The Iowa State Cyclones have fired men’s basketball coach Steve Prohm, a not-surprising move with the proud program failing badly in 2020-2021 to a record of 2-22 overall and 0-18 in the Big 12, the school’s first winless conference run since 1936-37.
Prohm was hired by ISU in 2015, coming to Ames from Murray State, where he led the Racers to three NCAA Tournament appearances in six seasons. Prohm replaced Fred Hoiberg, who had departed his alma mater to take the coaching opening with the Chicago Bulls. Early returns from Prohm were promising, with a Sweet 16 appearance in 2016, winning 23 games and reaching as high as #4 in the Associated Press poll in the process.
By 2019, signs of progress began to fade. ISU won the 2019 Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City, but by the end of the 2019-2020 season, the program had fallen to a record of 12-20. Prohm’s Cyclones lost their final 23 games against Big 12 opponents.
A coaching position even more sought after than Iowa State also became open on Monday morning, as Indiana University fired fourth-year basketball coach Archie Miller, who failed in his attempts to return the tradition-rich Hoosiers to the successful days of the Bobby Knight era from the 1970s through the 1990s. Miller’s Hoosiers missed the NCAA Tournament all four years he spent in Bloomington, going 67-58 overall and just 33-44 in Big 10 play. IU never finished with a conference record “north” of .500 in Miller’s tenure.
Miller came to Indiana after a highly-successful stint at Dayton University in the Atlantic 10 Conference, where he led the Flyers to four NCAA Tournament appearances and two A-10 regular season titles.
One of Indiana’s Big 10 rivals is also searching for a new coach, as Minnesota fired Richard Pitino after eight lackluster seasons with the Golden Gophers. Pitino, the son of legendary coach Rick Pitino, saw his teams go 54-96 in Big 10 play. This season, a promising start to the season ended in disappointment, with UM losing 11 of its last 14 games, falling out of NCAA Tournament consideration. Perhaps more damaging, the Gophers were one of only three major conference teams in the country to go winless on the road, going 0-10 in a 14-15 campaign.
While not at the level of Indiana on the “job circuit”, the Minnesota job is seen by many as one with potential growth, but also one where local recruiting will play a major role in success. Pitino’s inability to keep four and five-star talent from the Twin Cities region “at home” was seen as a major factor in his inability to turn around fortunes in Dinkytown.
It took Pitino less than 24 hours to find another coaching gig, as the New Mexico Lobos out of the Mountain West Conference have hired him as the new coach in Albuquerque. There, Pitino will be charged with reigniting a program and fan base that fell on hard times in the late 2010’s and into the new decade.
