“Is Fran gone?” We’ll know soon, but winning big in men’s hoops involves more than coach

INDIANAPOLIS — To beat a late-winter storm out of Iowa, I left a day earlier than I desired and drove Tuesday until I stopped in Champaign, Ill., for the night.

That left me with a lot of time to kill before getting to Iowa’s opening-round women’s basketball tournament in Indianapolis Wednesday night. So I lollygagged in Champaign Wednesday morning at a global coffee chain. Starbucks. I have a fear of intimacy.

As I was perusing the fabulous Green Gazette app on my phone, a group of Hawkeye fans from Des Moines and Ely entered the shop, also on their way to watch the Hawkeyes in Indy. We exchanged greetings, then one immediately asked me something.

“Is Fran gone?”

If I had a dollar for every time someone has recently asked me if this is Fran McCaffery’s last season as Iowa’s coach, I could have bought coffee for everyone in that Starbucks. Maybe for everyone in every Starbucks.

The answer, of course, resides in the mind of Iowa Athletic Director Beth Goetz, and she’ll tell us when she tells us.

McCaffery wants to keep coaching, and said last week that he plans to keep doing it at Iowa. It ultimately will be Goetz’s call, of course.

McCaffery is under contract through June 30, 2028. Under the terms of his deal, his buyout would be $4.2 million. Then, Iowa will almost surely have to pay a buyout when it hires a replacement.

Let’s say it’s, oh, I don’t know, Darian DeVries of West Virginia. For DeVries to leave West Virginia, where he has been for one season after leaving Drake, the buyout would be 37.5 percent of his unpaid cumulative total compensation for the remainder of his contract if it ends before April 30, 2028. His contract is for five years and $15 million.

When the question is whether McCaffery should “part ways” with Iowa, you get a strong no from his coaching peers who know what each other are up against, and a strong yes from the Hawkeye fan population.

The basketball people, with Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo one of their foremost spokespersons, know Iowa isn’t overrun with sugar daddies and mommies splashing around serious NIL cash.

“They don’t have the resources here,” Izzo said after his team clinched the outright Big Ten regular-season title with its 91-84 win at Iowa Thursday.

“Everybody has different amounts of resources. They’re not on the middle or high end.”

Matt Cross, a 6-foot-7, 230-pound forward who transferred out of Massachusetts last spring, visited Iowa last April. He averaged 15.3 points and 8.3 rebounds last season. He liked it. However, he got a significantly more-lucrative offer from first-year ACC member SMU, where he is averaging 12 points and 8 boards for a team that took a 13-6 league record into its game Saturday.

The donors are getting bang for their buck.

College sports are pro sports. Except that college’s players are now free agents every year. No pro sports team wins championships by nickel-and-diming its way to building a roster.

The Hawkeyes haven’t gotten as much as a share of a 3-way Big Ten regular-season title since 1979, and that was because Wisconsin’s Wes Matthews made a 50-foot shot at the buzzer to beat Magic Johnson’s Michigan State team in MSU’s regular-season finale.

That was 10 Iowa women’s basketball Big Ten regular-season championships ago.

McCaffery is enduring just his second losing Big Ten season in the last 13, and in what always has been one of the toughest conferences. Those numbers didn’t use to ring as hollow with a lot of Iowa fans, but familiarity breeds contempt.

Unless, that is, it’s regularly accompanied by memorable NCAA tournament success. Iowa hasn’t had it under McCaffery. The Hawkeyes need to win at Nebraska today just to get to play three days later in an opening-round conference tournament game in an empty Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

Iowa fans don’t have a say in choosing the starting quarterback or the cost of parking at Hawkeye events, but do have a voice in whether coaches should be dismissed. They vote with their pocketbooks and presence, and haven’t given men’s basketball much of either lately.

The crowd — the announced crowd — at Thursday’s Michigan State-Iowa game was 10,347. For a 7 p.m. game. Against the Big Ten’s top marquee opponent. Since those days of Magic Johnson, a Michigan State-Iowa game in Iowa City has drawn big crowds.

This season’s average home crowd — tickets sold, not bodies in the arena — was 9,161. In reality, far more seats at 14,998-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena have been empty than not.

It’s Iowa’s smallest average in generations. In Lickliter’s last season at Iowa, 2009-10, the average announced attendance was 9,550,. That team went 10-22 and was duller than hospital food.

I’ve enjoyed covering and watching Hawkeye men’s basketball under McCaffery, even with the defensive lapses and collapses that have grown old. I like the entertaining way they’ve playedl, the large number of exciting, fun games they’ve played over the years. Talent should be showcased, not stifled.

I like the players McCaffery brought in, decent and smart people with personality and character and heart and skills. I like that he saw things in Luka Garza and the Murray brothers well before other college coaches and we here got to see what future NBA players look like. I like that I never had to write about anything resembling a scandal.

If Goetz goes with the status quo for another season, however, she’ll be rowing against the tide of popular opinion. She didn’t have to look far from her seat in Carver this winter to see no one in huge splotches of seats. Her business is as bottom-line as any.

So, it could be a very interesting week for Hawkeye men’s basketball even if it isn’t in the Big Ten tournament.

Izzo’s right, though. If you’re going to be the Miami Marlins going against the Los Angeles Dodgers budget-wise, don’t expect future championship banners no matter who coaches your team.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com