Really?
Maybe 'nothing' is not the right word, I'll put it this way. I think most of us can agree that a lot of people look at sports as a "what have you done for me lately". If you look at Duke for the decade (70-80) prior coach K's arrival, their winning percentage was at .60, winning slightly above half of their games and had 3 NCAA appearances.
Compare that to the decade prior CFH (00-10) our winning percentage was .54 with 2 NCAA appearances. I think you would be hard pressed to find cyclone fans that wouldn't say that that decade of basketball stunk. Did it really matter that we had won two conference titles in 99 and 00? People were focused on the fact that we were in a hole that was lasting 10 years.
So although Duke has a richer tradition when you compare records back to the 20's, Duke's reality was no different when they hired coach K than ours was when we hired CFH. A decade of crappy basketball. Coach K resurrected Duke's glory although not nearly as quickly as CFH was raising ISU's stock. I think that is what some people were hoping that CFH could be to ISU what coach K is to Duke.
Maybe that clears up my point.