Iowa Hoops...there was once a time...

[hawkfan33]

no

a team program off a sweet 16 would have momentum

99-00? no momentum

alford restarted the program, and everything was rolling until Dec of 2001

losing control of his players

pierce

sommerville transfer

at that point the air was out

the nucleus of horner-brunner-haluska kept the team deceptively lively, then the seeds of 2001-02 were sown

no revisionist davis apologist here

the program had flatlined

alford put it into a lower flatline

lickliter almost killed it

if fran brings in some 2014 top 50, back to the 80s level

if not, a return to the alford flatline

A team losing basically everyone from the rotation except Oliver was not going to have momentum. You can spin it any way you want but Iowa was going to be bad in 1999-2000 no matter who was the coach. You don't lose that many rotation guys and not see a major fall off.

 

[JonDMiller]

A team losing basically everyone from the rotation except Oliver was not going to have momentum. You can spin it any way you want but Iowa was going to be bad in 1999-2000 no matter who was the coach. You don't lose that many rotation guys and not see a major fall off.

While this is true, normally a coach would have have something going...and Davis was a lame duck. The program needed an entire restart and Alford restocked the talent about as quickly as possible.

I think he made one very big mistake early on, though...

He gave an ultimatum to Pierre Pierce and Chris Thomas; we are taking one point guard, the first one of you who commits, we take and the other is SOL.

I didn't like the decision at the time because I felt there was room for both of them as Pierce was not a college point IMO. As a freshman, Thomas averaged over 15ppg for Notre Dame and over 7 assists. At Iowa, well we saw what not having a true point guard did and we know the rest of the Pierre Pierce story. Thomas wound up scoring nearly 2200 points during his Irish career.

Throwing out the off the court stuff, which no coach could ever really predict what Pierce did...I felt there was room for both of them. Had they kept recruiting Thomas and not played poker like that, they had a real good chance to get him.

 

[hawkfan33]

While this is true, normally a coach would have have something going...and Davis was a lame duck. The program needed an entire restart and Alford restocked the talent about as quickly as possible.

I think he made one very big mistake early on, though...

He gave an ultimatum to Pierre Pierce and Chris Thomas; we are taking one point guard, the first one of you who commits, we take and the other is SOL.

I didn't like the decision at the time because I felt there was room for both of them as Pierce was not a college point IMO. As a freshman, Thomas averaged over 15ppg for Notre Dame and over 7 assists. At Iowa, well we saw what not having a true point guard did and we know the rest of the Pierre Pierce story. Thomas wound up scoring nearly 2200 points during his Irish career.

Throwing out the off the court stuff, which no coach could ever really predict what Pierce did...I felt there was room for both of them. Had they kept recruiting Thomas and not played poker like that, they had a real good chance to get him.

You're assuming that Pierce and Thomas also felt that there was room for both of them, I'm not sure if either one of those guys would want to commit to a school that's brining in another top recruit in the same class at the same position. Plus Iowa already had Horner committed, it's hard to imagine all 3 of those guys being happy about sharing playing time.

 

[PalmettoHawkFan]

A team losing basically everyone from the rotation except Oliver was not going to have momentum. You can spin it any way you want but Iowa was going to be bad in 1999-2000 no matter who was the coach. You don't lose that many rotation guys and not see a major fall off.

if you don't have a lame duck year, you have a 98-99 recruiting class that would have had collison as the centerpiece

the way to play that would have been to let davis go at the end of the year instead of renewing the contract, bring in the hot young property alford

classless, but at least that way you have a chance at keeping a McDs AA power forward, which kind of helps

all old news

upset the hoosiers on the 31st

 

[ssckelley]

Back in the day, landing Iowa kids as the Iowa HC was not a hard thing. Iowa pretty much got who it wanted in state as the kids grew up wanting to play for Iowa because they saw Lute win, get to 1980 final four..then they saw the run from 86-89...which would have been when Raef Lafrentz was a kid...

After Chris Street died, that took some wind out of Mr. Davis's sails. I have had a lot of VERY connected people tell me that (about as high as you can get, at the time I was told)...he was never a voracious recruiter. Didn't spend the kind of time on Raef like Fran spent on Woodbury.

Losing Nick Collison was a bigger foul than Raef, as Collison absolutely grew up an Iowa fan. BUT that was less about Mr. Davis and more about the lame duck year. Hinrich was a Sioux City kid who had committed to ISU, but Tim Floyd left for the NBA and that coincided with Hinrich having blown up a bit during his senior year...Kansas was there.

Those were the things that began to sour me on Tom Davis.

Bullard went to Valley HS, but signed with Colorado out of HS then transfered to Iowa. I don't believe Bowen was highly recruited.

I do not doubt what you say at all and you are correct on Collison but the AD has already made up his mind he wanted Mr. Davis gone and I remember hearing similar concerns about his recruiting. Obviously his approach to recruiting cost Iowa Raef Lafrenz and again my main point about Raef was, IMO, it started the beginning of the end for Mr. Davis at Iowa. Had Raef came to Iowa instead of going to Kansas he would have retired as the coach of the Hawkeyes. It makes me sick to think how good Iowa could have been with LaFrenz and later on Collison, we may have never experienced the Lickliter years.

 

[atomicblue224]

I've recently posted some measuring posts related to Iowa's struggles in recent years...When Iowa last won an NCAA tournament game, Adam Woodbury and Mike Gesell were in the 1st grade. They have no idea of what things used to be like, the expectations that surrounded the program. I think they will be a part of brining some of it back.

For those of your reading this under the age of say 25, Iowa made it to the NCAA tournament 16 of 21 years before Steve Alford's tenure began...over 75% of the time.

The Iowa basketball team was ranked at least once during every season 1979-1993, 1995-2002 and 2004-2006. That's just two years since 1979 through 2006 where they were not ranked at least once (2003 and 1994). It hasn't been ranked since 3/14/06, going on seven straight years.

That's freaking crazy and so outside the historical norm for this program.

Freaking crazy we let a good coach go? are we gonna do that with Fran ? Hope not...I hope coaching staff get recognization for their good work! Tom had twoo losing seasons and one that was almost 20 wins season and all the rest of his 13 seasons he had 20 wins seasons. i would rather have THAT compares to last two coaches....

 

[atomicblue224]

As far as I know Mr. Davis never lost a first round game at Iowa......

What I remember last was Alford's number 4 ranked team losing to number 13 ranked NW State in the last seconds of the first round......

That was about to drop me dead! But we had time to shoot one more for three but we missed it !

 

[eveningnewsteam]

Iowa had Evans, Reiner (top 50), Worley (Top 75) in one class..it was a Top 15 class universally...and Recker and Hogan became eligible that next year, too. Iowa was 14-2 to start the 2000-2001 year..then Recker got hurt. They were 14th in the nation at that point.

They began the next year ranked inside the Top 10 in some polls..#9 preseason AP...that was one of the most disappointing Iowa hoops seasons ever.

That was a terribly coached team. That team had absolutely no cohesion at all. Good players, but for whatever reason, they just couldnt put it together. It always seemed like 5 individuals on the floor doing their own thing. It was painful to watch. They finally got their act together in the BTT, but they ran out of gas on Sunday. Should never have came to that with the talent on that team.

 

[atomicblue224]

Funny how times change. There once was a time where it was just about as difficult to snag a single game ticket to CHA as it was to get one to a Springsteen concert. There was a waiting list to purchase season tickets. Anyone remember when the basketball team was ranked No. 1?

Man, do I feel old.

Ditto and freak getting her braces make me feel older and shes older than me, lol