You could make the argument that this is Iowa Basketball for the last 40 years.
You could also point out that Iowa has finished 6th-9th exactly once in the past eight seasons (6th 2018-19). Seven seasons better than 6th place. One season worse than 9th.
‘They’ll make the tournament half the time’ or six of the last eight seasons, whichever is greater.
I think thow of Fran's teams have had a 4-way and 3-way shared 3rd place finish. That does not mean they were 3rd best team those years. Both those shared 3rd place teams got bounced out in 1st round of BTT. Add in the BTT record and those teams finished closer to 6th/5th place in Big10 overall record.
After 11 years, looks like Fran will never win a conference title.
Even last year's clear 3rd place team in regular season got bounced out in 1st game in BTT. The 11 year Fran trend is he won't win you a BTT championship, ever.
Fran has 37 year career with and zero sweet16 appearances...so odds are his "system" will never translate into a sweet 16 appearance at Iowa.
Fran's overall record is at 0.500 in B1G play, which fits the narrative that we are experiencing an average Fran year right now....maybe trendng towards a below average year and NIT.
Lute Olson had better B1G record and Final4 and a shared B1G regular season title....that is the high mark.
Raveling was an incredible recruiter and set the table for Davis
Davis had an Elte 8 appearnace, later a sweet 16 with his own guys, and little bit over 0.500 B1G record
Alford at least won the BTT a couple times and 0.500 B1G record.
Why we pay a guy $2.9 million for results that are average and then make him out to be some type of high level coach is the question.
If he wasn't managing the team like it was the Universtiy of McCaffery with obvious agenda to play his kids over better players, or if he had actually done something that didn't end in a Woodshed beating in NCAA round of 32, I'd have more patience.