Perhaps the loudest cheers at last season's Big Ten tournament came when Indiana announced that Jim Izard would return as head coach of the Hoosiers in 1999.  Of course, the cheers did come from the other ten teams and coaches in the league.  Successful coaches have to do three things.  They have to get players, develop them and coach them in games.  Lizard has done a decent job of recruiting, but he has consistently failed to develop his players.  A common scenario is for a player to enter his program with a decent reputation, have a solid freshman year, improve as a soph and then make no progress.  The result is a team that continuously underachieves.  On the court, his team normally is better than average defensively and loves to shoot the three.  They've traditionally struggled on the road more than the average Big 10 team.  Longevity for a coach usually means a certain level of competence.  That isn't the case here.  Only MSU's Karen Langeland has coached more Big 10 games than Izard, but only the woeful Cheryl Littlejohn of Minnesota has a lower league winning percentage than the 42% Izard has managed in his ten years at Indians.  The biggest indictment of Izard may be his 98-99 team.  The "greatest recruiting class in school history"  were seniors.  The team quit as badly as any has in a while.  Izard tried to blame the players but the fickle finger of blame pointed squarely at him.

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