Gophers men’s basketball forward Isaiah Ihnen suffered a season-ending knee injury in practice last week and will undergo surgery, the head coach Ben Johnson announced Monday in a press release. He missed the entire 2021-22 season with a torn ACL.

As a heralded international prospect from Boeblingen, Germany, Ihnen was rated as the No. 89 prospect in the 2019 class, according to 247sports. His potential continues to be hindered by unfortunate injuries.

As the lone remaining player that was recruited by and played for former head coach Richard Pitino, Ihnen was set to be one of the most experienced players on the young Gophers roster.

In his last action during the 2020-21 season, Ihnen averaged 2.8 points and 3.5 rebounds per game. He was expected to have a larger role this season and provide veteran leadership to a very young roster.

“It’s disappointing to see Isaiah go through this after he worked hard to get back on the court this year and made significant strides to his game this summer,” Johnson said in the press release. “We will be with him every step of the way in his road to recovery.”

Redshirt junior teammate Parker Fox suffered a knee injury in June and will also miss his second-consecutive season. Fox and Ihnen will spend the upcoming season recovering together for the second straight year.

“They gon’ feel us kid, might not be today, tomorrow or the next day, but they gon’ feel us kid,” Fox posted on Twitter Monday.

Now without Fox (6-foot-8) and Ihnen (6-foot-10), the Gophers will need to find frontcourt depth elsewhere in the rotation.

Sophomore North Carolina transfer Dawson Garcia will now likely be asked to play an even bigger role for the Gophers this season. The Prior Lake native will still officially need a transfer waiver from the NCAA to be eligible to play this season.

Look for sophomore Treyton Thompson and freshman Pharrel Payne to also play major roles in 2022-23.

Former Gophers guard Payton Willis signed a contract with Hapoel Gilboa Galil for the 2022-23 season earlier this month. Gilboa Galil plays in the Israeli Premier Basketball League, Israel’s highest level of professional basketball.

Willis will now be the second Gopher alumni to sign with an Israeli team this summer, joining Austin Hollins.

The 24-year-old grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and graduated from Fayetteville High School in 2016. Willis played his first two years of collegiate basketball at Vanderbilt; he mostly came off of the bench and averaged about five points per game over those seasons.

He then decided to transfer to Minnesota after the 2017-18 season.

Willis was ineligible to play in the 2018-19 season due to NCAA transfer rules. However, in 2019-20, he finished second on the team in assists (53) and third in steals (21). The Gophers had a record of 15-16 before the COVID-19 pandemic prematurely ended their season.

Following the 2019-20 season, Willis transferred again to the College of Charleston where he played one season before returning to the Gophers for one final run. Willis, along with other collegiate athletes, was granted an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic shortening many seasons.

In his senior year, the Gophers named Willis a team captain, and he had a career year. He averaged 15.9 points per game, second-highest on the team, and led them in assists and steals with 124 and 42 respectively.

He also was named Big Ten Co-Player of the Week twice during the season.

After his collegiate career, Willis went undrafted in the 2022 NBA draft but was signed by the Golden State Warriors to play in the NBA Summer League. Across seven total games, Willis averaged 4.7 points per game and made 46.2% of his field goals.

Now, Willis is headed overseas to Hapoel Gilboa Galil. The team will look to improve on their 9-13 record from last season, when they finished as the ninth seed in the Israeli Premier League and lost in the first round of the playoffs.

Last month, the Big Ten announced that Gable Steveson won the Big Ten Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year. He is the fifth male Gopher to win the award and the first since fellow wrestler Cole Konrad in 2007.

Steveson has had one of the best careers in Gopher history. He has a 90-2 record in matches over his four years of wrestling and hasn’t lost a match since his freshman season in 2018-19.

After going undefeated in the regular season, Steveson was the No. 1 overall seed for the 2022 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships in the heavyweight class. He won the tournament for the second time in his collegiate career ( first winning in 2021) after defeating Cohlton Schultz from Arizona State University.

Steveson also received the Dan Hodge Trophy at the end of the season, which is awarded to the best collegiate wrestler. This is his second time winning the award, after sharing it with Spencer Lee from Iowa in 2021.

Collegiate awards are not the only hardware Steveson has under his belt. He won the gold medal at the 2021 Olympics in men’s freestyle wrestling for the heavyweight class, defeating Geno Petriashvili from Georgia, the reigning UWW (United World Wrestling) World Champion at the time.

After the Olympics, Steveson signed with WWE and will pursue professional wrestling after his collegiate career. The WWE worked out an NIL deal with Steveson that allowed him to play a limited schedule this season while also being financially compensated.

He was assumed to retire from amateur wrestling but said he has not completely ruled out a return to the Gophers for next season. Whatever Steveson does next season, he will be remembered as one of the greatest wrestlers and athletes in program history.

Heading into his second season, many analysts have pegged wide receiver and Gopher alum Rashod Bateman as a breakout candidate for the 2022 NFL season. Bateman will likely be the WR1 for the Ravens this season, after they lost receivers Sammy Watkins and Marquise Brown to the Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals, respectively.

Despite Bateman’s youth, his teammates seem to think he can step up to the role. Ravens tight end Mark Andrews, who set the single season franchise records for yards and receptions in 2021, thinks Bateman has looked up to the task at practices this offseason.

“He’s running great routes. A lot of his releases, and everything…He’s getting open at the line super, super quick,” Andrews said in an interview with USA Today. “And then, he’s got a burst of speed that people don’t really talk about. And again, [in his] second year – he’s a guy that’s just going to get better, better and better. The sky is the limit for him.”

Bateman had a sensational three years with the Gophers. He had 704 yards and six touchdowns in 2018, the most ever for a Gopher freshman, and was named first team All-Big Ten and second team All-American after his 1,200 yard, 11 TD sophomore season in 2019.

As a result of his collegiate career, the Ravens drafted Bateman with the No. 27 pick of the 2021 NFL draft. He became the first Gopher drafted in the first round since 2006, when the Patriots drafted running back Laurence Maroney No. 21 overall.

Bateman missed the first five games of the 2021 NFL season with a groin injury and made his debut against the Chargers in week six. He had his first 100-yard game against the Browns in week 14 and caught his first touchdown against the Bengals in week 16.

Despite a solid rookie season, which he finished with 46 catches for 515 yards and one touchdown in 12 games, Bateman was not catching passes from starting quarterback Lamar Jackson for part of the season. Jackson missed the final four games of the season with an ankle injury.

In 2019, Jackson led the Ravens to a record of 14-2 and won the NFL MVP by unanimous vote, but he has regressed slightly over the past two seasons. If Bateman can break out and handle the role of being the top wide receiver in Baltimore, Jackson could potentially return to that level of play.

The Ravens went 8-9 in 2021 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2017. Bateman and the Ravens will look to improve on that record when they begin their regular season on Sept. 11 against the New York Jets.

Former Gophers wing Austin Hollins signed with Maccabi Tel Aviv of the Israeli Premier Basketball League on June 27. The contract is for two years.

“We are very happy to add Austin Hollins to the squad”, said coach Oded Kattash in a statement. “This is a guard with a good character, a good friend of the players next to him in the locker room, an excellent guard and a player who can play in several positions. He can provide us solutions for a variety of situations and line-ups on the court.”

Hollins was born in Chandler, Arizona and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2014 and was a major contributor for four seasons.

During his senior year, he was second on the team in points per game (12.4) and rebounds per game (5.0), while also averaging two steals per game.

He was named the MVP of the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) in the same season, a tournament of the best teams not invited to the NCAA Tournament. He scored 19 points and hit the go-ahead basket with under a minute remaining in the championship game against SMU.

Despite not being selected in the 2014 NBA Draft, Hollins has carved out an impressive overseas career. He started his professional career playing with Denain Voltaire, a second-tier French team, from 2014 to 2016.

He then signed with Kauhajoki Karhu of the Finnish League for the 2016-17 season, where he scored a career high 17.9 points per game.

Following the 2016-17 season, he spent two seasons in the German League; he was even named the Dunking Champion of the league All-Star Game in 2019.

Hollins most recently played in the Serbian League with Crvena zvezda for the 2021-22 season. Zvezda had great success in their sole season with Hollins, winning the ABA League, Serbian League and the Serbian Cup.

He will now join Maccabi Tel Aviv, which is widely regarded as the premier basketball team in Israel and one of the best in the EuroLeague.

Following a first round loss in the Big Ten tournament to Penn State, the Gophers men’s basketball team will look to make improvements in their second season under head coach Ben Johnson.

The Gophers will graduate eight players from last season’s team, including team captain Eric Curry. This season, they will have a young rotation led by junior Jamison Battle, who led the team in points (17.5) and rebounds (6.3) per-game last season.

Four freshmen will join the team next season, headlined by Braeden Carrington. The Park Center High School graduate won Minnesota Mr. Basketball, averaging 17.8 points per game in his senior season, and will look to now give the Gophers a spark of offense and three point shooting.

“[Our freshmen] are going to compete, they’re eager learners, zero ego … It’s fun to plug them in and see what they can and can’t do,” head coach Ben Johnson said. “We’ve got a group where each one of those guys brings something a little different, and they all have versatility, but they’re all pretty skilled, they should all be ready to go physically, they’re just enjoying competing.”

The new-look Gophers also added three players from the transfer portal in the offseason. Headlined by former McDonald’s All-American forward Dawson Garcia, the Gophers also added Morehead State point guard Ta’Lon Cooper and graduate transfer Dartmouth guard Taurus Samuels.

Minnesota will need more offense this season, as they were second to last in the Big Ten in points per game as a team last season (67.0). They were also last in rebounding within the conference and gave up lots of second chance points. 

The Gophers’ Big Ten opponents and locations have been recently announced. They will play a home and away series with Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Purdue, Rutgers and Wisconsin, and they will travel to Michigan State, Northwestern and Ohio State, but host Indiana, Iowa and Penn State.

Before conference play gets underway, Minnesota has had four non-conference opponents announced – Mississippi State, Chicago State, St. Francis (NY) and Alcorn State. With the SoCal Challenge holiday tournament also on the schedule, early signs point toward the Maroon & Gold being battle-tested next season.

The Gophers will look to make the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2019, when they lost in the Round of 32 to Michigan State.

The Board of Regents approved Gophers men’s basketball head coach Ben Johnson’s one-year contract extension at their meeting Thursday. He will now remain with the program through the 2026-27 season.

Johnson, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, attended the local DeLaSalle High School before playing for the Gophers basketball team for three seasons.

As a first-time head coach last season, Johnson took over for previous head coach Richard Pitino, who was fired after eight seasons and two NCAA tournament appearances. Johnson was previously an assistant coach for the Gophers from 2013 to 2018 under Pitino.

The Gophers accumulated a 13-17 record in Johnson’s first season, going 4-16 in Big Ten play. Despite the losses, the Gophers competed in many close games last season with some of the best teams in the conference.

“Ben has done a tremendous job guiding our men’s basketball program,” said Director of Athletics Mark Coyle in a statement. “His team plays with a tenacity and grit that should make every Gopher fan proud, and they are excelling in the classroom and the community as well. Ben is recruiting the state of Minnesota at a high level and has restored some of that magic to Williams Arena. I look forward to Ben leading our program for years to come.”

Johnson and the Gophers will look to build on the potential they showed last season, with three incoming transfers and a top freshman class headlined by 2022 Minnesota Mr. Basketball, Braeden Carrington.