Iowa dismisses men’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery after 15 seasons

IOWA CITY — Iowa is dismissing Fran McCaffery after 15 years as the Hawkeyes’ head men’s basketball coach.

"Fran McCaffery has been an integral part of our Hawkeye family for the past 15 years,“ Iowa athletics director Beth Goetz announced in a news release Friday.

“He is a tremendous coach and teacher, and we are grateful for the positive impact he has made on the institution and the community. We have a deep appreciation for his dedication to our student-athletes and his passion for the game that will have a lasting impact on our program."

The release said lowa will begin a national search for a new head coach immediately.

McCaffery, 65, departs as the program’s all-time wins leader with a 297-207 overall record. He took the Hawkeyes to the NCAA tournament in seven out of 14 possible years and had winning records in all but two of his 15 seasons.

Iowa is coming off a 17-16 season in 2024-25 that ended with two wins this week before a 106-94 second-round Big Ten tournament loss to Illinois Thursday night in Indianapolis.

Fan support for Hawkeye home games was low this season. Only 33.6 percent of the seats in their 18 regular-season games and one preseason exhibition were filled according to data obtained via an open records request.

Iowa averaged 9,161 in paid attendance, its lowest mark since the 1964-65 season.

McCaffery said after Thursday’s game that he planned on being back to coach Iowa next season. He was under contract through the 2027-28 season. His buyout is about $4.2 million.

Goetz will have her second big hire within the last year. She replaced retiring women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder by promoting assistant coach Jan Jensen rather than conducting an outside search.

The head coaching change opens the door for any Iowa athletes to enter the NCAA transfer portal immediately, without having to wait for the standard transfer portal window, which goes from March 24 until April 22 for men’s basketball.

Iowa hired then-Siena University head coach McCaffery on March 29, 2010 to replace Todd Lickliter, who was fired by then-AD Gary Barta following three years of losing and an attendance drop. McCaffery had been head coach at Lehigh for three years and at North Carolina Greensboro for six, taking both to the NCAA tournament once.

Then, he joined Digger Phelps’ staff at Notre Dame, where he spent 11 years as assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. He returned to the head coach’s role at Siena, where his five-year run included berths in three NCAA tourneys and wins in two of them.

McCaffery’s second Hawkeyes team went 18-17 with an NIT berth. His third team went to the NIT championship game and was 25-13. That was the first of his eight 20-win seasons at Iowa. The highest Big Ten regular-season finish was third-place, reached three times.

A lack of postseason success contributed to some fans’ disenchantment with McCaffery. Iowa reached the NCAA tournament seven times in his tenure (it would have been eight had the 2020 event not been canceled), winning a total of three games and never more than one in a tournament.

Iowa reached the semifinals of the Big Ten tourney just once in those 15 seasons, when it won four games in four days to capture the 2022 championship. It was 7-4 over four NIT appearances.

This season’s 7-13 mark was only Iowa’s fourth losing record in Big Ten play in McCaffery’s time, and two of those were his first two seasons. Iowa’s league record under him was 143-141.

Iowa finished in the final Associated Press Top 25 four times under McCaffery, and was No. 8 in 2021. It lost to Oregon in the second round of that year’s NCAA tourney after taking a 22-8 record into that game.

The Hawkeyes had their first men’s National Player of the Year in Luka Garza, in 2021. Garza is the program’s all-time leading scorer and was a two-time Big Ten Player of the Year.

Iowa had its highest NBA draft choice ever in 2022 when Keegan Murray was picked fourth after a consensus first-team All-America season, and Kris Murray was a first-round NBA pick the following year.

(The Gazette’s John Steppe contributed to this report)

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