Iowa men's basketball assistant coach Andrew Francis leaving program

IOWA CITY — For the first time in nine years, the Iowa men's basketball coaching staff will have a change.

A UI official confirmed to The Gazette on Tuesday night assistant coach Andrew Francis is leaving the Hawkeyes for another coaching position that has not yet been finalized. Francis, like remaining assistants Sherman Dillard and Kirk Speraw, joined Fran McCaffery after McCaffery became Iowa's head coach in 2010.

Francis, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., was on McCaffery's coaching staff at Siena in the three years immediately before McCaffery came to Iowa.

Iowa briefly had the longest-tenured staff of any of the 353 in NCAA Division I, getting that distinction when St. Joseph's fired head coach Phil Martelli in March.

Francis coached the College of Mount St. Vincent women's basketball team in Riverdale, N.Y., for two years, then got into men's college basketball. He was a member of Villanova University's men's basketball administrative staff before McCaffery hired him.

'We've got great guys on this staff that have been in this business a long time,' Francis said last month in Columbus, Ohio.

'We check all egos to the side. It really is a staff of guys that care about the players and what we can do to help our program.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com