Iowa, McCaffery Have Long History at Madison Square Garden

Hawkeyes Face Duke at Basketball Mecca Tuesday Night

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Fran McCaffery was a junior guard at Penn when he experienced Madison Square Garden in New York City for the first time. The Quakers played in the 1980 Holiday Festival, losing to St. John’s and beating Iona.

McCaffery’s first trip to the “World’s Most Famous Arena” wasn’t an awe-inspiring moment for the hoops junkie.

“I think there was an appreciation for the facility,” said Iowa’s basketball coach, who takes his team to the Garden for a Tuesday game against Duke in the Jimmy V Classic. “But I didn’t grow up with an affinity for the place. Because I was a Philadelphia guy. We didn’t pay attention to New York. We didn’t care.”

McCaffery’s NBA team of choice was the Philadelphia 76ers, not the New York Knicks.

The Knicks were irrelevant to us,” he said. “You grew up rooting for Wilt Chamberlain, not Willis Reed, You rooted for Doug Collins, not Walt Frazier. Dr. J (Julius Erving), not Bernard King or Bill Bradley. Or anybody. We didn’t like those guys. So we had no interest in going up there.”

McCaffery’s dad took him to Convention Hall in Philadelphia to see the 76ers. Later, the Spectrum became the new home of the franchise. There were other countless trips to the Palestra, where college basketball doubleheaders were a major attraction. The Palestra later became McCaffery’s college home, because that’s where the Quakers played their games.

“Now that doesn’t mean that I didn’t know Madison Square Garden existed, that I didn’t know it was a special place,” McCaffery said. “There’s an unbelievable history there with professional basketball, NBA playoffs and college basketball. They used to have doubleheaders there, too.”

McCaffery has been back to the Garden many times since he sampled it as a player. He and his roommate at Penn, Tommy Massimino, used to go to New York City to watch the Big East Tournament. Massimino’s father, Rollie, coached Villanova at the time.

McCaffery spent 11 seasons as an assistant coach at Notre Dame, and the Irish made numerous appearances at Madison Square Garden.

Tuesday’s game will be the fourth time McCaffery has taken an Iowa team to Midtown Manhattan and the Garden.

The first trip came in 2013, when the Hawkeyes beat Maryland in the semifinals of the National Invitation Tournament, then lost to Baylor in the championship game. The next trip came a year later for the 2K Classic, when Iowa lost to Texas and Syracuse. There were two more trips in 2018. The first was the Big Ten Tournament, where the Hawkeyes beat Illinois and then lost to Michigan in overtime. Iowa returned in November of that year to play in the 2K Classic again, beating Oregon and Connecticut to win the title.

Iowa’s history with the Garden includes two games against teams ranked No. 1 in the country. Playing its first game under Coach Steve Alford, Iowa faced top-ranked and defending national champion Connecticut in the 1999 Coaches vs. Cancer Classic. Alford’s team knocked off the Huskies, 70-68, but fell to Stanford in the title game.

Iowa also ran into No. 1 Cincinnati in the 1959 Holiday Classic at Madison Square Garden. That game was played at the previous Garden site. The current MSG opened in February of 1968. The Hawkeyes beat St. John’s and NYU to reach a finals matchup against all-American Oscar Robertson and the top-ranked Bearcats.

Robertson scored 50 points as Cincinnati beat the Hawkeyes, 96-83, before a crowd of 17,280.

Iowa had an all-American of its own in Don Nelson, who finished with 25 points. But Robertson had 33 in the first half alone. He ended up making 18 field goals and 14 free throws in 19 attempts.

“The Big O is great, but we didn’t do the job we should have against him,” Iowa Coach Sharm Scheuerman said.

Cincinnati Coach George Smith said it was one of Robertson’s best games.

“He’s the greatest college basketball player I’ve ever seen,” Smith said.
Iowa is 7-6 overall at Madison Square Garden, and 5-5 in the current building. Duke, 8-2, has one of the nation’s top freshmen in Kyle Filipowski. The 7-footer from Westtown, N.Y.,

Is leading the Blue Devils in both scoring (15.2 points) and rebounding (9.3). McCaffery was one of the first to offer Filipowski a scholarship, actually visited the Iowa campus on the first weekend of July in 2021. Three weeks later he committed to Duke.

This will be Iowa’s ninth game against the Blue Devils, and first since a 80-62 loss in an ACC/Big Ten Challenge game at the United Center in Chicago. Duke leads the series, 7-1. The only Iowa victory came in the first round of the 1994 Rainbow Classic in Honolulu, Hawaii. Jess Settles scored 28 points and added eight rebounds in a 81-71 triumph over the seventh-ranked Blue Devils.

“Settles was incredible,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said.