Is Fran McCaffery Building A PowerHouse at Iowa?

Unless our defensively philosophy changes nothing is going to change.

Basketball has become about shooting the 3 and defending the 3. The great teams do both, the good teams do one or the other very well. I don't think you need some wholesale philosophy change on defense. When they went 13-2 down the stretch last year, they were very good guarding the perimeter.
 
Well I had a friend in college that asked every girl at the bar if she wanted to sleep with him, he didn't usually get quality woman to agree and usually ended up with less than desirable company. When Fran starts signing the blue chip 4,5 stars than we'll see. Fran has been doing very well in spotting talent and getting players with upside. If Fran ever gets to the point where he gets already talented players I see a very Tom Davis situation like when he inherited Raveling's talent.
I think most of the under rated guys Fran brought in were already good. The recruiting services missed on guys like White Garza, and the Murrays. Getting guys the recruiting services call 4 starts won't necessarily make us better than getting actual 4 star talent that recruiting services under valued. I'm hoping it does tho.
 
Well I had a friend in college that asked every girl at the bar if she wanted to sleep with him, he didn't usually get quality woman to agree and usually ended up with less than desirable company. When Fran starts signing the blue chip 4,5 stars than we'll see. Fran has been doing very well in spotting talent and getting players with upside. If Fran ever gets to the point where he gets already talented players I see a very Tom Davis situation like when he inherited Raveling's talent.

Why ya gotta bring me into this?
 
Basketball has become about shooting the 3 and defending the 3. The great teams do both, the good teams do one or the other very well. I don't think you need some wholesale philosophy change on defense. When they went 13-2 down the stretch last year, they were very good guarding the perimeter.
Totally agree. You can have a weakness on D so long as it's not defending the 3 and rebounding. Giving up 2nd chances is a huge no no too. Iowa when in man to man rebounds pretty darn well. It's for some of those stretches in zone that we'll predictably struggle with it.
 
No cieling at all, it’s just a crap shoot in a one off game where the loser goes home. That’s why I said things will take care of themselves - ya can’t tell me that all of those coaches are better than Fran. Iowa has had teams capable of making runs, they just haven’t. Historically Iowa has never been successful in March and IMO the only way to change that is continue to give yourself at bats. As long as Iowa is doing that, I’m gonna enjoy the ride
It's not a crap shoot. The team that plays better wins.
 
It's also not a crap shoot when a team goes this long without making it out of the first weekend. It's a trend.
Correct, history has shown us that it takes a lot of things to go right in order for Iowa to make it past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. It would happen more than 5 times in 50 years if not. If 5 times in 50 years doesn't make a trend then why even track trends,
 
Fran had a good enough regular season to have a really good chance to make it to the sweet 16 twice. The fact that he missed on both was crap shoot part in my opinion. The good news is, those two times were the last two years. And without covid, it would have been the last three years he had a good chance. Iowa needs to keep getting 6 seeds or better. If we do, a sweet 16 is coming.
 
Who knows, maybe when Fran finally breaks the sweet 16 ice he will win it all like he did when he finally got the Big 10 tournament monkey off his back.
 
Who knows, maybe when Fran finally breaks the sweet 16 ice he will win it all like he did when he finally got the Big 10 tournament monkey off his back.

It does really have that feeling of if he can "just get over that hump". If Iowa can just get out of that first weekend, who knows if more would come more consistently. I think that's where we are now.
 
People (idiots) get so focused on wanting unreasonable nattys and final fours and winning the B1G that they don’t even think about how awesome we have it compared to 99% of the universities out there. Our football, MBB, WBB, wrestling, and baseball programs are all in the top 4 in the big ten, and all but baseball are perennially in the top 25 nationally. Half a million football tickets sold before the start of the season. 106,000 wrestling tickets sold before the start of last years wrestling season (highest in college wrestling g history and every seat sold to season ticket holders). That’s 14 sold out events in two P5 sports before the first whistle.

The number of schools that can claim similar success is very, very small. Being a fan of almost any other school would suck shit in comparison.

Alabama, Duke, Georgia, etc can’t claim any of that.
Do not forget about Iowa's track program too
 
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