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Bill Self’s path to challenging John Wooden’s streak of conference championships just got a lot clearer.
I was at the Tama-Grundy Cyclone Club outing in July 1998, one of if not the last events Tim Floyd attended as Iowa State’s head men’s basketball coach. I remember wondering why Floyd would choose to go to a team that had just been gutted and lost the best basketball player ever to retirement (again), when he was building something at ISU.
Fred Hoiberg is following his dream. He wants to be tested under the brightest spotlight there is. I can’t fault him for that. The danger lies in the broader message about Iowa State, which I fear is: You can’t stay here. You won’t stay here. This place can treat you like a god and you’ll still want out. Coaches won’t be told that, but they will hear it.
After ISU learned every lesson it could from losing Dan Gable, it lost Cael Sanderson for reasons beyond the university’s control (population and oodles of money). And now, after ISU learned every lesson it could from losing Gable AND Earle Bruce AND Floyd AND Sanderson, Hoiberg is leaving too, for reasons beyond the university’s control (in this case, going to the pros and oodles of money, but I think money is a true second). Each circumstance is different, but they all had the same depressing result.
Ames is not Chicago, and the toughest college basketball league in the nation is not the National Basketball Association. Acknowledging those truths doesn’t make it hurt any less.