Big Ten Basketball: Ranking all 14 head coaches heading into 2023-24 season
By Caleb Hall
No. 10: Fran McCaffery, Iowa Hawkeyes
Fran McCaffery has been in college basketball for a long time and he has been quite successful at Iowa since he has been there. McCaffery has been a head coach in college basketball since the 1985-86 season, and has worked his way up the latter of college basketball since then. He coached at Lehigh, UNC Greensboro, Siena, and finally the Iowa Hawkeyes. At Siena he led them to the NCAA Tournament in his last 3 years there, along with winning the conference too. When the Iowa Hawkeyes job opened he had to take it, and McCaffery finally got his shot at a power 6 school for the first time in his coaching career.
McCaffery had a tough first couple years at Iowa, but he has made the tournament most of his years there, and has been competitive in the BIG Ten as well. The Hawkeyes have made the tourney the past five years (they would have made it in the covid year) but they have not made it out of the first round at any point in McCaffery’s tenure there. McCaffery has proved he can win in the regular season, but winning in the postseason has been a struggle for him.
McCaffery will need more postseason success to move up on the list, but for now he is a solid coach in the BIG Ten. The Iowa Hawkeyes will always be respectable with McCaffery at the helm.