Gary Barta has a problem and it isn't that he's looking for the second men's basketball coach of his relatively short tenure in Iowa City.

Barta and UI administrators have a credibility gap to address.

Iowa's director of athletics met with members of the media Monday afternoon during a hastily called press conference to announce the dismissal of head coach Todd Lickliter just three years into a 7-year deal Barta himself brokered with the former Butler coach.

"My respect for Todd Lickliter's abilities as a basketball coach have not changed," Barta told a packed room which included several UI administrators but not a single member of the men's basketball program, most of whom were out of town on spring break. "But in reviewing our situation, I did not believe that we would succeed in Year 4 any better than we did in Year 3."

Those words stand in stark contrast to what Barta told the Cedar Rapids Gazette in early February:

Barta reiterated those opinions on Monday afternoon while briefly excoriating the press for dwelling on his past comments - and for good reason as you'll see later.

So what pieces weren't there? Well, it doesn't appear Lickliter was a missing link. After all, he's a "tremendous basketball coach" and a "tremendous person with high values" according to the man who just hours prior had terminated Iowa's third-year head coach during the course of a brief eight minute meeting. At times Monday Barta went out of his way to heap praise on the deposed leader of the Hawkeyes.

What about the players then?

In making reference to sticking together Barta seemed to lend credence to rumors that more players were planning to leave the Iowa program if Lickliter was retained. Multiple sources have confirmed that Barta met with several current players last week prior to the team's departure for the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis to discuss the direction of the program. He seemed to give a nod to those meetings during Monday's press conference.

He then quickly sidestepped the subject with the pronouncement that he and he alone had made the final call.

So why didn't Barta step forward March 11 when rumors of Lickliter's demise first bubbled to the surface after an Iowa City radio station erroneously reported that Lickliter would resign citing health reasons?

"There were rumors," Barta said. "I can't deal in rumors."

But by issuing his brief, cryptic statement on the heels of Iowa's first round loss to Michigan at Conseco Fieldhouse he seemed to be doing just that. The man charged with leading the UI's athletics department had the opportunity to step in front of the media and address the situation head-on. Instead he chose not to attend Lickliter's postgame press conference, instead leaving it up to UI Sports Information Director Phil Haddy to compose and release a statement that included zero references to Lickliter or his staff - a rather unique approach to not dealing in rumors.

So, with speculation running wild and rumors reaching a boiling point, Todd Lickliter, his staff, and Iowa's players were allowed to twist in the wind for three gut-wrenching days because Barta refused to douse the flames of innuendo when he had the opportunity to do so.

"What I always try to do when I hear rumors is get to the bottom of them," Barta said. "I did the best I could in that environment. And that's really all I can say. I went through an evaluation process and tried to eliminate rumors because rumors don't serve anybody well."

"I didn't want to make a rash decision, and so at the end of the (Michigan) game my decision had not been finalized,"

Sources close to the program have indicated to HawkeyeReport that isn't the case and that a decision had been made prior to Monday.

Yesterday Barta cited three factors as being paramount in his final decision: wins and losses, the team's competitiveness or lack thereof, and sagging attendance which contributed to a significant financial shortfall this year. Yet when Barta spoke with the Gazette's Scott Dochterman for that February article he appeared to brush off all three issues that suddenly became a factor in Lickliter's demise.

"I'm 100 percent behind Todd," Barta said. "I'm not excited yet where we're at, but I'm excited with the young guys on our team, his principles, his philosophies. We've got this group of young people who are getting better every day."

"Todd is going to continue what he's been doing. That's make this team better. We're young, but I'm excited. The feedback I'm getting, all of us would like to be farther along, but we have a young group, freshmen and sophomores mostly, they're working their butts off, so we're going to get better as a team, work harder to fill the arena and then it won't be an issue."

"As Todd's team continues to get better and starts winning, I know it'll fill up. I know it will. It already has the last couple weeks. The team is playing better and you've seen the arena start to fill back up."

Something doesn't appear to add up. A month ago Barta was firmly in Lickliter's corner; on Monday he handed him his walking papers. Those walking papers will cost the UI $2.4 million dollars thanks to language in Lickliter's contract that defines "termination without cause."

Without cause.

"Todd is partially to blame, I am partially to blame, bad luck and timing are partially to blame," Barta said. "It's a collective situation. Things just didn't work out."

Things didn't work out for Lickliter's predecessor in Iowa City either. Former Iowa coach Steve Alford left the Hawkeyes program after the 2006-2007 season for the University of New Mexico. In September 2008 Alford discussed his tenure at Iowa with ESPN's Andy Katz.

"The last couple of years at Iowa, it didn't matter how hard I worked," said Alford. "We were going up against [Big Ten teams] that had more bullets in their gun."

"I want to be (in Albuquerque)," Alford said. "It's got everything I've ever wanted. … But I couldn't get it (at Iowa). And if you don't have it, then it's not good enough to compete with Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan State year in and year out if your facilities aren't as good, if not better."

One of the things Alford meant by 'it' was a practice facility, a bone of contention between the former coach and UI administrators. When Alford left Iowa City there were no plans for a practice facility in place beyond discussions to create one. During the interview process in spring of 2007, Lickliter asked about facilities upgrades and was told shovels would be in the ground within six months of his being hired at Iowa. Lickliter was introduced as the new men's basketball coach April 3, 2007. Preliminary work began on the $43 million Carver-Hawkeye renovation project in July of 2009.

When Lickliter was hired he was also promised he would have input on the hiring of a strength and conditioning coach. Other UI administrators interjected themselves in the process and another hire was made. It wasn't until Rusty Burney was brought on board prior to this season that the program got its man.

Make no mistake about it, there appears to be a substantial credibility gap between what UI administrators have said in both past and present discussions involving the men's basketball program. It's enough to give any coach interviewing for the job reason for pause when considering his options.

"This is a great opportunity," Barta said.

The question is can he be believed? Todd Lickliter was given a 7-year contract and all the assurances in the world his boss supported his vision for the program. In the end, Iowa's now former head coach was unceremoniously fired before he could even see his first recruiting class through to the end because Barta couldn't "create an environment for this basketball program and get this basketball program back on track." Like it or not that's going to set off red flags for anyone looking at taking the job.