Iowa vs Iowa State basketball 10.12.2015
Steve Prohm has learned that what worked for Fred Hoiberg isn"t going to be what works for him.
For the Hoiberg, a laissez faire locker room where players were allowed to color outside the lines at times was the best way for him to manage a locker room and a program. It was a system that Prohm, the Iowa State men"s basketball coach who inherited a successful upperclassmen roster accustomed to that type of environment, tried to maintain when taking over for Hoiberg in June.
MARCH MADNESS ON SOCIAL MEDIA JOIN THE TEAM. Seven months into his tenure and amid a two-game losing streak and rising scrutiny, Prohm decided no longer."I finally kind of got to be me," Prohm said after his team"s win over Kansas State on Saturday, "so I just met with the team and I just told them, "Hey I"ve got to be" me. This is who I am, this is what I"m about and I want to fit in but I want to do things the way I want to do them.""
So what, exactly, does that mean going forward?
On the floor, it likely means pulling back the reins on the freedom-and-confidence-over-everything philosophy of Hoiberg. ISU won"t ditch its up-tempo and free-flowing attack, but it very well may be tempered to a degree.
"We"re on defense so much," Prohm said. "If you breakdown in football, we"d be like 20 minutes offense, 40 minutes defense, and we"re so good offensively, we"re still in games but we have to do a better job of managing games, whether it"s me (with) timeouts (or slowing pace)."
Off the court, it probably means tighter guidelines for the players to adhere to. Prohm carries himself much like Hoiberg in an understated manner, but prefers to adhere to a stricter set of expectations for his players.
"We"ve got great kids," Prohm said, "they"re not doing anything (bad). When I say things, it"s going to be done.
"Just do the right thing. That"s the only rule I have. I don"t have a sheet of 50 things. Do the right thing."
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The new Prohm, same as the old Prohm, did have an early casualty, Hallice Cooke, who was suspended for Saturday"s game.
"He didn"t do the things I wanted done," Prohm said, "and then he didn"t do what he was supposed to so left him back (in Ames).
"It was a one-game deal."
The players, though, seem to recognize Prohm"s stance as genuine and sincere, not simply a play for control.
"He got his swag," point guard Monte Morris said. "He stands on ten toes on everything."
Short-term adjustment period aside, Prohm said the change was just a matter of being the coach he wants and knows how to be. With likely top-ranked Oklahoma looming on Monday (8 p.m., ESPN) and a Big 12 season that seemed on the brink of slipping away, the move comes at a critical juncture for ISU.
"You kind of find your way for a little bit," he said, "and you see what the team needs and then you know, this is where this team needs help, this is where I need to help them and this is how I"ve done it in the past and this is how I"m going to do it."
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In the end, it"s about being true to yourself and the players you have. A tighter grip wouldn"t have fit Hoiberg"s professional sensibilities nor would it have likely meshed with some of the personalities he coached. It"s hard to imagine Royce White flourishing how he did under an iron fist. Hoiberg"s way also led to a school-record four-straight NCAA tournaments and the most successful five-year run in school history.
But it"s not his program anymore.
"It"s not drastic," Prohm said, "but I"ve been in a situation like this before where last year I had to get uncomfortable and I"ve got to get uncomfortable here to do the best job with this team.
"That doesn"t mean we"re going to win 15 in a row, but it means this team is going to max out and that"s my biggest goal, to max this team out."
This article was written by Travis Hines from Ames Tribune, Iowa and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
Source: http://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2016-01-18/iowa-state-basketball-prohm-putting-new-spin-cyclones
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