Lickliters continue to bond, now as coach and player

Todd Lickliter didn't have to sell the University of Iowa basketball program on his son, John. It was a match forged at the dinner table.

When Todd Lickliter, 54, accepted the Iowa coaching job in 2007, John Lickliter was an aspiring basketball player in Indianapolis with one year left of high school. But to play at Iowa, John Lickliter was told he needed to immerse himself in the Iowa City community.

“One of the things he wanted to do, he wanted to participate on a team that I coached,” Todd Lickliter said. “I said, ‘If you're going to do that, then it probably makes sense to be here in Iowa and experience Iowa and let people see what you're about and it's not just I'm bringing my son in here.'”

So John Lickliter, 20, moved to Iowa City and spent his senior season at point guard for Iowa City High's state championship team. Instead of choosing a basketball school at the Division II or NAIA levels where he could play right away, John Lickliter chose to walk on at Iowa and risk playing very little in his career. But it was a decision rooted in family as much as it was basketball.

“I get an experience with my dad, and I always wanted that experience,” John Lickliter said. “I get to be at a Big Ten level which is hard; there aren't many walk-ons at the Big Ten level.

“It's just a neat experience to see all the different environments and something I wouldn't be able to do if I was in a smaller school.”

John Lickliter, a 5-foot-11 guard, majors in art, plays the bass and hopes to coach basketball some day. Coach Lickliter said the two have a special relationship and basketball is a solid link. John Lickliter has traveled on recruiting trips and road games with his father since he was young. When the two decided to join forces at Iowa, there was a bit of hesitancy from the coach.

“The one thing I didn't want to do was harm that in any way and kind of throw a wrench in the works with a player-coach relationship because I can be pretty tough on him,” Coach Lickliter said. “I probably have higher expectations for him. I experienced that, I played for my father. It's a natural thing. You're always pushing, and that's not to say I don't have high expectations for the other guys, too. I just might be a little bit more realistic, unfortunately, for John anyway.”

The Lickliter family is rooted in basketball, beginning with Arlan Lickliter, Todd's father. Joining Todd and John on staff is graduate manager Garrett Lickliter, 25, John's older brother. Todd's oldest son, Ry, lives in Krakow, Poland, and attends a college which counts Pope John Paul II and Copernicus among its former students. Ry Lickliter, 29, studies Transatlantic studies in how media and technology affect culture.

Following Iowa's European exhibition tour of Italy and Greece in May, the Lickliter family flew to Poland to see Ry. The Lickliters traveled the country and visited Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp where around 2 million Jews were executed during World War II.

“To be there ... I wouldn't know how to express it appropriately,” Todd Lickliter said. “But it's moving.”

On the court, Iowa limped to a 15-17 record last season. Immediately following, four players announced they were transferring. That could have pitted John and his friendships with those players against his father. However, nothing could have been further from the truth.

“My dad never asked me about anything,” John Lickliter said. “Nothing was really ever said.”

“He's probably been the more mature one than me at times,” Todd Lickliter said of John. “He knows that I'm their coach and there's frustration, it's probably not always pleasant and easy and It think he accepts that. But it doesn't influence the way that he approaches things.”

John Lickliter red-shirted last year and has four seasons left to play college basketball. It's unlikely he'll receive significant playing time, although Coach Lickliter won't close the door on his son's basketball future at Iowa.

“I wouldn't rule out John developing,” Coach Lickliter said. “I wouldn't do that to anybody.

“He loves the school and he really believed we would get things going the way our vision saw it, what we could do and be a part of that.”