Iowa offers Pat Ingram

I brought up the ISU staff as a point of reference. The comparison of hiring "recruiting assistants" instead of "developing assistants". The point was there without you going into your entire staff's pubic hair records. Your post went away from the point of the thread which is why I called you out.

Fair enough. Just seemed like you were just "being mad again".
 
I wish idiot Iowa fans would stop mentioning Iowa State, we know how this works. There are a few Cyclone fans with so little to do, they troll an Iowa basketball board during the summer months, just waiting for someone to mention anything ISU related to give them an excuse to talk Iowa State on an Iowa message board.
 
I wish idiot Iowa fans would stop mentioning Iowa State, we know how this works. There are a few Cyclone fans with so little to do, they troll an Iowa basketball board during the summer months, just waiting for someone to mention anything ISU related to give them an excuse to talk Iowa State on an Iowa message board.

I deserve that. I shouldn't have used ISU as an example. T.J. was the first thing that popped into my head when trying to find an example of a new coach that came into a program with a proven recruiter.
 
Fran could win zero Big Ten games this year and next and we aren't making another coaching change. CAARHawk, I appreciate your research on coaching turnarounds, but what your statistics miss is that the vast majority of those coaches are on a much shorter leash than McCaffery is. Unlike those coaches, he will get time, for the simple fact that no school wants to have five basketball coaches in 15 years. If you fire Fran at any point in the next three seasons here is what prospective coaching candidates will see: Successful coach with no NCAA problems fired, successful coach run out of town, coach fired before a full four-year recruiting cycle, coach fired before a full four-year recruiting cycle. Do you really think Bob Huggins, Rick Majerus, or any similar coaches are going to walk through that door? What kind of money would it take to get guys like that into such a horrible situation, and where is that money going to come from? How many big-name coaches were lined up up after Lick was fired, even though it was obviously the right decision from a basketball perspective? All those coaches could see was a bad program that didn't even give a coach an opportunity to go through a full recruiting cycle.

The NIT in year 2 and NCAA in year 3 talk was always irrelevant. Fran is going to be evaluated on years 4, 5, and 6. If he doesn't commit some sort of major NCAA violation or get in legal trouble, I fully expect to see him complete his contract regardless of on-court results (that is, unless he wants to leave).

As to your point about panic recruiting, it seems to me that Fran was avoiding panic by pulling offers on marginal guys like Glover and not going all-out after Washpun. Now he's getting savaged for it... I'd still rather take the shot for a potential program-changing guy rather than just bringing in warm bodies. This one was a miss, but if any coach who can hit 70% of those guys is going to be a success. We'll see how it develops. Maybe it will be this year, maybe the year after, maybe the class of 2014. But Fran will get multiple opportunities to bring in better players-- as he should.

The second bolded I agree with but if the first bolded happens, no way.
 
I don't really give a flying **** about the Cyclones. I'm just saying that Fred was able to land(both by inheriting and by hiring) a better crop of assistants than Caff did and it's showing early on. Now, conversely, Iowa hired better developing assistants(in my opinion) so we will see which strategy works out better.
Iowa has much better assistants than the clones. The head coaching experience alone is a huge asset. We may not have any glamor names for assistants but they are all solid.
 
No, the problem is he is NOT coming to Iowa. I know his step-brother and he texted me earlier that "Mike was blown away with Stanford". Academics are HUGE to Mike as is a stable program. Well guess what, Stanford has both plus a pretty d@mn good coach (and good location doesn't hurt either). Iowa's academics are great but not Stanford quality and I don't even have to mention the program differences. Mike Montgomery and Fran are both quality coaches but Monty is a much more accomplished coach on a higher level. He will announce his decision in the next few months and for those who think he is a lock for Iowa, just don't be shocked if he goes elsewhere. I've already accepted this.

Your post would have a lot more credibility if you knew who the actual coach at Stanford is right now.
 
Iowa has much better assistants than the clones. The head coaching experience alone is a huge asset. We may not have any glamor names for assistants but they are all solid.

I'm not going to judge ISU's assistants, because I don't know much about them, and, this is important Cyclone fans, I don't care to know much about them- I am not asking for a lesson.


But Iowa has a good crop of assistants. It's funny how one piece of bad news seems to pop all the optimism many Iowa fans were feeling. Kirk Speraw was a great hire, Dillard has done a good job in recruiting and Francis was the one guy Fran brought along. I don't know if he is seeing the results, but if you follow him on twitter, he is all over the place.

If Fran doesn't get it done, it won't be because he brought in a poor group of assistants.
 
Fran's dilemma is not an enviable one. He inherits a program that was in the worst shape in Iowa basketball history, and than any other major program recently, with attendance in pitiful shape, and he is expected to completely turn things around with his first reasonable recruiting class. This years class is a very good one, all things considered, despite the Hubbard fiasco.

One thing that would help considerably is for the students and thousands of Hawkeye alumni who live in the IC area to start attending games. It is very difficult to recruit elite players to perform in front of a half-full house. We must do whatever it takes to fill the house. Book the Stones for a halftime show. Bring in jugglers, and strippers. Whatever it takes. Free keg beer would work very nicely.

:)
 
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OC: I agree you are right about Fran getting more time. However, my point is that if it doesn't happen now in recruiting it won't happen for Fran in the future. So, in most likelihood it will mean five bad years.

Of course a possibility would be to hire an AAU or high school guy as an assistant (If he could bring in a program changing recruit) but there hasn't been precedent for that as a way to turn around recruiting.

CAARHawk, in your research did you get a sense of how many guys were brought into turn around programs, didn't hit the first couple of classes, and were quickly fired? Also, how many guys that did hit big classes right away ended up in trouble with the NCAA? Just curious, I honestly have no idea.

@oroko, the point is largely irrelevant because there's no way we're going winless in the Big Ten over a two-year stretch (not sure if that's ever been done before). I'm just trying to make the point that even if we stink, Fran isn't going to be fired because of on-court performance until at least year 5. There's only so many times an AD can round up the search committee in quick succession before he loses all credibility. It's all pointless speculation, though, as I happen to believe we won't stink-- in fact, I'm sticking with the predictions I've been making all along, which are that we win 16-17 games this year, 19-20 the year after that, and then get into a good NCAA tournament groove of 20-23 win seasons with the occasional dud.

Also, FWIW (which isn't much), just in that quick video of Ingram I like him better than the quick video of Abrahamson, if only because I think Abramson is going to have to overhaul his entire jump shot when he gets to college.
 
I'm not going to judge ISU's assistants, because I don't know much about them, and, this is important Cyclone fans, I don't care to know much about them- I am not asking for a lesson.


But Iowa has a good crop of assistants. It's funny how one piece of bad news seems to pop all the optimism many Iowa fans were feeling. Kirk Speraw was a great hire, Dillard has done a good job in recruiting and Francis was the one guy Fran brought along. I don't know if he is seeing the results, but if you follow him on twitter, he is all over the place.

If Fran doesn't get it done, it won't be because he brought in a poor group of assistants.

I don't remember anyone saying he brought in a poor group of assistants. I said he brought in guys that were developing assistants probably more than recruiting assistants. Now if you didn't realize there was a difference, I don't know what to tell ya. But it's a fact that some of the assistants out there just relate better to kids than others...regardless of how much effort they put into it.

I realize it is going to take time to get the program on the right track. But the looks of things, it's going to take a good season for Iowa to start making some recruiting noise. That wasn't something that was needed at Clown U. They were able to get recruits without winning right off because of the approach they took. We will see which way works out better. I'm thinking Iowa's way will work...but only if they are able to win this year.
 
Stanford under Dawkins: 1st yr( 14-18) ,2nd yr. (15-16)...total conference record (15-24). Oh yea, he is really ripping it up out there.
Stanford has the academics,no doubt,but their program is not better than Iowa,and fan support is even worse.
 
I don't remember anyone saying he brought in a poor group of assistants. I said he brought in guys that were developing assistants probably more than recruiting assistants. Now if you didn't realize there was a difference, I don't know what to tell ya. But it's a fact that some of the assistants out there just relate better to kids than others...regardless of how much effort they put into it.


Dillard was working with Nike camps before coming to Iowa and Fran described Francis as a barracuda in recruiting.

You are just making assertions with nothing to back them up.
 
Dillard was working with Nike camps before coming to Iowa and Fran described Francis as a barracuda in recruiting.

You are just making assertions with nothing to back them up.

I have two years of data to back it up. What do you have? So what if Dillard was working the Nike camps. You don't think every other college in the country had assistants working the same thing. Where are the results? And you can't just say it's because we've had a poor teams, because there are other teams that are getting recruits that didn't win many more games than we did.

And I think Francis will be a tremendous recruiter in the B10 eventually. But I don't think he's developed enough relationships yet. He's been working hard on the 2013 classes from what I understand so my guess is that assuming we make some progress on the court this season, that is when we might see some results from him.

Again, I'm not knocking our assistants as much as I'm saying that we are going to have to win for this recruiting thing to turn in the direction we all want it to turn to.
 
Two years of data?

In Fran's first year, he brought in two players that ended the season as two of the Iowa's three best players.

His second class has yet to play a game, but includes a top 150 kid. The little data we have, is that Fran instantly upgraded Iowa's talent.

You ask if most school have assistant who worked as a Nike representative, and I don't even know if this is a serious question. No, most school don't have coaches who worked for Nike. The man was brought it for his connections.

According to Tom Kakert on the On Iowa Podcast, Dillard is the reason Iowa ended up with Aaron White and why Iowa knew about Hubbard, Dillard is why Kyle Meyer committed, and Dillard is why Cezar even visited. He has been the key recruiter.

The idea that Fran hired a Nike guy who hasn't coached since 2004 to be a "developmental assistant," is stupid.


On a side note, Speraw had the connections to help Iowa find Cartwright.
 
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OC: I didn't do the research on actual performance, but just recruiting. I also only looked at major conferences. It is just a totally different ballgame with respect to major and mid-majors. A lot of mid-majors wouldn't be able to rack up wins to make it to the post-Season with a major conference schedule.

I also did not look at how quickly guys were fired. However, since no one did it after year three, I have to think at least a decent group got to year 4 or 5. However, that is a good question.
 
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