Former Minnesota men’s Basketball coach Ben Johnson earned his first head coaching job during a time of monumental change for NCAA athletics.
Hired on March 22, 2021, Johnson took over a job held by Richard Pitino for eight seasons. Pitino led the Gophers to two NCAA Tournaments and a 2014 NIT Championship win.
Almost four months later, the landscape of NCAA athletics shifted, with student athletes given court approval to profit off of their name, image and likeness.
Despite the recent addition of NIL, Johnson revealed in a 2023 interview with InForum that he knew the new reality that NIL posed to the recruiting process.
“NIL is recruiting now. Period,” Johnson said.
The Dinkytown Athletes NIL collective aided Johnson’s recruiting process, but Minnesota only retained two starters for the 2024-25 season.
Before the start of Johnson’s inaugural season as head coach in 2021, 1,694 Division I men’s basketball players were in the transfer portal.
Currently, over 2,000 Division I men’s basketball athletes are in the portal, including three Gophers with no remaining athletic eligibility.
One of the three Gophers, guard Lu’Cye Patterson, transferred to the University of Minnesota for his last season of eligibility after two seasons at Missouri State and Charlotte.
Patterson said the team culture and his positive relationship with Johnson prior to his official visit made the decision to return to his hometown easier.
“I’ve known Ben for a long time, kind of like an uncle to me,” Patterson said in an interview with FOX 9.
Dawson Garcia’s transfer portal experience was quite similar. He started at North Carolina, transferred to Marquette and returned to his home state for his last three seasons of eligibility. At Minnesota, Garcia led the team in both scoring and rebounding for three straight seasons, a feat last accomplished by Austin Hollins in 2015.
Outside of the changes posed by NIL and the portal, Johnson’s final season as Gophers head coach included a new-look Big Ten with the addition of four West Coast schools.
Ahead of Minnesota’s 2024 Big Ten opener, Johnson said the expanded field of 18 Big Ten teams made it apparent that money played a major role in recruiting through NIL opportunities.
“The money piece is everything,” Johnson said. “It’s the only thing, if you want to be honest about it.”
In an interview before the 2024 Big Ten Tournament with the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Marcus Fuller, Garcia said he was optimistic about what the future held for Johnson.
“He’s going to have the Minnesota Gophers in a great spot for years,” Garcia said. “Even after I’m done playing.”
The Gophers’ Big Ten tournament loss to the Northwestern Wildcats, the team Johnson played for from 1999-2001, sealed Johnson’s coaching fate.
Going into that game, the Johnson-led Gophers pulled off major Big Ten upsets against UCLA, Michigan and Oregon in the regular season.
Even with multiple Quad 1 wins, Johnson’s career Big Ten coaching record of 22-57 proved too much for him to remain head coach.
Athletics Director Mark Coyle flew back from the NCAA Tournament selection committee to Minneapolis to break the harsh news to Johnson in person after the loss.
“The expectation for our program is to compete for championships, and unfortunately, we have not done that in the last four years,” Coyle said.