Hoops: Lutz to the ACC, filling out the staff

By Chris Williams, CycloneFanatic.com Publisher

Don’t you just love college basketball’s silly season?

This fickle game took a stone cold shot at Iowa State on Friday afternoon, when CycloneFanatic.com first reported that Iowa State assistant coach Bobby Lutz had agreed to move back to the place he calls home.

Lutz is heading to N.C. State to take a similar position under his longtime friend Mark Gottfried.

Gottfried was hired by N.C. State to replace Sidley Lowe earlier this week.

Why?

Lutz is a North Carolina guy. His family lives there. He’s been a close friend of Gottfried’s for nearly 20 years. On a personal/family level, this makes complete sense for Lutz and Iowa State fans should be happy for a guy who has nothing but great things to say about his time in Ames.

As kansascy so perfectly put it on our CycloneFanatic.com message board (which is the biggest and best on the net by the way), "It is far, far better to have had Lutz and lost him than to have never had Lutz at all."

Props.

Fred Hoiberg now has two assistant coaches to hire. Along with Lutz, Hoiberg is set with the chore to replace Elwyn McRoy, who went his separate way earlier this spring.

Keep an eye on…

Cornell Mann – According to THIS STORY that was recently published by the Kalamazoo Gazette, Cornell Mann, a former Brian Gregory assistant coach at Dayton is a candidate in Ames.

Mann joined Gregory’s staff at Dayton in 2008, when the Flyers finished with a record of 27-8. Before that, Mann was an assistant at Western Michigan, Central Michigan and some other lower-profile jobs along the way. Mann played college ball at Akron.

Needless to say, Mann is a strong recruiter in the state of Michigan, specifically the Detroit area.

According to the linked article above, Mann is also a candidate for assistant coaching jobs at Georgia Tech, Michigan State and Colorado.

CLICK HERE to read Mann’s profile that is currently up on Dayton’s website.

Matt Abdelmassih – Why not? When Fred Hoiberg got the Iowa State job, it didn’t take him long to bring along one of his aces with the Minnesota Timberwolves, the young Matt Abdelmassih, who assisted Iowa State in gaining commitments from Royce White and Tavon Sledge over the last year. Though he isn’t able to recruit under his current title of Assistant Director of Operations, Abdelmassih has already proven that he can land big time players as he briefly held a recruiting role while Hoiberg was filling out his staff at Iowa State. Yes, Abdelmassih is young and no, he doesn’t have a ton of coaching experience. But this move would make a lot of sense in my opinion.