Is Fran the Man? Magic 8-ball says 'Ask again later'

So “overwhelmed and overjoyed” may not capture the mood of the Iowa fan base after it learned of the school's hiring of Fran McCaffery.

Then again, that was never likely to be the reaction after this hire. Iowa men's basketball, for those who haven't noticed the last few years, isn't carrying a lot of cache nationally.

No matter. After this morning's introductory press conference, Hawkeye fans will surely love Fran McCaffery.

Why? Because college fans always love their new coaches after their introductory press conferences. The coach says the right things, gives the right first impression.

Steve Alford displayed the youthful, self-assured persona that was wanted after Tom Davis. Todd Lickliter gave the humble, Iowa-kind-of-guy thing that was craved after Alford.

If McCaffery throws some personality at us today with just enough confidence to suggest he will recruit Big Ten players, bouquets will pour into the Iowa basketball office this afternoon.

Then the games get played, the results pile up, and the love evolves either into lust or disgust.

This hiring, like Iowa's previous two, came from a mid-major. That was in direct defiance to many voices I've heard from in the last two weeks. As if “mid-major” only breeds coaching middle-managers instead of big winners like Bruce Pearl, Thad Matta, Matt Painter and Bo Ryan.

It's not like going from the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference to the Big Ten is Columbus crossing the Atlantic. Especially when McCaffery's Siena College team beat Matta's Ohio State squad in the 2009 NCAAs.

Yes, Siena has been darn good the last few years, and you didn't have to be living in Loudonville, N.Y., to know that.

The current NCAA tourney has been one of the best ever largely because of the mid-majors. Northern Iowa, St. Mary's, Cornell. They left Kansas, Villanova and Wisconsin in the rubble.

There's another thriving mid-major, one that might ring a bell around here. Saturday, I wondered if maybe Iowa shouldn't take a page from a Final Four program and start doing things the Butler Way. But I kid.

So here we are with McCaffery. The Big East's Seton Hall talked to him during its coaching search, but it went nowhere. Iowa had a lot more dollars to offer than the Pirates of New Jersey. Not Tennessee-type dollars, but good dollars.

The true million-dollar question is if McCaffery can recruit well enough to compete in the Big Ten. If he can't, his personality and style of ball won't matter a whit.

Since he recruited at Notre Dame for a decade and brought some pretty good players to Siena, it's safe to say McCaffery has a hint about how the process works.

That will become evident soon enough. It starts with recruiting Iowa's already-committed recruits.

Every situation a coach comes from is different, every situation a coach inherits is different. Most importantly, every coach is different.

McCaffery isn't a clone of Lickliter or Alford or anyone else. There is no earthly way of doing anything but guessing if he will be brilliant or mediocre here, but he should start with a clean slate in everyone's minds.

He has had success at all his head-coaching stops, Lehigh, North Carolina-Greensboro, and Siena. He took each to NCAA tourneys, and those were in one-bid leagues. That means he took over programs that weren't at the top of their conferences, and got them there.

It's also just resume fodder right now. You can take the highlights from any serious candidate and make him look like a combination of Mike Krzyzewski and Tom Izzo.

But Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta must not have been able to find a coach with two ‘Z's in his last name. One day, we'll be able to determine if he did the best he could after that. This isn't that day.