My problem with Prohm is just absolutely squashed all momentum the program had at the time. He was gifted two years of top 25 teams or better and really didn’t do much.
If I had to pick one era to re-live, I'd take Prohm too. McDermott was 5 long years of nothing burger. Not even an NIT berth, that guy had ISU riding that fine line between bad and almost mediocre his entire tenure. Got a handful of really talented players to come to ISU, but was awful at creating a balanced roster. Very much like what Prohm's failure was, too. Neither were good game day coaches either. Prohm got rocked by the other Big 12 coaches on game day. McDermott likely did as well, as he had come from the Missouri Valley and wasn't very experience yet when he came to ISU.
If he was a bad recruiter, the scouting services didn't agree. I just think he had trouble with player development, getting players to buy-in, and sucked at roster planning.
Did you watch the last 2 years under Prohm? In the immortal words of Gene Hackman,”Have you got pigeon #### in your eyes?” No coach should last out the season when you are 2-22.
IIRC, (and my memory is pretty good), the only other name I remember being mentioned in connection with the search at that time is that of Rob Jeter, who had just finished his first season at Wisconsin-Milwaukee and who had beaten Oklahoma in the first round (as an #11 seed, I think), and who was a "hot" name, at least in the Midwest. I don't know if Pollard soured on him during the interview process or what, but obviously that didn't go anywhere and we ended up getting Greg McD.
Don't forget being completely hopeless at strategy both pre-game and in-game.
Lost in all of this: I don’t think 2-22 happens without the pandemic. Prohm either takes another job or Jamie cuts him loose after the Big 12 tournament in 2020, except for the whole global pandemic/sports cancelled/potentially no revenue thing. Everyone knew it was over and was ready to be done.
LOL I am not defending Prohm, over time I have just concluded that in my personal opinion, recruiting was not what did him in. He seemed like a man without a plan, and I think the players he recruited here all picked up on that and it led to all kinds of problems both on and off the court. He also had mostly poor assistants who did next to nothing in terms of player development. A lot of guys peaked as FR and SO or whatever their first season in Ames was (see Michael Jacobson's stats in year 1 vs year 2 for example).
You think so? I am not so certain Prohm gets fired after 2019-20. Hadn't he just been given an extension after '18-'19? '19-'20 was bad, with some all-time embarrassing losses, but he did have a built in excuse of not having Haliburton down the stretch, which included the Big 12 Tournament game that they almost won v.s. Oklahoma State.
