Connor and Patrick McCaffery on their dads all-time Iowa starting 5, winning Big Ten

April 10, 2024

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Connor McCaffery was 12 when his father, Fran, became Iowa’s men’s basketball head coach in 2010. Patrick McCaffery had just turned 10. Both were aboard the flight from Albany, N.Y., to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on that Palm Sunday afternoon and sat with their mother, younger sister and youngest brother for the opening news conference the next morning at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The McCaffery brothers were fixtures at nearly every practice and game until they were old enough to join their father’s program as scholarship players. For Connor that was 2017; for Patrick it was 2019. They were fans and surrogate younger brothers to their basketball predecessors. They have special memories of Iowa basketball from before they took the floor and, of course, played together.

It also makes them the perfect candidates to dissect and elaborate on a few Iowa-based topics about their father’s tenure. The first question involved the most thought: Who makes up the starting five for their father’s all-time Iowa team? For Connor, a sixth-year senior, it was difficult. Patrick was more decisive. Collectively, they put together quite a lineup for their father’s first 12 seasons.

“That’s tough. Is this position-based?” Connor asked. When informed he was the decision-maker, Connor then rattled off four spots very quickly.

“I go Dev at the one. I go Whitey, Keegan, Luka at three, four, five, and then the two is kind of … that’s tough,” he said. “You think, like, Peter Jok. You could put JU at two. I think there’s a lot of different ways you can go there.”

Fran McCaffery has won 242 games as Iowa’s head coach. (Jeffrey Becker / USA Today)

For a nickname rundown, Devyn Marble was a first-team All-Big Ten guard in 2014 with 1,694 career points to rank seventh in Iowa history. Aaron White, a first-team All-Big Ten forward in 2015, is the only player to lead the program in rebounding for four consecutive years and ranks third in scoring with 1,859 points. Forward Keegan Murray was a first-team All-American last season, led the Big Ten with 23.5 points per game and was the No. 4 pick in the most recent NBA Draft. Center Luka Garza, who owns the program scoring mark with 2,306 points, led the Big Ten in scoring two years in a row and had his No. 55 jersey retired by the school after he was named a consensus first-team All-American in 2020 and 2021.

JU is forward Jarrod Uthoff, who averaged 18.9 points and was a second-team All-American in 2016. Jok, a shooting guard, led the Big Ten in scoring in 2017 with 19.9 points per game. Both also were first-team All-Big Ten selections.

“I picked this the other day,” said Patrick, a fourth-year junior. “I kind of just scrapped positions. Devyn Marble, Jarrod Uthoff, Keegan, Aaron White and then 55, the big fella. That’s my five that I’m rolling with. If I had to go position by position, I think Peter Jok and Jordan Bohannon can certainly make an argument to be in there. But I think that’s my five, and I’m gonna roll with them.”

Connor, now 24, anguished over his final selection.

“I’ll go Pete just because he’s my guy,” he said. “There’s so many different lineups you can do. Like, I love Sapp. Sapp was my guy, a really tough defender in there. But I think, like, the four that I named, like, Dev, Keegan, Luka and Whitey, you’ve got to go those four. And then, I didn’t mention T.C. T.C would be, like, real close.”

Sapp is Anthony Clemmons (2013-16), who was Iowa’s top perimeter defender under Fran McCaffery. In six seasons, Bohannon (2017-22) is the Iowa record holder in assists (704), 3-pointers (455), games played (179) and free-throw percentage (88.7). His 455 3-pointers also are a Big Ten record. Tyler Cook was an explosive, above-the-rim power forward from 2017 to 2019 and played with the Chicago Bulls last season.

The McCaffery brothers had a front-row opportunity to watch Iowa elevate from the Big Ten bottom and re-emerge as a competitive national program. Fran McCaffery’s predecessor, Todd Lickliter, guided the program to a 38-58 record in three seasons, and his 10-22 mark in 2009-10 was the worst in program history. Since 2014, Iowa has qualified for six NCAA Tournament berths, not counting the likely bid in 2020 when the tournament was canceled.

The brothers cherish the program’s climb to respectability more than any single moment.

“I would say kind of witnessing over time, like, the change and kind of the expectation to win games,” Connor said. “I don’t want to say some people take it for granted. But we’re beating high-level teams, high-level talent, like, on a consistent basis. When we kind of came in, that was not the case. We were down before my dad got here. The team was not very good. It was on a downward trajectory.

“His first season, we won like 10 games, but at the end of the year, we beat Purdue. And then, kind of once Matt (Gatens) kind of came about, we won 18 games and won big games at home. Beat Wisconsin. Beat Indiana. Like, those are big games, and then you kind of see the explosion from there.”

In Fran McCaffery’s first season, the Hawkeyes finished 11-20, but in upsetting No. 6 Purdue, the crowd rushed the floor. The following year with Gatens (now an assistant coach) as the team leader, Iowa was 18-17 and became the last at-large team to qualify for the NIT. The Hawkeyes played Dayton, which could not host a first-round game because of the arena’s First Four commitment, and fans sold out Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The raucous environment mirrored a football or wrestling event.

“I was young so I really didn’t know, but we were so bad,” said Patrick, 22. “Carver was packed. It was such a fun game.

“The Dayton NIT game was a moment that I was like, ‘OK, like, I want to play in this environment.’ And this is something that I think changed the tide of everything.”

Iowa beat Dayton before bowing out in the next round at Oregon. The following season, Iowa was one of the first teams left out of the NCAA Tournament before advancing to the NIT championship game in 2013. Only once during the past 11 postseasons has Iowa not qualified for either the NCAA Tournament or the NIT.

Connor’s favorite moments before playing at Iowa include an upset win at North Carolina in the 2014 ACC-Big Ten Challenge and center Adam Woodbury’s tip-in at the buzzer to beat Temple in the 2015 NCAA Tournament.

As for their time together as players, the brothers agree which moment was the best.

“For me, as a player, it would be the championship game against Purdue,” Connor said.

“There’s a million different games you could pick from, but I’d say probably the Big Ten tournament was kind of the pinnacle of all that,” Patrick said. “I think it just meant a lot to me, and I know it meant a lot to (my dad).”

This is the final year the brothers will play together under their 63-year-old father. They’ve shared in the basketball grind and tough times, like when Patrick had surgery for thyroid cancer the same day as Iowa’s 2014 NCAA Tournament debut. Patrick is the team’s leading returning scorer at 10.5 points per game. Connor ranked fourth nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio at 3.73. Their challenges and successes provide them with uncanny perspectives. They appreciate the journey and treasure the accomplishments.

“Any time you get to hold up a trophy and win a Big Ten championship, that’s something that you’ll never forget,” Patrick said. “It’s something I’ll always be grateful for.”

“We’re beating ranked teams on a consistent basis on the road,” Connor said. “I would say that’s been kind of my favorite thing is to see how this program has kind of changed over the last 12 years.”

(Top photo: Jeffrey Becker / USA Today)

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