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McCaffery ‘Rocks’ Burlington I-ClubMcCaffery ‘Rocks’ Burlington I-Club
Men's Basketball

McCaffery ‘Rocks’ Burlington I-Club

May 7, 2010

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Fran McCaffery got a free peek into the future Thursday night in Burlington when he made his debut appearance on the National I-Club’s annual spring banquet tour.

When he took the podium in the wake of presentations by UI head wrestling coach Tom Brands and Norm Parker, the architect of one of the nation’s top college football defensive units, McCaffery, Iowa’s new head men’s basketball coach, looked over a sellout crowd inside the Pzazz Convention and Event Center and seized the opportunity to tell the sea of black and gold exactly what they wanted to hear.

“We’re not going to play slow. We’re going to get it and go. We’ll run on makes and misses, drive the ball to the basket, attack the rim and then turn around and pressure. We’re going to try and score 90 every night.”

And the crowd erupted…just like McCaffery expects it to do inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena many, many times for many, many years to come.

“We’re going to make Carver rock again,” the newest addition to Iowa’s head coaching ranks said in his introductory press conference a little over a month ago.

Since that time, McCaffery has been confidently and deliberately putting together the staff that will help him implement the plan that returns the UI men’s basketball program to a position of national prominence.

He retained long-time administrative assistant Jerry Strom.

He made Andrew Francis – a member of his staff at Sienna – his first hire.

He made good on a promise made during his first day in Iowa City when he hired former Hawkeye Kirk Speraw as an assistant coach. Speraw had been the head coach at Central Florida for the last 17 years.

“We’re not going to play slow. We’re going to get it and go. We’ll run on makes and misses, drive the ball to the basket, attack the rim and then turn around and pressure. We’re going to try and score 90 every night.”
Fran McCaffery

And, most recently, he doubled-down on the commitment to give his staff a touch of black-and-gold by hiring Ryan Bowen as an administrative assistant and the team’s video coordinator. Bowen experienced March Madness as an Iowa Hawkeye during Tom Davis’ reign as head coach and most recently completed a 11-year stay in the National Basketball Association.

To say that McCaffery’s been running a thousand miles per hour since his hiring would be an understatement. In addition to the aforementioned, he’s been immersed in recruiting – both for the upcoming season and those that follow – in addition to putting the finishing touches on his stay at Sienna, and touching bases and establishing new relationships with AAU coaches hither and yon and while squeezing in telephone and in-person visits with his wife Margaret and his four children who still call Loudonville, New York, home.

The National I-Club spring banquet tour is the latest addition to the schedule, but it’s one that McCaffery embraces because of the participants. “It’s an opportunity to connect on a very personal level with our fans,” he said, noting that next week’s stops include the Nile Kinnick I-Club in Council Bluffs/Omaha on Tuesday and Clinton on Wednesday, and Dubuque, Amana, Davenport and Okoboji to follow in June.

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“We’re on the right track,” McCaffery told the 400-plus assembled in Burlington with confidence before walking off the stage to yet another sign of what’s on the horizon for McCaffery and the Hawkeyes – a standing ovation from an energized fan base.