A basketball guy’s take on the improvement of the Iowa Hawkeyes men’s team

I got an email last week from Randy Larson that he sent to several of his friends. The subject was the 2021-22 Iowa men’s basketball team, and I found it interesting.

Besides being an attorney and a restaurateur in Iowa City, Larson is a basketball lifer. He’s a former college player and high school coach, and is well-known for his 31 years as the founder/commissioner of the Prime Time League summer league in Iowa City and then North Liberty.

He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Hawkeyes fan, but Larson doesn’t throw false praise around. For me to get such a letter from him about this season’s Hawkeyes was something new. I asked him if I could edit it a wee bit and put it online, and he agreed. So here is what Randy wrote:

Yes, the continued improvement and excellence of the Murrays is a key, but I hope I can be forgiven for wanting to sermonize to some of my basketball friends what a difference coaching makes — X’s and O’s — as well as managing people.

“Fran (McCaffery) has made the dramatic change to consistently and very successfully doubling the post. How many coaches have made such a huge strategic change like this so successfully?

He has also changed to playing a high percentage of man-to-man, using the zone mostly as a change-up. He also uses the zone press effectively as always, but less, and they almost never give up easy baskets against it, rare with any pressure.

He has everybody playing team basketball even while about 80 percent of the team could arguably feel like they should play more minutes. Passing and teamwork can beat superior talent but getting 15 guys to do it, when the whole rest of the world is screaming at them to shoot, is very rare.

Jordan Bohannon is playing drastically improved defense. And how many coaches would change a guy's position late in the year — so glad it worked so well.

Great coaches with maturity do what works, not what should work. Iowa is a leader collegiately, and particularly in the Big Ten in showing how small ball can work beautifully at both ends. In contrast to most years when we were slower and less athletic at the 4 or 5 positions, now we're usually at the advantage athletically at 4 or 5.

I always felt a lot of coaches who wondered why they weren't better defensively didn't see that they weren't deciding on playing time by who were their best defenders. Tony Perkins and Kris Murray and Ahron Ulis and Joe Toussaint and Filip Rebraca are all great examples of Fran choosing to play defenders whose offensive contributions grew with confidence over time. Not to mention Connor McCaffery, who is a tremendous team defender, and individually against bigger opponents, and someone who many argued shouldn't play nearly as much.

Some coaching staffs make better changes over a season than others. Some know how to coach only one way. Some, even in the Big Ten, just go get great talent and don't coach them up much.

And some, like this one, match their strategy, their X’s and O’s, to their personnel. This one is really good. They lose four all-conference level players — none of whom had exhausted eligibility! (Hlas note: OK, Luka Garza did have another year of NCAA eligibility left) — and are one of the best 15 or 20 teams in the country again. And did it both years without any 4- or 5-star recruits, or many transfers, which means we get to watch a team of blue-collar workers, not prima donnas and jerks.

And all but 2 are probably returning next year. Looking forward to it.