NEW YORK — As a Philadelphia native who lived and breathed basketball, Fran McCaffery has often been asked if he had any special memories as a youngster in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
A natural question, given (as McCaffery said) that Philadelphia is closer to New York (94 miles away) than Iowa City is to Des Moines. But McCaffery’s answer to that question leading up to Iowa’s Tuesday game against Duke in The Garden was kind of funny.
“If you grew up in Philadelphia, Madison Square Garden doesn’t matter. Like, I grew up going to the Palestra and the Spectrum,” McCaffery said. “I grew up watching Doctor J and Wilt Chamberlain and Doug Collins (of the Philadelphia 76ers). I wasn’t watching Walt Frazier and Willis Reed (of the New York Knicks). I had no interest in going to the Garden. We didn’t like the Knicks. And that’s how.”
McCaffery is a guy from Philadelphia. And the guys from Philadelphia don’t like New York, plain and simple.
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Still, McCaffery has respect for “the most famous arena in the world.” He played there as a college player in Pennsylvania and coached there several times, including a 4-4 record as head coach of Iowa.
In 2013, he took the Hawkeyes to the NIT Final Four, where they beat Maryland before losing to Baylor in the title game.
Two seasons later, Aaron White led Iowa lost to Texas and then Syracuse in the 2014 2K Classic.
In 2018, the Big Ten tournament was held at MSG and 12eTop-seeded Iowa (in a down year) beat Illinois before falling in overtime to a Michigan team that didn’t lose again until the NCAA title game.
And the following November, Luka Garza and Tyler Cook led Iowa past Oregon and then Connecticut in an impressive performance to win the 2K Classic.
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McCaffery’s Hawkeyes haven’t returned since. Iowa’s 13th-year head coach thought a little ahead of this 8:30 p.m. CT, ESPN televised showdown against one of college basketball’s bluebloods as part of the Jimmy V Classic, as he has 499 wins in as Division I head coach. One more and it will hit the 500 mark.
This milestone prompted McCaffery to share a story about his first coaching job, when then-Penn coach Craig Littlepage hired him as a volunteer to coach the junior varsity team. He recalled 5-6 hour training days without pay, but it was a great opportunity to develop his coaching skills. He then went to Lehigh as an assistant coach and took over as Division I manager in 1984 at the age of 25. McCaffery won 49 games at Lehigh in three years; 90 wins at UNC-Greensboro out of five; 112 in Siena out of five; and now 248 in Iowa, which puts him 22 behind Tom Davis (269) as the Hawkeyes’ all-time leader in wins. McCaffery took all four schools he led to the NCAA Tournament. An 11-year stint as an assistant coach at Notre Dame was sandwiched between stops Lehigh and Greensboro.
“You pay your dues and hope to one day have the opportunity to coach full-time, to become a head coach,” McCaffery, 63, said. “And I think some of the big wins and some of the tough losses, some of the struggles.”
The Potential 500e winning, he said, is “just indicative of the great opportunities I had. I have truly been blessed. I’ve worked for great sports directors everywhere I’ve been. I had great players. I had great coaches on my team.
Interestingly, McCaffery has only faced Duke once in 27 years as a head coach. It was a 98-44 loss at UNC-Greensboro in 2004. He faced the Blue Devils five times as a player and beat them once.
What a great moment it could be if the No. 500 could come against Duke. Iowa has met Duke eight times in its basketball history and won only once, in 1994 at a neutral site in Hawaii.
After:Iowa basketball takes on No. 16 Duke. Here’s how you can watch the Hawkeyes game
Duke could be a challenge ahead of Iowa-Iowa State game
But the challenge is daunting. On paper, it looks like a tough game for the Hawkeyes 6-1.
While Iowa has a strong group of small forward types led by Kris Murray, its lack of proven big men could be a problem against some teams. The Hawkeyes’ tallest regular is 6-foot-9, 233-pound Filip Rebraca. Meanwhile, Duke will be throwing big waves at the Hawkeyes. Seven-foot rookie Kyle Filipowski, a player McCaffery recruited hard, was Duke’s best player. He’s scored in double figures in every game this year.
“A lottery pick,” McCaffery said.
The Blue Devils (8-2, their only losses to Kansas and Purdue) also start 7-1 rookie Derrick Lively and also have a good mix of veterans, including a player Iowa knows very well in the transfer of the Illinois graduates, Jacob Grandison.
“It’s a talented team. They have a lot of size. They have depth. They have athleticism,” McCaffery said. “It will be a very difficult challenge for us, but we are delighted.”
Nonetheless, it’s a game Iowa wanted. A chance to win a signature program is there. McCaffery got the call that there was an opportunity to face Duke on that date, coupled with an Illinois-Texas game (which begins at 6:00 p.m. CT Tuesday to kick off double-header Jimmy V).
“Ironically, we had one game left to schedule,” McCaffery said. “So we had to look at the dates and (asked), ‘Can we do it?'”
The main issue was that Iowa was scheduled to host Iowa State on Thursday. But despite the trip and less than 48 hours between games, McCaffery felt it was a given, especially with a veteran roster.
“It would have been easy to say no and face someone else who we thought was pretty badly beaten and stay rested for the Iowa State game,” McCaffery said. “But opportunities like this, I think you have to take advantage of.”
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow covered the sport for 28 years with The Des Moines Register, USA TODAY and Iowa City Press-Citizen. Follow @ChadLeistikow on Twitter.