Iowa coach Fran McCaffery on Dan Dakich: ‘If he was a coach, he’d be coaching’

In Iowa’s blowout loss to Wisconsin on Tuesday, ESPN’s Dan Dakich went off on Iowa center Adam Woodbury for two eye pokes on potential three-point shots. Dakich said it was “cowardly” and called Woodbury “gutless.”

”It’s gutless as well and he’s doing it on purpose. You can say he’s not and you can get mad at me all you want, but he’s doing it on purpose, it needs to stop and the Big Ten office needs to discipline the kid.

“Woodbury, for some reason, Woodbury thinks that that kind of thing is toughness. That’s as cowardly as you can be to hit a guy from behind or to poke a guy in the face and quite frankly Fran McCaffery and his staff have got to stop this.”

There’s clearly some contact there, and while Woodbury denied doing it on purpose — he said they’re instructed to reach in on defense against Wisconsin’s good shooters — even Wisconsin’s players weren’t too upset. Frank Kaminsky even joked about it after the game:

“I’m blind,” Kaminsky joked. “It happens during the game. I’ve had much worse happen. I’m not thinking anything about it.”

After the game, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery and Dakich got into a sparring match. McCaffery said that there was “no way” Woodbury did it on purpose and Dakich was “completely out of line.” Dakich responded on Twitter:

Dakich invited McCaffery on to his Indianapolis-based radio show, but McCaffery declined to make an appearance. However, McCaffery wasn’t done talking, as transcribed by Scott Dochterman of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, and McCaffery blasted Dakich on his own radio show, even attacking Dakich’s coaching:

Danny Dakich is so far out of line. He’s just lost it on this one. He doesn’t know Adam Woodbury. And for him to say the reprehensible things he’s said about an amateur is inexcusable. It’s absolutely inexcusable that his network would allow him to say those things of things about a guy he doesn’t know.

...

He’s a TV guy. If he was a coach, he’d be coaching. I should tell him to go buy some lottery tickets. He’d have a better chance to win the lottery than to ever in any way recommend what I should do with my player or my team.

Dakich tends to talk a lot about coaching on broadcasts, and despite having a radio show and being an ESPN personality, he considers himself more of a coach than a media member. McCaffery seemed to take exception to that, noting that Dakich was never a full-time Big Ten coach.

(IOWA RADIO ANNOUNCER GARY) DOLPHIN: “He’s a goofball and he gets paid to comment like that, maybe not a goofball, but he’s a character. A lot of analysts try to create their image of who they are, but he’s a former Big Ten player and a former coach in the Big Ten. That’s what surprised me about his comments.

MCCAFFERY: “Former assistant coach in the Big Ten. Let’s clear that up.”

Dakich played at Indiana, became an assistant under Bob Knight and coached for 10 years at Bowling Green, winning one MAC title, making two NITs and no NCAA Tournaments and finishing with a .500 record in conference play. He then coached Indiana for seven games as an interim coach at the end of the the 2007-08 season. He went 3-4, with a loss in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament and a loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Dakich wasn’t done with this argument after seeing McCaffery’s comments, firing back on Twitter:

Iowa plays Wisconsin again in Iowa City in 10 days. ESPN has the game.