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Fran and Barta to the transfer portal

Hawkbaby

Team MVP
Apr 4, 2018
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This is what you get with nepotism. To many roosters in the hen house. Fran,Margaret,Conner and Patrick. To many voices and opinions. This has now created problems in both the football and basketball programs. Fran leveraged his boys playing at Iowa for his last extension and Barta extended again with these rumblings going on. He is so weak. It is hard to recruit over your own sons and to get other players to stay or come knowing how much playing time your kids are going to get. Fran cannot be objective with this. Cj and Nunge leaving and Jordan coming back. Yikes! Last year is going to be as good as it gets. I have been going to and watching Iowa basketball for over 40 years. We don’t have to be just ok. We have some history. You can win more at Iowa. The Iowa basketball program is not here for the McCaffery Family . It is here for the players and the fans.
 
This take doesn’t make much sense.
  • CJ originally came to Iowa due to a close relationship with Fran - he knew Connor was here and knew Patrick would be coming.
  • CJ has pretty much been a starter since Day 1 when healthy.
  • Neither Connor nor Patrick are really a competitive threat to CJ for playing time.
  • You throw Nunge in here, but he certainly was not impacted by the McCaffery’s for PT and he transferred to be closer to home after a thousand injuries and the death of his dad.
  • Connor and Patrick were both 4* recruits and it appears that Patrick could turn out to be a really good player.
 
Not going to touch on the nepotism aspect, but the extension looks worse every week. This was the season that finally had reasonable title hopes. For both the Big Ten and even nationally. Played a couple games behind most the season for the Big Ten title and were effectively eliminated by February. No one in the world doesn't think next year will be a dropoff when you take the most decorated player in school history out, and don't have a recruiting class that matches up with your recent notoriety. But Barta loves horrible timing, so he throws out an extension right after that, and before they get upset and crushed in round 2 of the tourney.

Since then you lose the only experienced big man to transfer. Nunge is a strange circumstance with injuries and personal matters, so that's just bad luck. But now you lose your
best returning player?

Has one positive thing happened since that extension?
 
Fran and Barta to the transfer portal...only thing I can think of that would rival this amount of luck is Iowa football blocking back-to-back FG attempts to beat UNI like 12 years ago.

Long story short - I wish, Hawkbaby....but it's not happenin'
 
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The University of Nepotism just isn't that much fun to root for. Thanks again, Gary
 
Crying about nepotism is idiotic, especially when schools are hiring family members of recruits. Not many were crying about it when he led the nation in assist-turnover margin and stood up for his teammates.
 
This take doesn’t make much sense.
  • CJ originally came to Iowa due to a close relationship with Fran - he knew Connor was here and knew Patrick would be coming.
  • CJ has pretty much been a starter since Day 1 when healthy.
  • Neither Connor nor Patrick are really a competitive threat to CJ for playing time.
  • You throw Nunge in here, but he certainly was not impacted by the McCaffery’s for PT and he transferred to be closer to home after a thousand injuries and the death of his dad.
  • Connor and Patrick were both 4* recruits and it appears that Patrick could turn out to be a really good player.

You are correct on many of your points. I would disagree on a few others. But that's neither here nor there. The perception, right or wrong, is that when a coach has 2 of his own kids on the team other players are not going to get a fair shot. One could make the argument that was the case this year with Connor's playing time. If you go to this site (EvanMiya CBB Analytics) you can use the Team Breakdown tool and see how teams performed throughout the whole year with individuals on the floor, what 5-man combinations performed the best and which sets of 2 players produced the best results when on the floor together.

In their individual ratings, Connor is the 9th best player in the 9 man rotation. But he played the 5th most minutes on the team. And the 5-man rotation that was the most efficient by far for Iowa was Bohannon/Garza/Wieskamp/Murray/Frederick. That was evident to anyone watching games. I would argue that Patrick should have perhaps got more time this year. He has a good skill set.

The issue is that guys like Toussaint, Perkins and Ulis have to be wondering if they will be given a fair shot at playing time if it's down between them and Connor for PT as to who is on the floor.
 
You are correct on many of your points. I would disagree on a few others. But that's neither here nor there. The perception, right or wrong, is that when a coach has 2 of his own kids on the team other players are not going to get a fair shot. One could make the argument that was the case this year with Connor's playing time. If you go to this site (EvanMiya CBB Analytics) you can use the Team Breakdown tool and see how teams performed throughout the whole year with individuals on the floor, what 5-man combinations performed the best and which sets of 2 players produced the best results when on the floor together.

In their individual ratings, Connor is the 9th best player in the 9 man rotation. But he played the 5th most minutes on the team. And the 5-man rotation that was the most efficient by far for Iowa was Bohannon/Garza/Wieskamp/Murray/Frederick. That was evident to anyone watching games. I would argue that Patrick should have perhaps got more time this year. He has a good skill set.

The issue is that guys like Toussaint, Perkins and Ulis have to be wondering if they will be given a fair shot at playing time if it's down between them and Connor for PT as to who is on the floor.

Fair points on Connor and it will be interesting to see how things go next year. I would add that part of him getting a lot of minutes were the injuries to Nunge and Fredrick. If those two stayed healthy, I think you’d have seen Connor getting more like 7th most minutes.

Honestly, if I’m in the Toussaint, Perkins, Ulis group, I’m way more interested in what happens with Bohannon than Connor - especially Toussaint and Ulis. CJ leaving clears a lot of space - it really would seem to open the door for Perkins. If Bohannon comes back, then I’d be interested to see if Fran lets JoeT run the show and let JBo do what he does best and be a 3-pt specialist. If Fran tries to play with this group of guys (no Garza, no Nunge, assuming no Wieskamp) while running JBo and Connor at the point, it’s going to be a mess. The path to any success next year is by getting longer, faster and more dynamic - especially on defense.

CMac and JBo can add value to next year’s team, but it needs to be in specific roles, not simply carrying on what they did this year. We need to see a lot of JoeT, Ulis, Perkins, Murray twins and Patrick for sure.

I get the Connor playing time arguments, but my main beef with “nepotism” is that it throws Patrick in there as well. I think it’s pretty clear that he has a good skill set and looks like he could be a very good player soon. I’d argue that he’d be competing for significant minutes in just about any B1G program.
 
I don’t have an issue at all with Patrick’s playing time. I think he can be a very good player. It’s just the total dynamic of two sons on the team in which one of them is taking up a lot of minutes and cannot score and has trouble defending. You add in a wife and mother who is very vocal. Fran should be very active in the portal to recruit a player to take up the majority of Conners minutes if he doesn’t think he has that player or players on his current roster. If he would do that, he has to go home and explain that to the family. He’s only human. How many coaches have had 2 sons play major roles on a power 5 school. Barta let this happen. We had a very good year last year but also disappointing. We are lucky that Kenyon was Hawkeye or Keegan could walk into any program he wanted to
 
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This is what you get with nepotism. To many roosters in the hen house. Fran,Margaret,Conner and Patrick. To many voices and opinions. This has now created problems in both the football and basketball programs. Fran leveraged his boys playing at Iowa for his last extension and Barta extended again with these rumblings going on. He is so weak. It is hard to recruit over your own sons and to get other players to stay or come knowing how much playing time your kids are going to get. Fran cannot be objective with this. Cj and Nunge leaving and Jordan coming back. Yikes! Last year is going to be as good as it gets. I have been going to and watching Iowa basketball for over 40 years. We don’t have to be just ok. We have some history. You can win more at Iowa. The Iowa basketball program is not here for the McCaffery Family . It is here for the players and the fans.
Baby fits you.
 
The next university Pres should be giving Barta the boot, but that's unlikely. I suspect that person's time will be taken up by much bigger issues affecting the place than an incompetent AD.
 
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