I haven't written anything for a little while because every time I sat down with a topic to write about it was old news! It is a very exciting time to be a Cyclone fan and never more so than with the hiring of Fred Hoiberg. I'll be 29 in a few months and my first Cyclone memories are of watching Freddy-led teams in Hilton. My first Cyclone Sports memory is shrieking "Sit down Tubbs!" to my pre-pubescent heart's content at an ISU-OU game.
And now the man who planted the Cyclone seed in a young kid, who my sister thought was attractive enough he warranted poster space on her wall, is back. Certainly nobody in Cyclone Country is without nostalgia or without a certain level of glee. However is the hiring of Hoiberg the best thing for Cyclone hoops?
On the face of it, a few things are obvious - we will sell more tickets and there will be a lot of excitement around the program. Some of the folks that were lost from the "golden age" will return after the Morgan and McDermott eras. We have a coach that all of Ames will unite behind and we can quickly and easily put the disastrous McDermott reign behind us. It sounds like all current players and recruits are still on board so the program won't be a smoldering crater for Fred to take over. He has an extremely long playing career and a good stint as an executive for the T-Wolves. We know he knows what it takes to get to the NBA and as a scout the kind of talent it takes to succeed. If he has success here he will likely stay in Ames for a long, long time as he's still in his late 30s.
However the guy has never coached a game in his life, even as an assistant. He's never recruited a single player. Retaining coach TJ will help him in this respect. He really needs to bring in an old hand in the coaching ranks, preferably somebody with head coaching experience that can help guide him through the morass of the NCAA red tape. He really needs some big breaks because since he's never coached in a college program before there will likely be a pretty big learning curve his first few years. He'll get a longer than normal grace period from fans because there is a large number of Cyclones that would absolutely fall on the sword for Hoiberg.
As others have said, if you took the name Fred Hoiberg off this hire, and it was a random person, the fanbase would be absolutely livid about hiring somebody with absolutely no experience. Being Fred Hoiberg does not automatically equal success. As far as the PR move by Pollard most of the fans are eating it up. We know Pollard is above all else a bean counter and this move will likely do some good things for the bottom line of ISU basketball. We also know that there was at least one great young coach with a proven record in Reggie Theus that called Pollard about the job.
There are a lot of good things that can happen with this hire. There are a lot of absolutely terrible things that can happen with this hire and in my opinion the deck is stacked against him. Right now what I consider to be a PR hire is working swimmingly if internet chatter is to be believed. One thing is for sure, and that is the fanbase will start out completely united behind Coach Hoiberg and he will have every opportunity to succeed. Whether he does is yet to be seen.
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