Niko Medved added another piece to his backcourt and wing rotation this offseason in Malachi Palmer, a 6-foot-6, 210-pound guard who joins Minnesota after stops at Maryland and Villanova. The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, native has already logged two seasons of high-major college basketball, and he brings something the Gophers were short on a year ago: size on the perimeter who can also space the floor.
Palmer's path to Minnesota wound through two Big East and ACC-caliber programs. He started at Maryland as a freshman in 2024-25, appearing in 22 games but seeing limited minutes, then followed head coach Kevin Willard to Villanova for his sophomore season. At Villanova last season, Palmer played in 33 games with four starts, averaging 18-19 minutes a night. He put up 4.6 points per game while shooting 46.6 percent from the field and better than 35 percent from three on nearly two and a half attempts a game.
The shooting numbers matter for a Minnesota team looking for more perimeter punch, but Palmer's tape also shows a defender comfortable guarding multiple positions. Medved has praised him as a tough, physical guard who plays with a big motor and can guard across positions one through four, calling him a natural scorer capable of making big shots. That kind of two-way profile is exactly the sort of role player a program looks for when it dips into the transfer portal rather than just chasing scoring totals.
Palmer isn't a stranger to March basketball, either. He scored 11 points, including a trio of three-pointers, in Villanova's NCAA Tournament opener against Utah State last season — the kind of postseason experience that's valuable for a Minnesota program looking to build depth for a long Big Ten run. He also had a double-digit scoring night against Seton Hall and posted 10 points and five rebounds in his first career start, at DePaul.
With two years of eligibility remaining, Palmer arrives as a proven complementary piece rather than a headline scorer, but that's often the profile that ends up mattering most by February and March. Whether he cracks the rotation early or takes time to find his footing in a new system, Gophers fans will get their first look at him when Minnesota opens the 2026-27 season.