IOWA CITY, Iowa — Fran McCaffery, the winningest coach in Iowa men’s basketball history and third-longest tenured Big Ten coach, was dismissed Friday, according to a source with knowledge of the move, after missing the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive season.
McCaffery, 65, had a contract through 2028 with a $4.2 million buyout, which can be spread across three years. Among the potential replacements include West Virginia coach Darian DeVries, Mississippi State’s Chris Jans, Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes, Drake’s Ben McCollum and South Dakota State’s Eric Henderson. All either are Iowa natives or have state ties.
Known as much for his bombastic sideline demeanor as his overall success, McCaffery guided the Hawkeyes to seven NCAA Tournament trips since 2014 and finished at least .500 in Big Ten play in 10 of the past 12 seasons. But Iowa has failed to reach 20 wins in three consecutive seasons and finished 17-6 overall and 7-13 in Big Ten play this year.
McCaffery’s 15-year Iowa career concludes at 297-207 overall and 143-141 in Big Ten regular-season play. Under McCaffery, Iowa was ranked nationally in eight seasons but never reached the Sweet 16, an ongoing program drought since 1999. Even more troubling, the program has struggled to connect with fans and plummeting attendance numbers prompted the change.
The Hawkeyes averaged 9,161 in paid attendance this year, the program’s lowest since the 1964-65 season. Even worse, the program averaged only 5,172 tickets scanned per game this year, meaning 43 percent of the tickets purchased went unused, according to numbers obtained from the University of Iowa through an open-records request.
It’s a surprising level of indifference toward the program, which once was regarded as football’s equal in popularity. Iowa’s football and men’s wrestling programs have sold out every competition from 2021 onward. The women’s basketball program has sold every ticket for the past two seasons and generated nearly $300,000 more in sales than men’s basketball during the 2023-24 campaign. That financial disparity between the basketball programs will grow this year.
Iowa either has led or finished second in scoring among Big Ten teams in seven consecutive seasons. But it has ranked last or second-to-last in scoring defense in eight of the past nine years. Those numbers have contributed to plenty of Big Ten victories but also to major defeats in career-defining games.
In 2021, second-seeded Iowa gave up 95 points to Oregon in a 15-point NCAA Tournament second-round defeat. The following year, the Hawkeyes won four games in four days to capture the Big Ten tournament title. But four days later, 12th-seeded Richmond upset the Hawkeyes in the NCAA’s first round. Anecdotally, those two seasons shook supporters’ confidence in McCaffery.
McCaffery recruited, developed and coached consensus first-team All-Americans Luka Garza and Keegan Murray, All-Americans Kris Murray and Jarrod Uthoff plus first-team All-Big Ten performers Aaron White, Devyn Marble and Peter Jok. But not maximizing that talent in the postseason coupled with growing apathy led to McCaffery’s ouster.
(Photo: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)
