minor miracle needed to keep hawkeye fans' faith

IOWA CITY -- It will be the Iowa basketball feel-good story of all-time.

The soft-spoken, bespectacled coach was under siege inside his own program and under fire from the fan base. His team dawdled from a won-lost standpoint, showed late-season sparks hinting at future success, but then got torpedoed by the defection of his best player and three teammates.

But that coach got those remaining young men to believe and brought in a few recruits who injected some zest. The boys played their hearts out, and won the hearts of everyone as they grew into a winner.

All that's left is to sell the movie rights. Todd Lickliter, are you ready to take a meeting with Ron Howard?

Friday, Lickliter was asking us to believe at his hastily called press conference at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Believe a program can suddenly lose 40 percent of its 10 returning scholarship players in a three-day period, including its only two point guards, one (Jake Kelly) who had emerged as the team's leader and best player.

Believe this is a bump in the road, not a set of blown tires.

Believe it's the darkness before the dawn, not the darkness before darker darkness.

Problems in the program? Pish posh. It's just the kind of shuffling that goes on in when someone else's recruits don't quite mesh with a coach who wasn't the one who introduced them to their school.

Except such things usually are contained to the first year or maybe two of a new coach's tenure, not entering Year 3.

The Hawkeyes will be a consensus pick to finish in 11th place in the Big Ten come late autumn. An elevator that should have been climbing upward appears to the basement for more repairs.

That's not good for an athletic department that needs to see more bodies in the seats for home games, nor a fan base tired of watching Drake and Northern Iowa and most other Big Ten teams paying visits to the NCAA tourney.

The true-believers will still buy the tickets and stand by their men. Everyone else will say "Show me." Whether Showtime, or Lickliter's version of it, arrives to rally Hawkdom is the question.

It's hard to picture today. Maybe someday. Maybe.

"I'm sure the perception of people is going to be pretty skeptical," said Iowa sophomore-to-be guard Matt Gatens, "but I hope we don't have to sell it. I hope the fans are there. I hope the fans are loyal, whether it's down or up, and stay behind us and be supportive."

Gatens was a bona fide blue-chipper who had a very nice freshman season. He becomes The Man in Kelly's absence. More men need to step up quickly for Gatens' wishes to come true.

"We're very excited," Lickliter said. "I'm very excited about the future. I love the guys we've got here. I'm excited about the recruits.

"You can better or you can get bitter. We choose to get better."

Of course, they're also choosing to get better at Ohio State, Michigan and Illinois. They've already gotten better at Penn State, Minnesota and Northwestern. They don't need to get much better at Michigan State, Purdue and Wisconsin.

And last-place Indiana has more firepower coming back next year than 10th-place Iowa.

I asked Lickliter to give an impromptu 30-second pitch why people should buy season tickets for the 2009-2010 Hawkeyes. It may sound like a softball, but softballs have easy answers.

"The last three of four home games, our attendance was terrific," Lickliter said. "They looked at the way our guys were playing. I heard so many compliments about the effort and competitiveness and the spirit.

"These guys are guys we recruited to come in here and help us win the Big Ten. We're going to add to that group.

"I think people are really going to enjoy watching this team compete at the level they'll compete at."

Or try this: Hand the keys to a Big Ten team to Marcus Jordan, the son of Michael Jordan who led Chicago Whitney Young to the Illinois high school Class 4A title last weekend.

The site was Peoria's Carver Arena, by the way. That's right, Carver.

The victory left Michael Jordan with tears in his eyes. How great would it be for Iowa when Michael weeps for joy in Iowa's Carver in 2012 after Marcus leads Lickliter's Hawkeyes to a Big Ten (or NCAA) title?

Many coaches recently began wooing young Jordan, Oklahoma, Marquette, Arizona State and more have joined a fray that includes Iowa State. Greg McDermott has already landed one of Marcus' teammates, Chris Colvin.

So why would Jordan - any Jordan - play in Lickliter's rather constricting offense?

Well, an old joke is the only person who could hold Michael Jordan under 20 points a game was his North Carolina coach, Dean Smith.

Coach Lick has jumped into the fray, joining the group of coaches who have offered Marcus Jordan a scholarship. Now he must convince Marcus he can do the same thing for him that Smith did for his dad, which is make him a well-rounded, killing machine of a basketball player.

I'm just trying to Hollywood this up a little. Because the Hawkeyes' plot as it stands right now isn't marketable to Iowa fans, let alone Ron Howard.