New Iowa basketball coach Todd Lickliter has focused so much on the team aspect it was more than 20 minutes into his news conference before he even discussed an individual player. Lickliter takes over an Iowa program that lost its two leading scorers from last year’s team that finished 17-14 in Steve Alford’s final season at the helm and he wants his team to establish an identity.
Lickliter says he really wants a team that shares the basketball, a team that values the basketball, and they’ve tried to emphasize that. He also wants a team that defense together. Lickliter says when individuals sacrafice the team succeeds. He says he’s often asked his teams who the leader scorer is, and they can’t say, but they can tell you who won the national title.
Lickliter says individual pictures of the current players have been taken off the walls. He says after people graduate he doesn’t mind putting their individual pictures up, but until then it’s a team. Lickliter says they have the championship team pictures up and he wants the team to recognize them, otherwise, they’ve taken down individual pictures.
Lickliter says it did not take long for him to discover how much Iowa fans care about the program. He says if they were to play and no one were to know, they would still play to win and put everything they had into it. Lickliter says when you add in the loyal, passionate following, that is great incentive.
Iowa opens at home November first against Simpson.