The first transfer portal commitment for Minnesota Golden Gophers' head coach Niko Medved was a player that he was very familiar with, one of his players at Colorado State, forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson.

A prospect out of Warren High School in San Antonio, Texas as part of the 2023 recruiting cycle, Crocker-Johnson was a quality but lightly recruited prospect. His offers included Arkansas Little-Rock, Illinois-Chicago, Incarnate Word, Lamar, San Jose State, Sotuh Dakota, Texas-Rio Grande Vallley, and UTSA among others. He would go onto commit and sign with Little Rock.

Here's what to know about Crocker-Johnson as he begins his career as a Gopher.

While we see it at times in college football, it's becoming quite common in college basketball to see players who are playing with four or five programs within the same number of years. For Crocker-Johnson, Minnesota will be his third program in three years. After playing as a freshman in 2023-24 with Little Rock, averaging 9.1 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, he earned the 2023-24 Ohio Valley Conference Rookie of the Year honor for his performance.

After his freshman season, Crocker-Johnson transferred to Colorado State. In his lone season in Fort Collins, Crocker-Johnson was solid, averaging 9.0 points and 4.4 rebounds per game while shooting 49.1 percent from the field, including 58.8 percent from within the perimeter.

We briefly highlighted it above, but Crocker-Johnson is a quality shooter overall, shooting just under 50 percent from the field while shooting nearly 60 percent from within the perimeter. According to Bart Torvik, he shot 70.8% at the rim which accounted for a heavy amount of his shooting success. He did struggle at times whne not at the rim, shooting just 36.2% on all other two-point attempts, which is only shlightly better than his three-point percentage.

He was a quality three-point shooter for Colorado State last year. He's not going to take a large volume of shots from three-point range, only averaging 2.7 per game this past fall, but on a total of 96 three-point shot attempts, he shot 35.4 percent from three-point range. Out of his 36 games played, Johnson made at least one three-pointer in 21 games and had nine games where he made two or more three-point attempts.

Neyond those numbers, Crocker-Johnson improved his free-throw percentage from 69.2 percent in 2023-24 to 75.9 percent in 2024-25 while also posting a true shooting percentage this past season of 59.9 percent, up 3.9 percent from his freshman season in 2023-24.

With the Gophers, Crocker-Johnson isn't likely to be the program's top scorer, but he should be able to find a comfortable role as the program's number two or number three option. Last season for Colorado State, he posted a 21.2 percent usage rate, which was the second-highest of any Ram regular, only behind guard Nique Clifford. Notably, despite his high usage rate which accounts for both shot attempts and turnovers, Crocker-Johnson averaged under one trunover per game in 2024-25.

Crocker-Johnson should be a strong defender for Minnesota next season. The San Antonio, Texas native totaled 55 blocks over the past two seasons and 27 steals while also posting a career defensive rating of 102.4. Now, defensive rating can be heavily impacted by the performance of your teammates, but notably, his 101.1 defensive rating this past season would have led the Gophers. Additionally, his defensive win share of 1.7 would have led the Gophers as well.

Overall, Crocker-Johnson, for being a 6-foot-8 forward, has been a solid but not a great or elite rebounder by any means. For his career, he's averaged 4.8 rebounds per game, including 1.5 offensive rebounds per contest. When looking at it from a rate perspective, he's posted almost identical 16.4% and 16.5% defensive rebound rates over the last two seasons, while his offensive rebound rate dropped from 9.3% in 2023-24 to 7.6% as he made the jump up in competition from the Ohio Valley Conference to the Mountain West Conference. For comparison, his offensive rebound rate this past season would’ve ranked third on the Gophers behind Frank Mitchell (17.9%) and Trey Edmond (9.8%), while ahead of Parker Fox (6.4%) and Dawson Garcia (5.4%). It wouldn't be surprising to see Crocker-Johnson add weight and muscle to his frame this offseason in order to be in a better spot to play down low in the physical Big Ten conference.

There's a classic saying that your best ability is your availability.

Well, over the last two seasons, Crocker-Johnson has proven to be that for Little Rock and Colorado State. Out of the 70 potential games in which he could have played over the past two seasons, Crocker-Johnson appeared in all 70 games, including making 62 starts — 33 in 2023-24 and 29 this past season for Colorado State.

He averaged 23.3 minutes per game for Little Rock in 2023-24 and 21.5 minutes per contest this past season for Colorado State, the highest amount of any forward for the Rams.

Of course, injuries can never be predicted, and even the most durable players will occasionally find themselves banged up, but on paper, Crocker-Johnson is a player that Niko Medved and the Gophers should be able to count on the court in some capacity, game in and game out.

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