedric Tomes to 2026 class

Gophers add Maryland transfer guard Chance Stephens

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — Migrants placed on a deportation flight originally bound for South Sudan are now being held in a converted shipping container on a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, where the men and their guards are contending with baking hot temperatures, smoke from nearby burn pits and the looming threat of rocket attacks, the Trump administration said.

Related Articles

What the Trump travel ban means for the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games

Germany’s Merz says he found Trump open to dialogue and committed to NATO

Pentagon watchdog investigates if staffers were asked to delete Hegseth’s Signal messages

How Trump’s pick for surgeon general uses her big online following to make money

Federal vs. state power at issue in a hearing over Trump’s election overhaul executive order

Officials outlined grim conditions in court documents filed Thursday before a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to swiftly remove migrants to countries they didn’t come from.

Authorities landed the flight at the base in Djibouti, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from South Sudan, more than two weeks ago after U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston found the Trump administration had violated his order by swiftly sending eight migrants from countries including Cuba and Vietnam to the east African nation.

The judge said that men from other countries must have a real chance to raise fears about dangers they could face in South Sudan.

The men’s lawyers, though, have still not been able to talk to them, said Robyn Barnard, senior director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, whose stated mission is to ensure the United States is a global leader on human rights. Barnard spoke Friday at a hearing of Democratic members of Congress and said some family members of the men had been able to talk to them Thursday.

The migrants have been previously convicted of serious crimes in the U.S., and President Donald Trump’s administration has said that it was unable to return them quickly to their home countries. The Justice Department has also appealed to the Supreme Court to immediately intervene and allow swift deportations to third countries to resume.

The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The legal fight became another flashpoint as the administration rails against judges whose rulings have slowed the president’s policies.

The Trump administration said the converted conference room in the shipping container is the only viable place to house the men on the base in Djibouti, where outdoor daily temperatures rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), according to the declaration from an ICE official.

Nearby burn pits are used to dispose of trash and human waste, and the smog cloud makes it hard to breathe, sickening both ICE officers guarding the men and the detainees, the documents state. They don’t have access to all the medication they need to protect against infection, and the ICE officers were unable to complete anti-malarial treatment before landing, an ICE official said.

“It is unknown how long the medical supply will last,” Mellissa B. Harper, acting executive deputy associate director of enforcement and removal operations, said in the declaration.

The group also lacks protective gear in case of a rocket attack from terrorist groups in Yemen, a risk outlined by the Department of Defense, the documents state.

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this story.

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass layoffs as part of his plan to dismantle the agency.

The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold.

Joun’s order has blocked one of the Republican president’s biggest campaign promises and effectively stalled the effort to wind down the department. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed.

The judge wrote that the layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration.

The layoffs help put in the place the “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states,” Sauer wrote.

He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in April voted 5-4 to block Joun’s earlier order seeking to keep in place Education Department teacher-training grants.

The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department.

One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other suit was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general.

The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.

Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, though he has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to do that. In the meantime, Trump issued a March order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wind it down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

Related Articles

What the Trump travel ban means for the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games

Germany’s Merz says he found Trump open to dialogue and committed to NATO

Pentagon watchdog investigates if staffers were asked to delete Hegseth’s Signal messages

How Trump’s pick for surgeon general uses her big online following to make money

Federal vs. state power at issue in a hearing over Trump’s election overhaul executive order

Trump later said the department’s functions will be parceled to other agencies, suggesting that federal student loans should be managed by the Small Business Administration and programs involving students with disabilities would be absorbed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those changes have not yet happened.

The president argues that the Education Department has been overtaken by liberals and has failed to spur improvements to the nation’s lagging academic scores. He has promised to “return education to the states.”

Opponents note that K-12 education is already mostly overseen by states and cities.

Democrats have blasted the Trump administration’s Education Department budget, which seeks a 15% budget cut including a $4.5 billion cut in K-12 funding as part of the agency’s downsizing.

Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan jury resumed deliberations Friday in Harvey Weinstein ’s sex crimes retrial after ending its first day without reaching a verdict in a case that encapsulated the #MeToo movement.

The panel, which was handed the case Thursday morning, has requested to hear a readback of some testimony from two of Weinstein’s accusers, as well as to see medical records from one of those women.

Related Articles

Wall Street gains ground following a solid jobs report

Midea recalling 1.7 million of its popular air conditioners due to mold concern

Hiring in the US slows, though employers still added a solid 139,000 jobs in May

Judge puts temporary hold on Trump’s latest ban on Harvard’s foreign students

Today in History: June 6, Allies land in Normandy on D-Day

The jury of seven women and five men is considering two counts of criminal sex act and one count of rape against the 73-year-old Oscar-winning movie producer, with the criminal sex act charges the higher-degree felonies. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty.

Sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein propelled the #MeToo movement in 2017.

He was eventually convicted of sex crimes in New York and California, but the New York conviction was overturned last year, leading to the retrial before a new jury and a different judge.

Jurors heard more than five weeks of testimony, including lengthy testimony from three accusers.