So your saying you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express......nice!
Guard recuriting
- Thread starter gunnyhiway
- Start date
Coach Fran is indeed a better coach then just Average....believe me, there's a whole lot worse coaches out there then McCaffery, has Fran and his coaches lacked recruiting skills needed to stay in the upper crust of the Big Ten, the answer is yes and his in game skills have left us speechless numerous times at end of games that Iowa failed to protect leads. Iowa is not going to change coaches any time soon so until some of the newbie's become more experienced and next year class adds some muscle in the paint, it's going to be a long year, but that doesn't mean that coach is off the hook for not getting better players at Iowa. He's responsible for every player that sees the floor during a game and as long as he owns up to that fact, I can live with his shortcomings....
Wow, the board gets negative after a couple of losses to teams that are just plain better than we are at this point in time. Right now, we just don't have the experienced studs, except our offensive guru- Jok, who also leads the team in turnovers and has to learn better defense. Fans need a lot of patience this year. However, some good points have been made. Fran is a good but not great coach. We have among the worst guards in the BIG, although I hold out hope for Bohannon when he gets more experience. A couple of comments: I think the fact that Fran has two sons on Iowa City West's team has led to some serious anguish on Fran's part about who to recruit on that talent-laden outfit. He passed on little Lohaus and Morgan, and I follow MVC sports carefully, and those two guys were every bit as good as his sons, except for the aforementioned very important "length." His sons are much taller. Morgan should be at Iowa. He is better than half the guys on our team. Guard Lohaus could be unconscious shooting- like Jok, just five inches shorter and with medical problems, so I can understand why Fran passed . Another comment about Fran. Like it or not, Fran is huge on "character." He is not going to take a player who may not qualify academically or in any way be disruptive to his program. I think we have pretty decent players on the character issue, but, without naming names, I'm sure we've passed on a few kids because of grades or because they may have been potential trouble. KF is the same way in that regard. Frankly, I like that. We are not Kentucky or Louisville, and I never want us to be. True Iowa fans will support the program and pray we get a huge upgrade in point guard very soon. Our front court is set in the future with Cook, Pemsl, Nunge and Garza, and guards Weiskamp and Connor will definitely play. But the new guards will have to learn; they won't just appear on the court and be our saviors, as much as we will want them to be.
Last edited:
The board is not negative because we lost a couple of games. It's negative for the very things you posted. Horrendous defense. Poor guard play. Too many turnovers.
Those are good reasons to be negative.
A huge upgrade in PG is not coming. Not for another 4 years. Fran might not be here in 4 years because Connor isn't much of an upgrade at PG. Particularly on defense.
Most fans have been around long enough to see what we have now, who we are losing for next season and what we have coming in. That doesn't bode well for the future of our back court. And the posters around here know it.
I think this a growing year we are just too young and inexperienced. This group will get better. I'll take a 500 year knowing we are getting better athletes and those athletes are getting exp.
By definition the term avg coach means "there's a whole lot worse coaches out there then Mac", and there's also a whole of better coaches out there than Mac. He's a terrible game coach, a so so recruiter (does a nice job recruiting small/power forwards, does a terrible job recruiting guards). I think he does a decent job of developing players. He's an avg coach. His style (pressure, uptempo) works really well at small schools but it will not consistently work against the good teams in the B1G. Iowa will never get the athletes required to beat MSU, Mich, OSU, Wis, pushing the ball up the court. To win the B1G you need to be able to slug it out in a halfcourt game. Fran doesn't recruit the type of players whose game is best suited for that style of game.
Excellent post. You don't need 4-5 star players to play good defense. Inexperience is an inadequate answer. Jok and Uhl are respectively a sr and jr with a ton of minutes under their belt and yet they are probably a couple of the worst defenders on the team.
Not to mention having 2 inexperienced PG's, one of them who isn't even a PG (the other one is more of a combo or 2G), and then there's no PG signed for next year's class.
It's not negative to bring up these points, something like the PG issue has been a problem for all 7 years Fran has been coach. It's just looking at the program/coaching honestly and objectively. It's called critical thinking.
12-6 in the B1G last two years. We swept MSU and Michigan last year.
Those nine coaches that finished below Iowa must be REALLY bad.
LOL. You are going to use 1-2 years to make your case. What did MSU do 2 years ago in the tournament? Find me a single basketball analyst in the country who would swap Tom Izzo for Fran. Good coaches can have bad years, and bad coaches can have good years. Didn't Lick make it to the sweet 16 at Butler? Come on, dude, let's try to make some serious points here.
The last 2 seasons Iowa has started 4 Jr and 1 Sr (2014-2015) and 4 Srs and 1 Jr (2015-2016). Most of those starters had been starting since their freshmen year, or at the very least seeing a ton of minutes since their freshman year. Do you think that might have had something to do with their success the last 2 seasons? Still, they couldn't make it to the sweet 16 either year. Heck, they didn't even do anything in the B1G tournament. Care to tell me what they did prior to those 2 seasons, or what they've done this year?
I'm not buying in to the notion the Hawks are more athletic just because they can score 80-90+ points....you have to play sound fundamental basketball on both ends of the floor. I personally don't care for the old UNLV basketball theory of just running up and down the floor and trying to come out ahead. Fran has had way more than enough time to recruit and coach. This team may get better and better by the week but overall I'm not impressed with the lack of B1G toughness...rebounding & defense that Fran coached teams have shown. This is not a league that you play soft offensive minded basketball and have consistant success. Rebounding and defense are the groundwork for a great program, and of course recruiting.
Hope like the dickens that Connor is better than I think he is.
Dailey and Moss don't look like pg's but I wouldn't give up on them.
Really thought CW would look better than this. Wow, really needs the light bulb to turn on. JBO is about what I expected. He needs the game to slow down for him. When it was reported he was running even with CW it set off alarms with me.
Dailey and Moss don't look like pg's but I wouldn't give up on them.
Really thought CW would look better than this. Wow, really needs the light bulb to turn on. JBO is about what I expected. He needs the game to slow down for him. When it was reported he was running even with CW it set off alarms with me.
Morgan is a senior this year...he would never have battled with Connor for minutes. The year Morgan came out Iowa had only one scholarship and that went to Jok, and it's pretty hard to criticize Fran for taking Pete over Jeremy at that point.
Agree 100%.
Agree with you. I think Dailey played some PG in high school, so hopefully Fran does not get locked into Williams and Bohannon like he did with Gesell and Clemmons at the expense of giving anyone else reps. If Dailey shared a locker with a PG in high school, that is close enough for me to give the kid a shot.
Notre Dame will hang another 90 on us with 1-2 guys going off for career nights.
Agreed, Fran is infatuated with length and versatility. I think this is sometimes at the expense of guys who can actually make plays and shoot and play defense. You shouldn't take a guy just because he is tall or athletic if he can't shoot the ball or you end up with a lineup with only one or two guys that can score. Pretty easy to defend.
Connor is as much of a pg as CW is, IMO. Not excited about either. It is what it is. Lots of ways to win basketball games and hopefully they do.
Similar threads
