Off Campus: Philly hoops coach finds success in Iowa

PISCATAWAY, N.J. - Maybe there's a job out there too big for Fran McCaffery. Maybe Kentucky? The Lakers? The current Sixers?

Whatever that job is, McCaffery hasn't been offered it yet. His 15-3 Iowa Hawkeyes, still undefeated in the Big Ten, have hit the top 10 of the national rankings - the kind of progression you can believe if you've followed the career of a coach who grew up in West Oak Lane.

McCaffery's three previous head coaching stops, at Lehigh, UNC-Greensboro, and Siena, all resulted in NCAA appearances for those schools. Iowa's progression under McCaffery has been steady: 11 wins to 18 to NIT runner-up to NCAA first round to NCAA second round to . . . the top 10.

Although his wavy hair is gray now, McCaffery at age 56 still is a recognizable figure, even from his teenage playing days when the Evening Bulletin gave the kid from La Salle College High the nickname of White Magic.

Now, the Philly guy has three starters from Iowa and 13 from the Central time zone, none from the East Coast. These guys are on an eight-game winning streak, a kind of offensive assault that includes a home-and-home sweep over Michigan State (No. 1 and No. 4 in the country at each time) and at Purdue (No. 14 at the time).

Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan might have a 6-14 team at the rock bottom of the Big Ten, but he knows what he's watching at the top. Asked Thursday night about the team that had just beaten his Scarlet Knights, 90-76, Jordan said, "They have a rhythm to the way they play. They play random basketball, in a good sense."

He further explained he was talking about the way the Hawkeyes cut and find each other, their ability to probe for mismatches.

"Just like the Wisconsin team last year," Jordan said.

Getting the best locals, getting Iowa kids to stay home, is one key.

"The only thing it really takes, they have to look and say to themselves, 'All right, this guy knows what he's doing and I want to be a part of it,' " McCaffery said of keeping the most talented in-state players.

McCaffery, a Penn graduate, has a pragmatic way of looking at coaching in the Big Ten, that it's not his job to outcoach Tom Izzo, because that's not going to happen. It's his job not to get outcoached by Tom Izzo.

"Not just Tom Izzo," McCaffery said. If you think you're outcoaching anybody in the Big Ten, he said, "you're deluding yourself. . . . You're trying not to get outcoached."

At this point, Fran's brother, 2 1/2 years older, may be more well-known in their hometown. For three decades, Jack McCaffery has written a sports column for the Delaware County Times. There's no bias in what McCaffery writes. But McCaffery doesn't write about Iowa hoops. He was in the third row of the RAC on Thursday night behind Iowa's bench wearing black and yellow, giving his gum a workout as Rutgers hung with Iowa most of the first half.

Ask Jack why Fran has succeeded as a basketball coach, he'll start with: "He's a people person. He knows people and remembers people and remembers parents. He connects."

Jack talked about seeing his brother chatting up older folks at some road games. He figures it was the parents of a player. He was surprised to find out it was the parents of an opposing player. His brother had seen them from past stops.

"I think that's his No. 1 skill," said Jack McCaffery, adding, "He's also very, very bright in the room when he's breaking down film, he's very good at that. . . . And he's got a pretty good eye for talent."

With a starting lineup of four seniors and a junior, McCaffery said this group hoped to compete for a league title.

"It's a really rounded group," Fran McCaffery said, not too high or low, during this streak or after a one-point loss at second-ranked Iowa State. His own approach was to look at all the things they did to score 82 points on the road at the second-ranked team in the country. "Let's look at it pragmatically," he said.

Is there any Philly left in Fran's coaching style?

"Oh, a lot," Iowa's coach said. "I think the intensity, the competitiveness. How we grew up - there's no question our team epitomizes that fire."

His father was a Philadelphia police officer who retired and then worked a lot of local sporting events, "low-key security," as Jack McCaffery described his dad's work outside the Eagles' locker room and the referee's room at the Palestra, occasionally helping coaches realize they didn't actually want to attack the men inside that room.

And when was the last time Fran McCaffery has been called White Magic?

"Well, it doesn't happen in Iowa," said the Hawkeyes coach.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus