Parker Fox opens up about long road back from serious knee injuries

"There's a lot of isolation and some crazy, dark days and times where you've got a lot of self-reflection."

Finally, after two seasons ended before they even began due to injury, Mahtomedi native Parker Fox was able to take the court at The Barn wearing Gophers colors in the team's season opener against Bethune-Cookman. In an hour-long appearance on KFAN's Power Trip in the Morning show No. 15, Fox opened up about his long road to that moment.

"It was definitely a whirlwind," Fox said when discussing stepping on the court for a game. "Being from Minnesota, growing up a Gopher fan it was definitely one of my dreams to play Gopher basketball. It was definitely a whirlwind with the two injuries but now that I'm here and I stuck it out I'm living proof that if you set your mind to it you can do it, for sure."

The 6-foot-8 redshirt senior was one of Gophers basketball coach Ben Johnson's first recruits upon being named the head coach in 2021. Fox had spent the previous three seasons as a standout at Division II Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Before leaving Northern State, Fox graduated with his undergrad in sports marketing and administration – with a minor in business – and has since completed his masters in sports management at the University of Minnesota.

"I don't have the exact answer yet but I love sports and I want to stay in sports," said Fox when asked what he wants to do with his education. "Being from Minnesota I would love to stay here and be in sports. I grew up loving the Vikings, loving the Timberwolves. So, whether that's a front office kind of deal or staying in basketball and doing player development. I just started my own podcast about a year ago now so I kind of got into the broadcasting, speaking side of it as well. I'm kind of just experimenting seeing what works for me, what doesn't work. I've gotten really close with Jim Petersen who does the Wolves games. That would be something I would love to do eventually down the road."

After entering the transfer portal and committing to the Gophers, Fox suffered his first torn ACL ending his 2021-22 season before it began. He would suffer a similar injury the following season. Johnson, meanwhile, never lost faith in Fox.

"I commit and then I tear the ACL and I think a lot of other coaches would have probably said 'Good luck' and Ben didn't even waver," Fox recalled. "I remember calling him and he's like, 'Alright, let's get you here and let's get you surgery.' It was very professional and that just instilled more confidence in myself as well. That's just a testimony to who he is as a guy and what he wants this program to be about."

Spending two consecutive years on the injury table can be taxing for anybody let alone a college kid trying to make a mark at a new school.

"There's a lot of isolation and some crazy, dark days and times where you've got a lot of self-reflection," Fox said. "You learn a lot about your body and you learn all the muscles that you need to get stronger and everything you need to go through, the lateral shifts and being able to decelerate, being able to jump vertically. There's so many moves in basketball that you need to have down before you want to get back out there.

"The mental [side] is really the beast," he continued. "You do physical all the time...but this mental battle you go through, the second guessing and the doubting yourself, that's not the norm. High major Division I basketball players, you want to be confident and you want to have that 'stick your chest out and proud of who you are' but when you have something that takes you down like that and you can't do anything about it, that's where the mental beast comes in and that's the hardest part. Those are the days, those dark days, that test you and you got to find a way to get through."

The 24-year-old former Mahtomedi standout said he wasn't thinking about his knees the first time he took the court for the Gophers this season.

"You don't really think about the knees. When you go through it like this if you're thinking about the knees, you're still not ready. If you're thinking about the injury, you're still not ready. I know where I'm at in my career, I've been through two injuries and I'm the oldest guy on the team. Who knows what basketball has for my future so I just live it up, whatever happens, happens. Just go out there and give what you got and let the rest fall into place," Fox said.

"My whole family was there so that was super special," said Fox about that moment taking the court for the first time after his injury ordeal. "Yeah there was definitely emotion. I heard it from the crowd too. There was a huge applause, which I was eternally grateful for because it means a lot to me. Yeah, so, definitely some emotions flooded me."

Now that he's finally been able to put some minutes in Gopher gold under his belt, Fox is able to finally shift focus to just playing and helping the Gophers get better. Under Ben Johnson the Gophers haven't come close to making the NCAA tournament, finishing 13th and 14th in the Big Ten in Johnson's first two years.

"We love where we're at, we love the guys we have in our locker room," Fox says about the 2023-23 squad. "Guys that are for their teammates and that's the way we've been playing. You can see it in our first couple of games. I think we're averaging right around 100 points a game. We're scoring really well, we're passing the ball really well. We've got depth. The past couple years we couldn't even play in practice because we didn't have 10 healthy guys. We love where we're at. We love where coach Johnson has put us."

It's been five seasons since the Gophers last made the NCAA Tournament and eleven seasons since they got past the second round. Fox says they have the pieces to make a mark in the tourney this season and discussed what it's going to take to make the Gophers a regular in the NCAA tournament.

"Personally, I think we have the pieces right now, as it stands," Fox said. "Closing the borders so guys like Jalen Suggs, Matthew Hurt, Chet Holmgren that have left, what does it take to flip those guys and keep them home? We were actually at Will Humphries, Kris Humphries dad, house last night and he was talking about Kris was actually committed to Duke and Trent Tucker told him, 'Why would you go to Duke when you can do what you want to do right here in your backyard.' I think there's so much truth in that and why go somewhere else when you can live out your dreams right here in Minnesota, be at home doing it in front of your family and friends. For me that's special. I think we're laying the foundation right now. I think it's a special place and I'm grateful I get to be a part of it."

Gophers football coach PJ Fleck has been vocal over the past couple weeks about the impact a lack of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) money is having on his program. Fox says "it definitely does" have an impact on the Gophers basketball team as well.

"I think these big, crazy contracts are one-in-a-million. When you talk about this smaller scale NIL for us as a team it definitely impacts people. You've seen us lose guys in football and basketball to this NIL deal and these big schools getting guys that they maybe wouldn't have gotten but because they have the boosters, and people backing their program, they get a little extra money. But for us as a team, we have a collective, Dinkytown Athletes, they do a great job trying to get us a little extra money here on the side. But like I said, nobody is getting these million dollar contracts, nobody is doing that kind of stuff. I think it's a fair compensation for what we do. There's obviously been a lot of debate about this in the past... it's in it's beginning stages and I'm interested to see where it will go. The new commissioner of the Big 10 came in and talked to us and I asked him 'Where do you see, with UCLA and USC joining, an even playing field when it comes to NIL?' He actually mentioned that he thinks he's going to see it plateau, kind of level off and it's going to be hard to sustain paying guys $1-, $2-million a year."