Iowa State selects Steve Prohm to succeed Fred Hoiberg
Steve Prohm probably feels much better today that his alma mater Alabama hired Avery Johnson instead of him earlier this spring.
Being snubbed by the Crimson Tide two months ago enabled Prohm to land a better job Monday.
Instead of beginning a rebuilding job in Tuscaloosa, Prohm will inherit a top 10-caliber roster at Iowa State. The Cyclones have announced they’ve hired the highly successful former Murray State coach as the successor to Fred Hoiberg.
Prohm’s challenge will be making sure that Iowa State’s recent resurgence doesn’t end with the departure of its beloved head coach. Hoiberg left for the Chicago Bulls last week after transforming the Cyclones into a perennial Big 12 contender during his five-year tenure, leading them to four NCAA tournament bids and back-to-back conference tournament titles.
What surely made Prohm attractive to Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard is the success he enjoyed in four seasons at Murray State.
He compiled an impressive 104-29 record, nearly leading the Racers to an unbeaten regular season in 2012 and developing NBA guards Isaiah Canaan and Cameron Payne during his tenure. He also favored a similar up-tempo, free-flowing yet efficient system to what Hoiberg has run at Iowa State the past few years.
Enough talent returns from last season’s 25-win team at Iowa State that Prohm should enjoy instant success if he can handle the pressure of following a revered coach and design a scheme to capitalize on what he has coming back. From there, the key will be whether he can find a way to recruit to a school that traditionally hasn’t attracted elite prospects.
The state of Iowa is not an especially fertile recruiting ground, nor do its schools even typically land its best in-state prospects. The last two Iowa-born McDonald’s All-Americans, Marcus Paige and Harrison Barnes, both went to North Carolina, while fellow Iowa products Kirk Hinrich, Nick Collison and Raef LaFrenz all starred at Kansas in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The way in which Hoiberg circumvented that problem was by turning Iowa State into a popular destination for talented transfers in need of a second chance, from Chris Allen, to Royce White, to Will Clyburn, to DeAndre Kane, to Jameel McKay. More recently, Hoiberg also pursued impact recruits out of high school as well because the Cyclones had grown in stature enough to land some of them.
It will be interesting to see if Prohm can follow the same formula.
From Mick Cronin, to Billy Kennedy, to Mark Gottfried, Murray State has produced some highly successful coaches in recent years. Iowa State will have to hope that Prohm is the next.
