Hlas column: For hope to follow, Hawkeye basketball needs a change

PROLOGUE: I wrestled with this column for two full days. I've never called for anyone to be fired to my memory, though I said Iowa State had no real choice after the Larry Eustachy situation arose several years ago. Gratefully, I've never been fired or had to fire someone else. But I worked with good people who got fired ("laid off") in 2009, and got a clear sense of how devastating it is then and a year later. No buyout can ease that pain.

If Gary Barta proceeds to retain Todd Lickliter as his men's basketball coach, I think I'll admire Barta's conviction and, yes, courage. And I'll try extra-hard to be fair in evaluating next season's results and the future outloook of the program.

If Lickliter is retained and turns things around, I promise to remember and note how wrong I was in writing the following:

Two days after Todd Lickliter's introductory press conference at Iowa in 2007, I encountered Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo in the gallery at the Masters golf tournament.

He was taking a break in the middle of a recruiting trip. I asked him what he thought about the Hawkeyes' new men's basketball coach.

“He's done such a good job at Butler,” Izzo said. “He's beaten everybody at the higher level.

“Recruiting, that'll be an issue. You've got to recruit. If he recruits, he can coach. I think he'll do both, I really do.”

Izzo then asked if I was surprised Steve Alford left Iowa for New Mexico. I told him why I wasn't. He then said “Sometimes both parties never embrace a situation.”

Those words resonate again three years later.

Firing Lickliter isn't something Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta wants to do this week, or ever, and you can't blame him. He views him as a decent person and a good coach. He knows Lickliter took over a job that is tough enough to command in good times. Plus, an AD will always sympathize more with a coach he or she hired than one that was inherited.

But unless Barta is willing to risk even more erosion of his basketball team's fan base, there doesn't seem to be any way around him changing coaches.

It's bad enough to get a steady barrage of comments from unsatisfied fans day after day, week after week. But the where-it-hurts reality was the striking number of empty seats in Carver-Hawkeye Arena at every home game, a number that still seems unimaginable for an institution cherished by so many for so long.

When ticket-holders offer to give away seats to friends and can't get takers, something is broken. All those unused or unsold tickets are a referendum on the results Lickliter has failed to attain, and on the style of ball the Hawkeyes play.

I can't say with certainty that he wouldn't eventually steer the Hawkeyes to a winning course. But can Iowa athletics really chance another year of potentially even more disdain and apathy about the program?

Do you know a teenager in Iowa right now who finds Hawkeye basketball captivating the way past generations of young Iowa fans (who became lifelong customers/donors) did about teams coached by Ralph Miller, Lute Olson and Tom Davis?

Can you roll the dice on the promise that a collection of incoming freshmen - a promising group by most accounts - will help the incumbent players form a competitive and entertaining Big Ten outfit next season?

Can you dare gamble there won't be anything even remotely similar to what happened this season, when Iowa lost its last four conference road games by an average of 25 points?

Can you erase the memories of the unprecedented drudgery Iowa fans have witnessed, like the first two 40-point games since 1949?

To lay everything that hasn't gone right the last three years at Lickliter's feet would be terribly unfair. He walked into a reclamation project in and out of Carver-Hawkeye Arena, not a rose garden. No coach in the country would have had Iowa winning in the Big Ten in Year One with the talent left behind, and many would still be struggling to some degree this season.

But the thorns have continued to pile up, and it's gotten progressively harder to find people who think things will ever get really good here under this coach. When people give up on a product, it takes something drastic to get them back.

It feels a little unseemly writing this, like I'm part of a pack of mad dogs. Lickliter isn't a cheat or an ogre. He has brought no shame to the university or state. He seems quietly thoughtful about life in general, and knows tons about coaching his sport.

It's a detail that was mentioned a lot more three years ago than lately, but he was his peers' choice as National Coach of the Year in 2007. You don't fall into that award. You don't stumble into the NCAA Sweet 16.

Then, at Butler, both parties embraced that situation. But every situation is different.

At Iowa right now, men's basketball in general simply doesn't feel very good. There have been pockets of sunshine, but overall it hasn't truly felt all that good for over a decade. A decade before Lickliter arrived, in fact.

Barta again needs to try do something to change that, There are times when change is prudent, not bold. It brings no joy to say this, but such a time is now.