Fran McCaffery and the Art of Avoiding the Hotseat

As Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery prepares for the fast-approaching start to the 2018-19 college basketball season he finds himself facing dramatically different circumstances than he has in recent years. After following three consecutive trips to the NCAA tournament by taking a largely freshmen-led team to the NIT, expectations for a return to the NCAA were widespread at at the outset of last season. While the media was largely divided on Iowa’s place in the Big Ten hierarchy (most polls had them finishing anywhere between 5^th and 9^th in the conference), Hawkeye fans seemed far more bullish about their team’s prospects.