Since he arrived in Iowa City nine years ago, Fran McCaffery has avoided losing any of his assistant coaches.
That changed on Tuesday when assistant coach Andrew Francis, who has been with McCaffery for a total of 12 years, decided it was time to move on.
The news of the departure of Francis was first reported by the Des Moines Register.
Francis has not announced where he will be headed pending final approval of the move.
The Brooklyn, NY native first joined McCaffery’s staff at Siena in 2007 and was the only coach to remain with him when he was named the head coach of the Hawkeyes. During that first spring with the program he helped stabilize their recruiting efforts and was key in then Siena recruit Melshan Basabe joining the Iowa program.
All of this means that for the first time since his hiring, McCaffery will have a vacancy on his staff. He will also need to act relatively quickly if he wants to fill the position before the first live evaluation period of the AAU circuit, which begins next weekend.
Given that hiring a new assistant is an important decision, McCaffery may decide to use a current staff member to fill the recruiting role on a temporary basis. If he opts to go in that direction, McCaffery would likely send video coordinator Courtney Eldridge on the road for the evaluation period.
One name to potentially keep in mind for the open assistant position could be Billy Taylor. He is currently the head coach at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, NC. Prior to that, Taylor, a Chicago area native, served as Iowa’s director of basketball operations for three seasons. His first job as an assistant coach at Notre Dame with McCaffery. He was hired by McCaffery as one of his assistant coaches in 1999 at UNC-Greensboro and then eventually became the head coach at Lehigh and Ball State until 2013.
McCaffery could also look to hire a former Hawkeye to fill out his staff. If he opts to move in that direction, the most logical names to consider would be Dean Oliver (assistant at Wisconsin), Jeff Horner (head coach at Truman State), or Matt Gatens (Director of Basketball Ops at Drake).
