Reusse: Gophers’ Cade Tyson finds old Barn a better ‘fit’ than staying home on Tobacco Road

The ancient corridors of the large barn opened as Williams Arena in 1928 have had a bit of haunted quality for this athletic school year.

This started with Keegan Cook’s volleyball team, a promising crew of experience and terrific freshmen that lost four regulars to an injury epidemic that started before the first match at the adjacent Maturi Pavilion. Those Gophers had a good season — reaching the final 16 of the NCAA tournament — but it could have been exceptional.

The Gophers women’s basketball team was a few minutes into an opening romp over Manhattan on Nov. 7 when it lost valuable forward Taylor Woodson to a torn knee ligament for a second consecutive season. Coach Dawn Plitzuweit has some depth and if the roster can stay away for further injuries, this will be an NCAA tournament team.

Niko Medved was the basketball coach that needed availability from his full slapped-together roster of transfers to compete in his first season as Gophers men’s coach. Instead, muscular Robert Vaihola has now joined point guard Chansey Willis Jr. as two starters lost for the season — and forward B.J. Omot and guard Chance Stephens haven’t hit the court yet due to injuries.

“When you’ve coached as long as I have, you’ve had guys out that made your team thin for stretches, but long-term … we’ve never been in this situation," Medved said. “We can get 10 guys with the walk-ons for a scrimmage, but we’re actually doing more 3-on-3 and 4-on-4.”

And now the Gophers’ grind starts.

So, offer some novenas for the remaining Gophers, you Barn faithful, with special attention paid to Cade Tyson and the defensive schemes he will face in 18 consecutive Big Ten games — starting Saturday, Jan. 3, at Northwestern, and ending here on March 7, also vs. Northwestern.

Students rushed the court that night, either just for laughs or in appreciation of the fact they probably had witnessed the highlight of the season in the conference opener.

Last season at times, as Ben Johnson’s tenure came to an end, it appeared to be Dawson Garcia against the world. Dawson is now in the G League and Tyson, a 6-foot-7 senior transfer, will have that responsibility on select evenings.

“He’s a sweetheart of a kid who also kind of has a chip on his shoulder for what happened last season at North Carolina, where he didn’t get to play much,” Medved said. “You have to know that two years ago, coming out of two outstanding seasons at Belmont, Cade was one of the most-wanted transfers in the country.

“He could have gone almost any place, and you couldn’t blame him for choosing North Carolina — a kid from down there by Charlotte; North Carolina’s Mr. Basketball [for Carmel Christian] in ’22, seeing that Carolina Blue for his whole life.

“The thing about this new portal world, ‘fit’ might be more important than ever because you’re only going to have a player for a year or two. Carolina’s always going to have talent, and what it was doing, Cade wasn’t a fit.”

“A lot of schools wanted Cade,” Medved said. “At the end it came down to us and Iowa. And he was already here in early June, working out, becoming a Gopher.”

That dedication was no surprise, considering Cade’s brother Hunter — three years older — has spent three seasons with the Denver Nuggets, a second-round draft choice, although not getting much playing time.

The Tysons are both 6-foot-7. They grew up in Union County, outside of Charlotte. Cade also has a twin sister, Laikyn, a former volleyball player, and she is already teaching in elementary school.

“My brother and I started off in the driveway, on a basket that didn’t have a net … throwing an orange ball in a red hoop," Cade said this week. “Hunter helped me a lot with my shot. So did my dad [Jonathan]. We were just a North Carolina family that loved basketball.”

There’s no shortage of those. But the wearing of Carolina blue … it didn’t work out?

What was Tyson’s reaction when he started shooting buckets on late spring days in our big old Barn?

“I loved it; the raised floor, the whole thing,” Tyson said. “I hadn’t played in anything like it, although when I was at Belmont, we had a practice at Vanderbilt. Raised floor there, too.”

Tyson was part of a well-balanced effort in the victory over Indiana. He had 38 points vs. Texas Southern on Dec. 14, with eight threes.

Nick Martinelli, a 6-7 lefty forward for Northwestern, leads the Big Ten in all-game scoring with a 22.8-points average. Tyson is second at 21.9 points — although coming off foul trouble and 12 points in an ultra-ugly 60-43 victory over Fairleigh Dickinson … the last nonconference cupcake on the Gophers schedule.

Frustrating?