What to do with Coach Prohm Poll..

What should Pollard do with Prohm?

  • Keep Prohm as coach and let him finish his contract

  • Fire Prohm as head coach immediately and pay buyout

  • Fire Prohm at end of season and pay buyout


Results are only viewable after voting.
I applaud those who made constructive suggestions. Craig Smith and Darian Devries might be worth a look. My fear is that Prohm had a similar, if not better track record and pedigree at the time we hired him.

A few things that differentiate Smith and Devries from Prohm

1) both took over poor programs. Utah state had not made ncaa since 2010 and Smith took them in his first season. Drake has been awful and Devries has them on track for 3rd straight 20 win season. Murray State was 212-102 the previous 10 years before Steve took over. He took a winning program and maintained it.

2) both Smith and Devries have ties to the midwest. Devries coaching at Creighton for 17 years and an Iowa native. Smith a Minnesota native and years coaching in the Dakotas, Nebraska and Colorado.

3) both have been assistants as high major programs and understand the duties and pressures that come with that.
 
I applaud those who made constructive suggestions. Craig Smith and Darian Devries might be worth a look. My fear is that Prohm had a similar, if not better track record and pedigree at the time we hired him.

Coaching in the Big 12 is tough - you are coaching against Scott Drew, Bill Self, Bob Huggins, et. Al. Unless we can get a blockbuster coach with a big name and credentials to match those coaches, I’d rather hope that we have a recruiter who we can grow into a Big12 coach with help, rather than going after the latest wunderkind.

For those of you who simply state anyone would be better or do as well, you are delusional.

Hi Tom,
Hope all is well. Im one of the delusional ones that said anyone can finish in last place. Prohm is going to be in the conversation as one of the worst coaches in Iowa State History. Although nobody is expecting to battle with Kansas every year, not being the worst is a goal I think we can achieve on a year in year out basis.

Cheers,
Thatguy
 
Yeah I agree but I do like his energy

Shaka is winning is because his team old and has talent. Colman, Jones, Sims, K Jones and when you add an elite frosh in Brown...you have something. Shaka saved his job in the last 10 games of last season. So is it coaching? Or a maturing core who have played together for a few years and figuring it out?
 
I applaud those who made constructive suggestions. Craig Smith and Darian Devries might be worth a look. My fear is that Prohm had a similar, if not better track record and pedigree at the time we hired him.

Coaching in the Big 12 is tough - you are coaching against Scott Drew, Bill Self, Bob Huggins, et. Al. Unless we can get a blockbuster coach with a big name and credentials to match those coaches, I’d rather hope that we have a recruiter who we can grow into a Big12 coach with help, rather than going after the latest wunderkind.


For those of you who simply state anyone would be better or do as well, you are delusional.

It's delusional to state that anyone could do better than 10th?
Back-to-back 20 loss seasons here, unless there is a huge wave of cancellations. Anyone can do better.
 
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I applaud those who made constructive suggestions. Craig Smith and Darian Devries might be worth a look. My fear is that Prohm had a similar, if not better track record and pedigree at the time we hired him.

Coaching in the Big 12 is tough - you are coaching against Scott Drew, Bill Self, Bob Huggins, et. Al. Unless we can get a blockbuster coach with a big name and credentials to match those coaches, I’d rather hope that we have a recruiter who we can grow into a Big12 coach with help, rather than going after the latest wunderkind.

For those of you who simply state anyone would be better or do as well, you are delusional.
Coaching a team to a last place finish in conference seems pretty easy tbh..
 
What Devries has shown is an ability to coach up whomever he has on his team and find pieces to plug in when he loses guys. I mean they lost Robbins to Minnesota and people thought they weren't going to be that good because of it and all he does is have them 13-0 and the top team in the conference. Prohm has really struggled when he has to find guys on the fly to build a team. The way Drake plays is also great basketball to watch as opposed to most of Prohm's teams.
 
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I applaud those who made constructive suggestions. Craig Smith and Darian Devries might be worth a look. My fear is that Prohm had a similar, if not better track record and pedigree at the time we hired him.

Coaching in the Big 12 is tough - you are coaching against Scott Drew, Bill Self, Bob Huggins, et. Al. Unless we can get a blockbuster coach with a big name and credentials to match those coaches, I’d rather hope that we have a recruiter who we can grow into a Big12 coach with help, rather than going after the latest wunderkind.

For those of you who simply state anyone would be better or do as well, you are delusional.

From a very technical standpoint I think it would be hard to do worse than what he is doing right now. Like, I don't know how you can do worse than 0 Big 12 wins.
 
You all are making a compelling case for Devries.

But what about his predecessor Niko Medved?

He seems to be doing very well at Colorado State.
 
If you haven’t brought in a defensive/rebounding guru after year 6 and when you’ve finished in the basement of the conference 3 of the last 4 years, he’s not going to do it in Year 7.

I laughed at this because it's so true, and so sad that's it's shamefully hilarious.
 
You all are making a compelling case for Devries.

But what about his predecessor Niko Medved?

He seems to be doing very well at Colorado State.

I think he could finally tap into that MPLS market that has eluded ISU for a while. He’s got Dave Thorson on staff who is a legendary HS coach in Minnesota and actually coached Royce White 9th-11th grade
 
I think the bottom line is that fans are willing to be patient when you are at least competitive. Everyone gave Prohm a pass after Fred's players left - we all knew there would be a pretty big reset happening. So that first last place finish was "ok". Then we brought in a great recruiting class with an NBA lottery pick and another NBA player. And we finished 5th in the conference. One of those NBA players left and we finished in the basement again. We bring in more talent and are poised to finish dead last in the conference. Does that sound like something that will be magically fixed between Year 6 and Year 7? If so, how?

I think it has been very, very clear over the past 2 seasons that Steve Prohm isn't going to work out at Iowa State. We all wanted it to work...but its clearly not working. So why prolong the misery for a 7th year?
 
Based on what the media including @ChrisMWilliams have said about him I vote absolutely not. Also by from what they said there is zero chance as Pollard wouldn’t like him either.
Just curious what has been said about him? I don't know anything about him aside from that he coached Drake for what seemed like a very brief stint, had moderate success but no NCAA appearances, and jumped town the first chance he got...is that it?
 
A few things that differentiate Smith and Devries from Prohm

1) both took over poor programs. Utah state had not made ncaa since 2010 and Smith took them in his first season. Drake has been awful and Devries has them on track for 3rd straight 20 win season. Murray State was 212-102 the previous 10 years before Steve took over. He took a winning program and maintained it.

2) both Smith and Devries have ties to the midwest. Devries coaching at Creighton for 17 years and an Iowa native. Smith a Minnesota native and years coaching in the Dakotas, Nebraska and Colorado.

3) both have been assistants as high major programs and understand the duties and pressures that come with that.
Both those sound good to me. I am assuming we could get them relatively reasonably too. Put Messi on the search committee.

It sucks Prohm hasn't been able to have success here as he is a great guy and by all accounts wanted to be in Ames for the long haul but I think it is time to move on.
 
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