How long do you give a coach??

mopkins said:
He was looking at a complete rebuild after the wasteland of Lickliter. 3 NCAA tournaments in the past 4 years...last year they were the 1st team out of the tournament after losing 4 of 5 starters from the year before.
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Exactly. The trajectory had been upwards until last year, which was definitely a rebuilding year after losing quite a bit. Still came reasonably close to an NCAA bid, which is about as much as I expected. So I wanted to see how far Fran could take this thing.

Off to a bad start this year - but there's a lot of games left to see what happens. Could be a disappointing season. If the Hawks miss the tournament this year and next, then yeah, I'll be convinced that Fran has taken us as far as he can. A couple of 7 seeds and second round losses in what would be 9 years at that point... Yeah, not good enough IMO. But I'm not ready to write him off after the first few games of this year.
 
tksirius said:
This is actually a good question. Even Kirk was able to turn around a football program in 3 to 4 years.
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Well, one could argue that Fran DID turn the program around. Depends on your definition of a "turnaround", I guess. He got us back to the NCAA Tournament multiple times after where Lickliter left things. That's not so bad.

No, Fran hasn't won a conference title or anything like that but not like he's been a complete and utter failure, either. The question is whether he's peaked or not and whether people are satisfied with what he's producing, the way I see it.

If he has peaked, then no, I'm not satisfied with the overall results. A couple of 7 seeds.. Meh.
 
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InGoodCo said:
hasn't that always been standard? When has Iowa's "standard" been above it? I'd argue that we've been no where near even the "standard" routinely for the last 2 decades and just recently have we even been in the neighborhood.
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You must be young..Between 1980 and 1999, Iowa was in the Final 4, Elite 8, Sweet 16, 4 times and reached the 2nd round 10 times. That is hardly "just making" the NCAA tourney here and there. Iowa has turned into such a crap hole for basketball that fans are now settling for total mediocrity
 
1977Hawkeye said:
Yes, Davidson and Temple. There are NIT wins of course but NCAA wins are the gold standard.

Fran has been awful in the Big Ten Tournament.

I remember years ago, all of us bagging on Alford because he had just 3 NCAA appearances in 8 years. If Fran doesn't find a way to get the team to pull together this year, he will have the same track record as Alford. 3 in 8. Alford was 1-3 in three trips. Fran is 2-3. Granted, this season has a long ways to go, but it's not looking too good so far with regard to making it a 4th trip.

Look, I like Fran and he did a nice job of putting out Lickliter's dumpster fire, but overall, I'm not jumping up and down about the results. He hasn't done anything that Mr. Davis, Raveling and Lute didn't do on nearly a yearly basis. I'm not calling for his head yet because I try to keep in mind how poor of shape the program was in, and we've been to the dance 3 of the past 4 years, but miss the NCAA's this year and next, and my tune will change. That will be almost a decade as our coach, which is enough time. But cart before horse - We'll see how it plays out.
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But Alford didn't have to lose rebuilding years so his record is way different. The Lick excuse is over for missing tournaments now, but it still applies to his overall record. It will always be tarnished because of Lick. Hell he has to make it this year to go 4 out of the last 5 years, and that only gets him to making it 50% of the time. The 3 out of the last 4 has nothing to do with Lick. The 3 of the last 7 does.

So if he doesn't make it this year, he will be 3 out of the last 5. To me that's not bad enough to fire but it's bad enough for me to not really care if he did get fired. The next year would be 3 out of the last 6. I want to make it more than half of the time so I'm 100% ready to move on. Especially when it's 0 out of the last 3.
 
blubberhawk said:
What D-1 coach gets 10 years to turn a basketball program around?
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Fran turned the program around in 3 or 4 years. He turned it from being one of the worst D1 programs in the nation, to a top 25-35 program over last 4 years. He has already turned the program around. The questions are, are we satisfied with top 30, and what are the chances he can get us higher. Before this week, I would have said 90% on that last question. I don't know what I would say now, but it's considerably lower than 90%.
 
1977Hawkeye said:
Well, one could argue that Fran DID turn the program around. Depends on your definition of a "turnaround", I guess. He got us back to the NCAA Tournament multiple times after where Lickliter left things. That's not so bad.

No, Fran hasn't won a conference title or anything like that but not like he's been a complete and utter failure, either. The question is whether he's peaked or not and whether people are satisfied with what he's producing, the way I see it.

If he has peaked, then no, I'm not satisfied with the overall results. A couple of 7 seeds.. Meh.
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And this is why you should read all posts before responding lol. I don't get the turn around argument. How high do you have to get before it can be acknowledged that he's already turned us around?
 
Fran didn't get his first head coaching shot in a major conference until he was 51. How many good coaches have to wait that long? I'm not sure how respected Fran is in the coaching community.
 
blubberhawk said:
You must be young..Between 1980 and 1999, Iowa was in the Final 4, Elite 8, Sweet 16, 4 times and reached the 2nd round 10 times. That is hardly "just making" the NCAA tourney here and there. Iowa has turned into such a crap hole for basketball that fans are now settling for total mediocrity
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I'm not that young... I said the standard has always been "making the NCAA" .... that's the standard at Iowa and it always will be unless we go on some miraculous run that has never happened in school history. There are years you fall below that standard and years you achieve better. But standard is something you expect every season and have reason to be upset with if that standard isn't met.

You can't say the Sweet 16 is your standard if you only make 5 of them in since 1970. You can't say the elite 8 is your standard if you only make 2 of em since the 1950's. You can't say the final 4 is your standard if you make only 1 in 60 years. If Iowa would have went to the sweet 16 or better REGULARLY in the 20 years you described, then the sweet 16 would have been the "standard". It wasn't - 4 times doesn't set a standard.

From 1980 - 1999 the standard for Iowa basketball was making the NCAA.

We haven't been even at the "standard" in 2 decades. Fran getting us there 3 years straight is as close as it's been since Mr. Davis left. Mr. Davis never did 4 years in a row. Never.

If Fran can't get us back to the standard, I'm all for the next guy. But we've been above the standard in 3 of the last 4 seasons and we just missed last year. Missing this year will put Fran on my personal hot seat because he's now re established the standard and needs to maintain it.
 
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PCHawk said:
And this is why you should read all posts before responding lol. I don't get the turn around argument. How high do you have to get before it can be acknowledged that he's already turned us around?
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Iowa has 25 NCAA tournament appearances in close to 80 years of it's existence. I was just told that my standard of making the dance isn't high enough lol. The program has been turned around. Now the question is can Fran keep us there and take us the next step.
 
PCHawk said:
But Alford didn't have to lose rebuilding years so his record is way different. The Lick excuse is over for missing tournaments now, but it still applies to his overall record. It will always be tarnished because of Lick. Hell he has to make it this year to go 4 out of the last 5 years, and that only gets him to making it 50% of the time. The 3 out of the last 4 has nothing to do with Lick. The 3 of the last 7 does.

So if he doesn't make it this year, he will be 3 out of the last 5. To me that's not bad enough to fire but it's bad enough for me to not really care if he did get fired. The next year would be 3 out of the last 6. I want to make it more than half of the time so I'm 100% ready to move on. Especially when it's 0 out of the last 3.
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Oh I agree - Fran inherited a totally different situation than Alford so I suppose it's probably not quite fair to compare them straight up, not the earlier years anyway.

I'm with you on half the time or better, which is why I'm not out there with a pitchfork. If we miss out the next couple years, I'll be getting pretty restless, though. I'm not to that point.
 
1977Hawkeye said:
Oh I agree - Fran inherited a totally different situation than Alford so I suppose it's probably not quite fair to compare them straight up, not the earlier years anyway.

I'm with you on half the time or better, which is why I'm not out there with a pitchfork. If we miss out the next couple years, I'll be getting pretty restless, though. I'm not to that point.
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We have to expect this crop of players are what we are going to get with Fran more or less. So if they can't make the tourney as sophomores and juniors, it's not a good sign. The writing would be on the wall.
 
ChosenChildren said:
Relax. Fran can coach. They started slow last year as well. They need Nick Baer back.....
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Next year will be the first year since Marble's senior year where we didn't lose our best player. That year we didn't start slow. Hopefully his slow starts can be attributed to that. We will find out next year. I really want to play in Des Moines next year so looking so bad now really has me down. I'm still bummed the team tanked last time and robbed us of the chance to watch them in Des Moines.
 
Fran isn't going anywhere unless the wheels fall off. He's got some really good recruiting classes coming in with what will be a solid veteran group in the next yr. To blow this up now wouldn't be a good idea. What coach would we get that could keep the group together and improve them from what Fran has? Look I have hope for the next couple years of seeing some darn good basketball. I'm willing to wait and see if it'll happen or not. If there's some ups and downs this year as we have some young players that will be in new key roles to them then so be it. Garza and Nunge are going to struggle and look great at times probably within the same game sometimes. Moss isn't a finished product and he'll be asked to shoulder a lot. So let's just wait and see.
 
BGOLD said:
Fran didn't get his first head coaching shot in a major conference until he was 51. How many good coaches have to wait that long? I'm not sure how respected Fran is in the coaching community.
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I think you raise a good point here that people tend to overlook and have overlooked as Fran came in and made a good impression and worked really hard to turn around the program. I sense that people on the outside see Fran as rather unconventional with his player rotations and style of play that tends to not emphasize defense. Interesting that Fran's early teams with Woodbury, Gesell and Clemmmons did play good defense due more to the guys we had in the program than how Fran wants to play. I think Fran has taken us about as far as he can and the coming seasons however many he has of them will bare this out.
 
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mopkins said:
What do you want the standard to be? A final four every 3 years? A national title every 5 years?
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Ding, ding, ding, ding....... we have a winner!!!! Absolutely nothing wrong with that standard AS A GOAL.

What is the standard now? Play no name basketball and football programs to juice up your winning percentage and then TRY to win half of your conference games and then play and LOSE in post season. This mind set SUCKS.
 
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blubberhawk said:
You must be young..Between 1980 and 1999, Iowa was in the Final 4, Elite 8, Sweet 16, 4 times and reached the 2nd round 10 times. That is hardly "just making" the NCAA tourney here and there. Iowa has turned into such a crap hole for basketball that fans are now settling for total mediocrity
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Amen brother!!!!!!!!!
 
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