After leading his AAU team to a national runner-up finish in early July, Wayzata\u2019s Nolen Anderson picked up the scholarship offer he had been waiting for from the Gophers.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for Anderson to show how excited he was about the opportunity to stay home to play college basketball.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the 6-7 senior wing announced his commitment to new Gophers coach Niko Medved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I told Niko he was pretty pumped and so was the rest of the staff,\u201d Anderson told the Minnesota Star Tribune. \u201cI\u2019m excited. I can\u2019t wait to get down there next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medved and assistant coach Dave Thorson watched Anderson\u2019s breakout performance during D1 Minnesota 17U\u2019s run to the Adidas 3SSB championship game in South Carolina. Anderson visited the U unofficially and started to build a relationship with the new coaching staff that has already established a strong local presence since Ben Johnson was fired in late March<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest thing is how invested they were in me and showing their interest in me,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cThey were at every single one of my games [during the live recruiting period]. They were non-stop communicating with me and being honest and transparent with everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson, who also had offers from Virginia Tech, Drake, Illinois-Chicago, Montana, Northern Iowa, Ohio and Toledo, expanded his game this summer after being labeled as mostly a three-point shooter during his high school career. His ability to shoot, slash and score from all three levels was a tough matchup for opponents.<\/p>\n \u201cMy body and athleticism are probably the biggest things I improved,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cI\u2019ve always shot it pretty well … wanted to keep getting better with that. And just tried to get more efficient with shot selection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After leading his AAU team to a national runner-up finish in early July, Wayzata\u2019s Nolen Anderson picked up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-50804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}