The Big Lead

Fran McCaffrey's Iowa tenure the definition of unfulfilled potential

By Sam Westmoreland

Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Fran McCaffery watches the action Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in a first round game at the 2025 TIAA Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Ohio State Buckeyes at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Fran McCaffery watches the action Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in a first round game at the 2025 TIAA Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Ohio State Buckeyes at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. / Grace Smith/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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The Iowa Hawkeyes are making a change to their men's basketball team, as the school is expected to fire head coach Fran McCaffery after a loss to Illinois at the Big Ten tournament, according to ESPN's Pete Thamel and Jeff Borzello.

McCaffery leaves Iowa after 15 seasons as the school's all-time leader in wins, with 297, but it's hard to see his tenure with the Hawkeyes as anything but supremely frustrating for fans.

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McCaffery came to Iowa from Siena, taking over a program that had floundered in three seasons under Todd Lickliter. In those 15 seasons, McCaffery built the Hawkeyes into a fairly consistent winner. They posted losing records just twice, in his debut 2010-11 season, and again in 2017-18. Outside of that, Iowa was always good enough to get over .500, and made seven NCAA Tournament appearances in his tenure.

McCaffery's offenses are renowned in college basketball. The Hawkeyes could score with anyone, and frequently ranked as one of the highest-scoring teams in the sport under his watch.

However, all was not sunny in Iowa City. For all the explosive offense, the Hawkeyes could never quite get it together under McCaffery. In 15 years and seven Tournament appearances, they never advanced out of the round of 32. Zero Sweet 16 appearances, and only two appearances with a seed of five or higher in that span.

The most heartbreaking of those early exits came in 2021. The Hawkeyes were 22-9, and ranked 8th in the AP Poll, but crashed out to Oregon in the second round despite a roster that featured future NBA standouts Luka Garza and Keegan Murray.

For all their scoring ability, McCaffery's Hawkeyes never could quite figure out defense, which was a big reason why McCaffery was never able to build a team that could win more than 20 to 23 games in a year, or make deep runs into the tournament. There was plenty of potential, plenty of opportunity to build, and McCaffery just couldn't quite get there.

The last three seasons really illustrated the frustration around his tenure. After two straight top five seeds in the tournament, McCaffery failed to crack 20 wins in any of the last three seasons, with teams who averaged more than 80 points per game, in large part because they also conceded no less than 74.7 points per game in any of those campaigns.

By the time the dust settled on this season, it was clear that whatever magic McCaffery may have once had in Iowa was gone, and it was time to make a change. So many of his seasons in charge left fans excited for the next year, only to be disappointed when the Hawkeyes couldn't build on previous success and take the next step. 15 years of waiting for a coach to make the next step, and eventually you realize it might just not be coming for him.

There's still a lot of potential for success in Iowa City, the only question is whether the next coach can do a better job of harnessing it.

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