2025/26 Hawkeye Roster, Fran v Ben

[Hawk_4shur]

Obviously takes a little imagination at this point. But if you assume Owen and Dix would have moved on anyway, but Fran kept everyone else for next year including the transfer and recruits - which coach assembled a better roster for next year so far?

To be clear, I'm not wishing Iowa and Fran hadn't parted ways!

 

[Hawk_4shur]

I voted for Ben. I really like the group he has put together so far. They look like hard-nosed guys ready to "impose their will".

 

[TampaHawkfan]

I voted for Ben, not necessarily because I think his roster will be immensely more talented than what Fran would have had (he's still filling out the roster, so this could change) but because I just think Ben will get more out of what he has.

 

[LuteHawk]

Ben coaches his players to play both offense and defense.
He expects them to rebound and take good shots.
Fran simply plays offense with his team and that is all.

Bottom Line: Ben will get the most effort from his players to have wins
than Fran could.

 

[Dauminator]

Ben, for two reasons. 1) an All-American PG. 2) I believe he is assembling what can be a cohesive unit that buys into a system, which will excel over a motley crew of lanky shooters.

 

[TailgateTom]

Ben has more individual and collective talent so far, and we have 50% of the roster filled.

 

[SDHawkDoc]

It's more likely than not the players Fran would have had would play the same way as we've seen the last many years. No D or rebounding. No toughness. That would likely continue to give the same results we've been seeing.
Dix is the only player I was really interested in bringing back and I'd written him off early as unaffordable.
Not that I think this is a world beating group, but I've got a lot more confidence in these guys with BMcC as the coach, being competitive against upper half of the league teams than what Fran would have put on the floor.

 

[retrohawki]

Brauns was the best big on the team last year and as it stands now, he would have been the best big on this years team. Ben really needs to find a big.
That being said, last years team had Brock Harding. I’m never rolling with a 5”10 140lb guard who doesn’t have a jumper.

 

[Packer54]

The NIL base would not have changed for Fran.....no excitement drawing in funds...and he would have lost a few guys for sure. At the end it would not have been close in my opinion.

 

[ichawk24]

Fran might end up with the better roster.

But zero doubt in my mind that Ben would win more games.

 

[GunnerHawk]

If I looked at last years team if it returned vs. incoming team.

PG - better than last year by a mile
SG - Dix better than Hausen but not by alot.
SF - Ben's SF's are much better defenders and rebounders. Koch will shoot as well as Sandfort.
PF - Alvaro should draw bigs away from the rim which is a big plus.
C - Undersized but should be better on D and rebounding. much more athletic. If they get a true center then this roster will be very good.

 

[Max_Rebo]

If Fran had stayed, I am confident that we would have still lost Freeman and Dix. Probably Harding as well, IMHO. For the sake of argument, let's assume everyone else stayed. So the starting lineup would have looked something like this:

PG: Portal player TBD
SG: Pryce
SF: Joshua Lewis
PF: Traore
C: Dembele

You can assume that Fran would have hit the portal for help, particularly at PG. With revenue sharing available, he would have more money to work with; yet his track record at recruiting the portal is what it is. So you can expect his starting PG to be somewhere between Bakari Evelyn and Drew Thelwell, in terms of ability. Perhaps serviceable, but not particularly strong.

I'm willing to assume he also might have landed JT Power, who followed Fran to Penn. The one-time 5-star recruit has averaged a combined 1.7 points and 0.9 rebounds in two seasons at Duke and Virginia, so I don't think he'd be particularly impactful for Iowa. But maybe he could be a contributor.

So, comparing position to position:

• Bennett Stirtz vs. an unknown portal player -- massive advantage Stirtz
• Brendan Hausen vs. Pryce Sandfort -- strong advantage Hausen
• Tavion Banks (or Cooper Koch) vs. Joshua Lewis -- modest advantage to Banks/Koch (I was never sold on Lewis)
• Cam Manyawu vs. Seydou Traore -- clear advantage to Manyawu. Love Traore's athleticism, but Manyawu has the skills
• Alvaro Fulgueiras vs. Ladji Dembele -- strong advantage to El Pulpo. Both a little undersized, but Alvaro has way more upside

Bench:

• Combs, Howard, Banks/Koch, Jirak, Sage(?)
  • vs.
• Koch, Tadjo, Power, Kingsbury, Johnson-Arigu, Diakite, Briscoe, perhaps another portal PG

This is the only area where I might give the advantage to Fran's guys, if only for the numbers. Both teams lack depth at PG.​

As the OP said, this takes a little imagination and guesswork. But this is where I landed.

 

[IllQChawk]

Ben by a mile, one word, GUARDS. Fran was never able to get that point guard even close in a Stritz type player, unless you count RD Marble and he was more of a off guard then a point guard. Bohannan was a shooting guard that played point guard but history proved he wasn't the answer either, I really liked Harding, won a state title with Owen, but he was thrown into the fire way too early, good point guard, but his size limited his effectiveness in the Big Ten. Owen was good around the basket but had no game away from it.
Ben relishes guards and Fran was a FORWARDS kind of coach, and in 15 years only Fran saw the potential with the forwards that Fran recruited, but in reality at the end of each season the forwards were never enough to make Iowa a Big Ten contender or have post season
success. It was time for Fran to look for other opportunities and he's probably in a better place at Penn.
I know I'm not listing a lot of Fran's better players he recruited to Iowa, but in the end they all were never good enough to alter Frans
path to another coaching job.
If this was pre portal times, I doubt Ben would be recruiting a whole roster, but that is what will give Ben the advantage over what Fran had to begin his tenue at Iowa back in 2011 and that is what will give Ben the jump start at Iowa that Fran never got.

 

[littlez]

Brauns was the best big on the team last year and as it stands now, he would have been the best big on this years team. Ben really needs to find a big.
That being said, last years team had Brock Harding. I’m never rolling with a 5”10 140lb guard who doesn’t have a jumper.

Brauns defensively is not /was not better than either Manyewu or Banks.

 

[HawkBall23]

Doesn't matter the rosters either would have, Ben is clearly the winning pick in this poll because his squad will give 100% in all phases of the game.

The only thing Fran's teams work 100% on is getting their shot up and then extremely lazily go through the motions on the other end of the court, no matter what.

 

[danny14]

Fran's teams, as a whole, lacked athleticism and quickness. It's hard to play good defense at the D1 level without these assets. He had a tendency to prefer, length over quickness, and shooters over athleticism. I think Ben recruits a different type of player.

 

[texas twister]

Brauns was the best big on the team last year and as it stands now, he would have been the best big on this years team. Ben really needs to find a big.
That being said, last years team had Brock Harding. I’m never rolling with a 5”10 140lb guard who doesn’t have a jumper.

FG .454 3pt .398 174 assists and 50 steals You even got his measurements wrong. His assists were double any teammate. He made the offense click. Fran should have never used him with a center switching 40 feet from the basket on defense.
Brauns was not the best big on the team last year. He did a great job; but, Freeman was still the best.
That is 3 claims, 3 strikes, you're out.