Nobody has to tell\u00a0Niko Medved the challenges he faces as Furman\u2019s new men\u2019s basketball coach. He was an assistant on Larry Davis\u2019 staff nearly a decade ago, and he is familiar with the program\u2019s results over the last 30 years \u2014 10 winning seasons, one Southern Conference regular-season championship, zero trips to the NCAA tournament and five different head coaches.<\/p>\n
So why is Medved so excited about taking on the challenge following Jeff Jackson\u2019s resignation after seven seasons? It\u2019s actually Medved\u2019s familiarity with Furman that drives his optimism, because he can\u2019t understand why those numbers shouldn\u2019t be better.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurman is a special place, an amazing place,\u201d says Medved, who spent the past six seasons as an assistant coach at Colorado State and whose wife, the former Erica Nesselroad, is a 2006 Furman graduate. \u201cThe campus is beautiful, you can get a great education, and the surrounding community is wonderful. I was gone for seven years, and I come back, and everything is even better than before, both on campus and in downtown Greenville. What is there not to like about this place? There is a lot here to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n
That, of course, will be Medved\u2019s basic challenge \u2014 to sell a product that has had trouble attracting buyers. The Furman basketball program has stirred little sustained excitement in the Greenville community since the early 1990s, when the team last won the regular-season league title, and poor student attendance at the games has allowed a whole generation of alumni to come and go without developing an allegiance to the program.<\/p>\n
Medved, 39, understands all of this and is willing to do whatever it takes to get things moving in the proper direction. He wants to personally engage the Furman students and get them excited about attending games. He wants to be a highly accessible and recognizable figure in the community. And, most importantly, he wants to win games, which will solve most any marketing challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will take a lot of hard work,\u201d Medved says. \u201cThere is no quick fix. We need talented players; we need a talented coaching staff. But we can win here. I know that. I wouldn\u2019t have come back here if I didn\u2019t think we could be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medved first came to Furman in 1999 as a member of Larry Davis\u2019 staff and stayed for seven years. It is worth pointing out that four of Furman\u2019s 10 winning seasons during the past three decades came during that period, and the 2004-05 team posted the school\u2019s first winning record in league play in 13 years.<\/p>\n
When Davis resigned at the end of the 2005-06 season, Medved moved to the University of Minnesota program for a year, then joined Colorado State as an assistant coach. He was part of a staff that, after losing more than 20 games in each of their first two years, guided the Rams to four consecutive postseason appearances, including back-to-back trips to the NCAA tournament in 2012 and 2013.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask me about the challenge at Furman, but I can tell you we had a bigger challenge at Colorado State,\u201d Medved says. \u201cThere was a tremendous amount of hard work involved in turning that program around.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has received his share of credit for Colorado State\u2019s success. When it was announced that Medved would be going to Furman, Matt Stephens, a sportswriter with The Coloradoan<\/em>, wrote a column saying Rams fans should be grateful for Medved\u2019s six years of service.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d even argue he\u2019s been the most instrumental piece for making CSU basketball what it is today,\u201d Stephens wrote. \u201cTim Miles [former CSU coach, now at Nebraska] was the face of CSU\u2019s building project and Larry Eustachy is keeping it going, but behind the scenes has been Medved, bringing the talent to Fort Collins. He\u2019s one of the most underrated recruiters in college basketball and has thrived from actually having integrity and treating folks around him with respect.\u201d<\/p>\n What can Furman fans expect to see this fall when Medved\u2019s first team takes the floor? A more upbeat tempo, for one thing. Medved was in charge of the Colorado State offense, which led the Mountain West Conference in scoring on its way to a school-record 26 wins in 2012-13 and a third-round appearance in the NCAA tournament, where the Rams lost to eventual champion Louisville. He\u2019s bringing that offensive philosophy with him to Furman.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople can expect to see a lot of ball movement, a lot of player movement,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ll be aggressive and we\u2019ll be an attacking team. When we get a good shot, we\u2019ll take it.\u201d<\/p>\n Medved says he could count on one hand the number of set plays the Rams ran in 2012-13. \u201cI don\u2019t think people come out to watch a system,\u201d he says. \u201cThey come to see you play with passion and energy. And that\u2019s the way we\u2019ll play. We\u2019ll be a fun team to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n The author is director of news and media relations at Furman and has been the official scorer for the men\u2019s basketball team for 30 years<\/em>. To learn more about\u00a0Medved\u2019s plans for relaunching Furman basketball and to see other videos on Furman athletics, click here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nobody has to tell\u00a0Niko Medved the challenges he faces as Furman\u2019s new men\u2019s basketball coach. He was an assistant on Larry Davis\u2019 staff nearly a decade ago, and he is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":2631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}