I agree with you.
The problem is the rebuild doesn’t mean much at this point in Fran’s tenure. Even if Iowa got hot in February and snuck into the tournament, it would just be another season that ended the first weekend of the Dance. Yawn.
My sense is most Iowa fans are appreciative of Fran bringing Iowa basketball back from the Lickliter doldrums, but now that Fran has been here a decade and a half and has more seasons at Iowa under his belt than Dr. Tom, fans have grown tired of the same ho hum results. The program is just stale and kinda rancid at this point. No matter who the players are, the same deficiencies in defense, rebounding, toughness, athleticism, etc. persist. There just isn’t any sign of that ever changing under Fran, and without those aforementioned team attributes the results in March will continue on BAU.
I think that’s the point. Pretty much all Iowa basketball fans get Iowa’s place in the pecking order as far as being a non-blue blood is concerned. With that said, most Iowa fans also get it is not unreasonable to expect a little more energy and excitement to be injected into the program by bringing in a few better athletes while trying to improve upon areas of weakness that always plague Fran teams. With that, instill the possibility of making a decent run in the NCAA tournament once in a blue moon as opposed to never.
Unfortunately,
@curtisj157 is 100% right when he says you can’t put out a basketball team that looks handpicked from the J Crew sales team and expect them to compete at a high level. A team full of C+ versions of Kyle Korver may light up the nets against East Alabama State A&M but winning consistently in the Big Ten is another matter. And it certainly doesn’t put butts in seats at Carver.
It’s time for a change.
