When Steve Alford quit on Iowa last April, he bestowed upon Hawkeye fans the unanticipated gift of a coaching vacancy. Moving swiflty after an ill-conceived interlude with Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl, Iowa AD Gary Bartha displayed his basketball acumen by hiring a coaches’ coach, Butler’s Todd Lickliter. Of the three Big Ten coaching hires in the Spring of 2007 (
Dues Paid
Like Alford, Lickliter is an Indiana high school coach’s son and former basketball player but the similarities end there. As is the case with many terrific coaches, Lickliter has no Five-Star, collegiate All-American pedigree. After bouncing around the country as a collegian, Lickliter wrapped up his playing days back home, in Hinkle Fieldhouse for the Butler Bulldogs.
After logging lunch room duty and riding yellow buses to games for thirteen years as a high school coach in Indiana, Lickliter returned to the Butler bench in 1999 as an assistant to his mentor, Barry Collier. Under Collier, Lickliter learned and refined the
A Winner in Indianapolis
Once Thad Matta eloped after a brief one-year stint, Lickliter took the Butler reigns, prodded the colt and never looked back. Out of the inestimable Horizon League, Butler amassed two Sweet Sixteens and 131 wins against teams such as Louisville,
Reaching the Sweet Sixteen once can happen to anyone who gets in the NCAA tournament, two quickies in the first weekend and you’re in, but hitting it twice is no accident. Lickliter can certainly coach, as Hoopraker was fortunate enough to witness first-hand last season on two occasions, one in Chicago and one in New York.
Spring Green Hurdles
While the basketball season is spring green, it appears Lickliter has already made the most important transition, earning the respect of his players where Alford could not. As he did at Butler, it’s evident Lickliter will establish a program at Iowa where success is premised on building teams and not beholden to the recruitment of individual players who, while talented, do not complement the team.
For an Iowa team picked by many to finish at or near the bottom of the Big Ten, Lickliter reeks of the optimism:“ [A] lot can be done when you pull it together as a team. What a beautiful aspect of sport. You know, you don’t have to have individual gold medal winners to have a championship team. If they complement one another, if they will understand one another’s strengths and if they set their goals and priorities properly.â€
It’s a Team Game
Refuting a premise of basketball where coaching matters less than the recruitment of individual all-stars, Lickliter firmly believes in the transcendent nature of five players playing together. As Lickliter says, “[o]
For the foreseeable future in Iowa City, Hawkeye fans should enjoy watching a brand of basketball worthy of imitation, one that’s unselfish on offense and relentless on defense and one that’s disciplined and highly competitive. While Alford left the roster rail thin, Lickliter makes no excuses for 2007. “[W]ith the right amount of humility, it doesn’t matter who you’re playing. You want to play the game correctly. You understand that they are good players and you need to give them your best. And if you do that, then, hey, there will be time up, there will be a score kept and you’ve just got to be better than them that day. And that’s the challenge of it.â€
Offered a challenge by Bartha to restore dignity to Iowa basketball, Lickliter resolutely stepped forward and accepted. With Iowa now having a Coach, the Team won’t be far behind.
