Wednesday was Fran-tastic for Iowa fans

I wonder when excitement for Iowa Hawkeyes men's basketball was last at the level it reached Wednesday night just because of a high school player's verbal commitment to the program.

There certainly hasn't been a game in the last four years, if not more, that had people as enthused and optimistic as the commitment of Sioux City East center Adam Woodbury, all 7-foot-1 of him.

(7-1? Yowsah!)

Woodbury isn't just a tall kid, he's tall and good. Combine that with Iowa ending its long losing streak against Roy Williams when it came to landing blue-chip Iowans, and the Hawkeye fan base had reason to believe the future of the program will be brighter.

The Woodbury news came a month after a verbal from Mike Gesell of South Sioux City, Neb., Woodbury's AAU teammate. Gesell is a point guard of repute. This marks the first pair of Top 100 preps Iowa has landed in the same year since Steve Alford locked up Greg Brunner and Jeff Horner. That was a while ago now.

This is what Iowa fans have been awaiting. Coaching, schmoaching. College basketball is about talent. It's about recruiting. You want to start really competing against Tom Izzo and Thad Matta, you have to get players. Melsahn Basabe was a start. Aaron White, Josh Oglesby and Gabe Olaseni are incoming freshmen who should have their days. When the class of 2012 is on campus, maybe the thing will start to really take off.

You wonder if, with Iowa's Fran McCaffery and Iowa State's Fred Hoiberg on the job, if the days of Iowa's elite prep players leaving the state might be fewer and farther between.