The person with the greatest impact on Cyclone basketball, perhaps on the entire athletics program, in my opinion, was Johnny Orr. People who did not follow ISU basketball in the 1970s do not know how miserable we were. On top of that, football under Jim Criner was probably even worse, so the basketball team's improvement in the early and mid 1980s kept us from being totally irrelevant when Iowa's teams were grabbing the state's fancy. Remember, we went like four decades without an NCAA appearance.
Johnny gave us a team to be proud of, to be excited about. Plus he became a recognizable figure around the state. Win or lose, Johnny would say something uniquely funny and perhaps even borderline profane after the game, and we would all feel good about the Clones. I watched visiting teams quit warming up to see what the commotion was when Johnny came running onto the court to the sound of the "Here's Johnny" song. One coach supposedly came to greet Johnny as he was just walking onto the court so Johnny couldn't parade down the sideline and further fire the fans' frenzy.
Without Johnny, we have no Fred Hoiberg, no Marcus Fizer, no Georges, no Monte, and absolutely no Hilton Magic.