Enough is enough.
The Iowa men’s basketball program has been a near-laughingstock in Big Ten basketball for a few years now.
Now there have been notable players to come out of the basketball program like Luka Garza, a two-time Big Ten Player of the Year and two-time first-team all-Big Ten. There have also been the Murray brothers, Keegan and Kris, who each have one first-team all-Big Ten appearance.
Beyond that, there are no other notable men’s basketball players to come out of our program in recent memory.
And it all starts at the top with head coach Fran McCaffery.
Since taking over the head coaching job from Todd Licklitter in 2010, McCaffery has led the Hawkeyes to seven NCAA tournament appearances. In those seven appearances, the Hawkeyes did not make it past the second round once.
In terms of the Big Ten tournament, McCaffery’s Hawkeyes won it in the 2022 season by defeating Purdue, 75-66, in the championship game. This gave Iowa an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament as the No. 5 seed in the Midwest regional.
What did we do with that automatic bid and the No. 5 seed? We got upset in the first round by No. 12-seeded Richmond, 67-63. Embarrassing.
Historically, the Big Ten tournament had no cutoff, and every team in the conference had a chance to compete for the title and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Starting this year, the tournament will feature the top 15 out of 18 teams following the additions of Oregon, Washington, UCLA, and USC, according to the Big Ten. This means the bottom three teams in the conference will not make it into the tournament.
With how Iowa men’s basketball has performed in recent seasons, there is a real chance Iowa will find itself in the bottom three of the conference.
The formula to win in men’s college basketball is to have star players. That is why the Iowa program saw success when they had players like Garza and the Murray brothers.
Currently, on the roster, there is one “star” player. Owen Freeman is a sophomore forward who was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year last season. Freeman played in 19 games this season before having surgery on his finger that had him sidelined for the remainder of the season.
Freeman was averaging 16.7 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks before going down with an injury.
In an interview with Hawkeye Fanatic when asked about other school’s NIL offers, Freeman said, “I know this is where God wants me and this is where I’m supposed to be. I know I want to play for coach McCaffery and the coaching staff here and just rep the black and gold.”
It is incredibly reassuring to hear that a player of Freeman’s caliber wants to play at Iowa despite there being higher-paying opportunities at other universities. There is no doubt the Hawkeyes have valuable talent in the sophomore forward; it is now up to coach McCaffery and staff to capitalize on it.
With college sports continuously evolving with NIL, Iowa needs to get ahead of the competition and bring pride back to our men’s basketball program. A great start would be recruiting players capable of winning championships, not the coaches’ sons.
Iowa has already landed four-star small forward Joshua Lewis after his decision to decommit from USF. Lewis is from Tampa, Florida, and is the No. 49 nationally ranked recruit by 247 Sports. After visiting Iowa City in January, Lewis was won over by the way he felt on campus.
“I just got a great feeling from everybody, all the players, all the coaching staff,” Lewis told 247Sports. “They’ve got a real culture over there, a real great fan base from what I saw. And their play style, I love their play style. I feel like I would fit in great with the way they play and the great group of guys that they have.”
Hearing a highly sought-after recruit like Lewis say positive things about the men’s basketball program is a tremendous start in turning around a program that is in desperate need of a rebrand.
Hopefully, the addition of Joshua Lewis and other recruits like Isaiah Johnson-Arigu, Badara Diakite, and Dezmon Briscoe bring us closer to the goal that all other basketball programs are aiming for: a national championship.