Anthony Hubbard, we hardly knew ye

Oh, what a good story it could have been.

Anthony Hubbard, who spent 47 months in jail for his participation in an armed robbery, eventually comes to the University of Iowa on a basketball scholarship and finds his happy place while propelling himself to success, fulfillment and so forth.

I loved the potential for the story and wrote as much in this column a few months ago.

But on Thursday afternoon, the UI put out a press release saying Hubbard will transfer elsewhere.

"I plan to work with my junior college coach and family to select another school perhaps closer to home," Hubbard said in the release.

Home is Virginia. Hubbard would have been a 26-year-old junior in Iowa this year. It would seem 26 is too old to be homesick, but that might be a dumb thing to say.

Hubbard played well in North Liberty's Prime Time League. At 6-foot-5, he scored and passed well. He was third in the PTL in rebounding.

Through his first six PTL games, Hubbard averaged 23.2 points, 11.2 rebounds and 5.5 assists.

What can you say? Iowa's depth just got reduced by a player who surely would have been an integral part of the team's rotation. Scorers are hard to come by for most programs these days, it seems. Fran McCaffery just lost one.

This is the nature of college sports. Rosters are as fluid as the Iowa River.

I looked forward to seeing how this Hubbard story would play out. Now it will play out somewhere else. McCaffery took a big chance bringing Hubbard to Iowa. It was a chance that failed.

But it's embarrassing to Iowa, sticking its neck out for this player (because and only because he was a highly skilled player), and being left with nothing but an empty jersey.

When was the last time something came easily for Hawkeye men's basketball?