From Start to Finish
Moore, Thistlewood shared same vision with Medved
Every coach has a vision. The idea is to find players who can see it, too.
Adam Thistlewood was all in. So was Kendle Moore. At Drake.
That’s where Medved originally recruited both to play for him. Then he switched locations, but the vision was still the same. And the players could still see it working.
“I think the biggest thing was a winning culture,” Thistlewood said, whose choice was easy because it meant he would be playing closer to his hometown of Golden. “Not just a winning program and not just a good culture, but a hybrid of both, where we have great guys and we can win and we can play at the highest level. I think we’ve transformed this into that kind of place.”
Moore had things to consider, but he was always enamored with Medved and the program he wanted to build. When Medved brought his entire staff with him, Fort Collins felt like home.
Now, four years later, Moore will tell you the man who recruited him is the same today as he was then.
“It was basically come in here and grow into a family,” the guard said. “Make sure everybody is one on the court, everybody enjoys each other. A winning culture.
“I like it, because no matter what, even the first couple of years we were here, they weren’t the best years, but at the same time, nothing changed. His motto, his mindset was still the same of everybody building a winning culture, everybody come here and become a family. That’s one thing I like about Coach Niko. Through adversity and all of that, he stays on the same track.”
Medved was taking over a program where the preceding divorce was not exactly amicable. There were players already on roster to win over, too, but his first recruiting class was important. He needed players who could not only play, but help set a tone. Not just in the present, but for the future.
What he saw in Thistlewood and Moore were young men who would come in and work. Daily, without looking for shortcuts. Be examples.
“They’ve been everyday guys in just their approach to the work, their approach to the process,” Medved said. “Their approach is really how they’ve handled everything. It’s just so rare. You feel a sense of debt to them for what they’ve done. They believed in a vision and not what was already here. It’s been really fun to watch guys who commit to that with no guarantees of anything in the future.”
Which is the payoff for both of them entering their senior years. A lot of players help build the blocks for a vision the coach has, only to see it come to fruition after they’ve left the program. No doubt, they left their mark and helped create something, but often, they don’t get to share in the bounty.
As this season begins, the expectations could not be higher for the Rams. They’ve been picked to win the Mountain West after placing fourth in the NIT a year ago, and the program is coming off successive 20-win seasons for the first time since 2011-12 to 2012-13. And the program has never won the Mountain West championship.
Thistlewood and Moore have a chance to see the vision come true, and they definitely did their part, step by step, the first one being the toughest.
“The biggest thing for us as freshmen, we were leading by example,” Thistlewood said. “It’s hard for a freshman to walk in and say, you need to do this, you need to do this, you’re doing this wrong, whatever it was. It’s hard for a freshman to wear those shoes. Developing those habits, as the next recruiting class and the next recruiting class, building that brotherhood by getting on the same page, first, by example, and as the years have gone on, we’ve been able to be more vocal with each other.”
Medved had more room in his next class, which brought to the table David Roddy, Isaiah Stevens, Dischon Thomas, John Tonje and James Moors. They needed leaders to follow, and Medved showed them the two who came in before them.
There were older, more experienced players on the team, to be certain. But in those two, he had the blueprint for how he wanted his players to go about the daily grind, on and off the court.
“When your leaders, your older guys who have been through it, are some of your best people and hardest workers, have the best practice habits, are more about the team than themselves, then that’s easy for the new guys to come in and to look at that, that’s the example,” Medved said. “Somebody new to college basketball or Colorado State, what’s the first thing they’re going to do? Well, they’re going to come in and look across at the veteran guys who have been through it, and that’s who they’re going to try to emulate. Those guys emulate what we want from a player as well as anybody.
“You feel a tremendous amount of loyalty to them. They’ve been loyal to us. You have a feeling, to be honest, that we’re all in it together as coaches and players and we’re in that foxhole together. That’s just the feeling you have that we’re all rowing in the same direction.”
Obviously these guys came in and believed in us knowing it was going to be a tough go of it early. It’s been really, really cool for them to come in and dive head first into it. We see now as we sit here four years later, we have an opportunity to do that.Niko Medved
Team Together. It is not just a slogan on a T-shirt, it is who the Rams have become. And when the next group of players came in, Moore and Thistlewood encouraged them to speak up and break out of the normal freshman mode. A blend of those two classes became the Rams’ normal starters all of last season, and were in the exhibition game last week.
His first recruiting class has made it easy for those who have followed to blend in, to be part of the family, so to speak. To them, those roles they held were just as important as a clutch Thistlewood 3 or a Moore steal for a fast-break layup.
“The biggest thing for me was making sure everybody, not fit in, but that everybody was wanted,” Moore said. “We use the phrase embracing your role. We knew coming in they were going to play a big part of this program, so as we led by example as freshman, for us as upperclassmen at the time, it was telling them they could be more vocal and have more in a leadership role, because there wasn’t too many of us who had stepped into that role.”
But for a new player to follow your lead, you have to have a resume to back it up, or else it all sounds empty.
Moore came in and started all but one game as a true freshman at point guard, a spot he surrendered to Stevens with Moore moving to the other guard spot. He has started all but two games in his career, too, averaging nearly 30 minutes per game, while averaging 9.3 points per game and collecting 121 steals, which rank sixth all-time in program history.
Thistlewood started 24 games as a true freshman, immediately proving himself as a 3-point gunner. He’s now started 80 games in his career, ranking fifth in career 3-pointers (161) and seventh in long-range attempts (422). He’s also averaging 9.3 points per game, and he’s seen his rebounding totals go up each season.
The time has gone by so fast. The results have been what they hoped for, but never imagined.
“It’s a little crazy. I was always after a positive and winning season,” Moore said. “Just thinking about winning 20 games, I don’t think it crossed my mind. I’m glad we’ve done it and our hard work pays off and allows us to do that.”
After all this time, they’ve started to sound like their coach, too.
Deep down, they know they have assembled a strong team, a contending team. It is a group which believes it is good enough to win the conference, make the NCAA Tournament field and even win a game.
None of those accomplishments have happened yet. Until then, stay humble and work hard. Like every other year. Those were the teachings of Medved when they arrived and they remain in place to this day.
After all this time, Thistlewood isn’t close to believing anything else than the Medved method.
“We haven’t done anything. We’re 0-0 still,” he said. “We still have that chip on our shoulder, we’re still hungry. We haven’t arrived yet, and we’re going to work our butts off to get there. We still have to earn it.
“Trust. That’s the biggest thing through this whole process which has really made the difference. Every single day it’s trusting every day. The things he recruited us on, they’re true. He hasn’t come back on his word at all. He’s building us off the court as men and he’s building us on the court as good basketball players. I’ve trusted him since day one, and I’ll never lose his trust.”
But here they are as a team, filled with a lot of new faces. Thistlewood and Moore are the only two left from Medved’s first team which went 12-20. The Rams have moved from eighth in the league that first season to third a year ago with a program record 14 conference victories.
It sounds a lot like what Medved told them he wanted to build at Moby Arena.
“I think it was always consistent that we wanted to build a program that could contend at the championship level of the Mountain West and have an opportunity to go to the NCAA Tournament, and you want to win when you get there,” Medved said. “I think that was consistent from day one. Obviously these guys came in and believed in us knowing it was going to be a tough go of it early. It’s been really, really cool for them to come in and dive head first into it. We see now as we sit here four years later, we have an opportunity to do that.”
And those first two players he recruited still have an active part in making it happen. The vision was clear then, but more of a dream. In a few months, they could very well turn it into their reality.