I think you have to look at the landscape of college basketball and make judgements in that context. Would Fran and UI ever cheat like KS, AZ, etc? Iowa is not Harvard, but it's not Louisville, fortunately. You got to find recruits that have a reasonable chance of making it through the classroom. Fran does get Iowa HS talent, but it is rarely above 3 star level. It's difficult to find higher talent to go with it.
Fran's a development style coach. With the transfer portal out there keeping players happy is in your interest. If you're a commodity coach then you don't care. The portal is your life preserver.
The Alford hire drug the program down and Lickliter created a chasm. Getting to mediocre was accomplished, but I can't see much more given the context of the B1G and college basketball in general