INDIANAPOLIS — Amid speculation that he could be coaching his final game at Iowa, men’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery was ejected following multiple technical fouls in the Hawkeyes’ Big Ten tournament loss against Illinois on Thursday night.
With 13:33 left in the game, McCaffery grew frustrated by a disparity in foul calls, blew his top and picked up a technical from official Brian Dorsey. McCaffery kept talking and official Larry Scirotto — with whom McCaffery has sparred over the years — tossed McCaffery from the game. McCaffery, who is the winningest coach in Iowa history, then walked to the locker room and into an uncertain future.
Fran McCaffery is assessed double tehcnicals and ejected from the game after exchanging words to the officials. pic.twitter.com/M5rl524Dmw
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) March 14, 2025
McCaffery has a contract through the 2028 season, but with his program plagued by stagnant on-court performance and collapsing ticket sales, athletic director Beth Goetz could make a change to jolt the program. If Goetz fires McCaffery, the school will owe the coach $4.2 million, which can be paid over three years.
When asked by The Athletic after the game if he expects to remain Iowa’s head coach, McCaffery replied, “I do.”
After the 106-94 loss Thursday to their fiercest rival, Iowa (17-16) will miss the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive season and post a sub-20-win campaign for the third straight year. The Hawkeyes finished 7-13 in Big Ten play, their worst since 2017-18. And the on-court slide runs concurrent to a malaise among Iowa fans.
Iowa posted its worst average attendance since the 1964-65 season at 9,143 tickets sold per game. The average number of scanned tickets used per game was 5,172, according to an open-records request. That means only 56.6 percent of tickets available to Iowa men’s basketball games were purchased, and only 34.6 percent of seats were filled.
The plummeting support runs counter to Iowa’s football, men’s wrestling and women’s basketball programs, which have all sold out their seasons for at least two consecutive years. Iowa’s men’s basketball program once regularly ranked in the top 15 in average attendance, but the last time Iowa generated $4 million in men’s basketball ticket sales was in 2004-05.
The slumping ticket sales coincides with the program’s difficulty with raising NIL funds alongside its Big Ten competition. When asked by The Athletic what Iowa needs to compete for Big Ten championships, McCaffery said, “this year, you’d probably need $6 million.
“We were nowhere near that,” McCaffery said. “Those numbers are going to go north of that.
“Now, when the settlement is completed and the rev share number is what it is, we’ll know what that is, but I think it’s safe to say the collectives aren’t going away. Those are the numbers that exist already, so we can only imagine those going up.”
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(Photo: Michael Conroy / AP)
