The Iowa State men’s basketball roster wasn’t the only thing that needed rebuilding this offseason.
With the departures of consensus All-American Joshua Jefferson, program cornerstone Tamin Lipsey, and the sharpshooting Milan Momcilovic, those are major players to replace. But the Cyclones also had two big vacancies to fill on their coaching staff.
As J.R. Blount (San Diego) and Kyle Green (Northern Iowa) left for opportunities to make their Division I head coaching debuts, T.J. Otzelberger had to work to find new players while interviewing potential candidates for his coaching staff.
He worked fast. The Cyclones landed five transfer commits in a 72-hour stretch in April to complement a three-man incoming freshman class. For the coaching staff, Iowa State announced the quick hiring of Tim Buckley on April 6, and Allan Hanson was revealed as the final assistant coach hiring on April 24.
They join returning assistant coaches Erik Crawford and Nate Schmidt.
“With Coach Buck, we’d worked together before, so there’s a synergy and alignment that’s been in place that we’ve had in the past working relationship, and it’ll benefit us here,” Otzelberger said of his new assistants. “He immediately was able to come in, hit the ground running. It’s been a great chemistry and synergy with other coaches on our staff, Schmidt, Crawford. Then with Al (Hanson), he’s been back and forth, as he’s tied things up at his previous employer and doing things with his family, so he’s been in the office for visits and things along those lines. Now he’s here full-time, so I think it’ll be exciting.
“This is a time of the year where, between Tailgate Tour, conference meetings, recruiting, we’re kind of all scattered when our players aren’t here. So it’ll be great to get everybody together as a staff during the upcoming weeks and just get everybody moving forward on the same page as we enter our summer workouts.”
Players are expected to all arrive by June 13. The Cyclones’ eight-week summer training program will begin on June 15, and it’ll be the first opportunity for Iowa State to get a look at its new-look roster for the 2026-27 season. For the new assistant coaches, it’ll be their first chance to work hands-on with players.
Otzelberger has used a unique system with his assistant coaches since taking the helm at Iowa State. While they serve an important piece with player and positional development, they also function in roles similar to coordinators on a football team.
Crawford and Schmidt are essentially offensive coordinators for the Cyclones’ basketball team. Previously, Green and Blount were in charge of defense. Now that they’ve moved on to the next chapter of their careers, these newly hired assistants will play a big role in maintaining the Cyclones’ defensive intensity.
“I think there’s a lot of parallels. At the same time, you lose two great coaches, it’s just like when you lose Tamin (Lipsey) and you lose Joshua Jefferson, you don’t just say, ‘Well this is the new Tamin and the new Joshua, right?'” Otzelberger said. “You want to put the coaches in position to be successful, to teach to their strengths within the realm of how we do things as well. I think it’s my responsibility to determine where my influence comes in, when am I leading a drill or something? Then, when are we putting those guys in position to do it?”
Buckley arrives in Ames from Cincinnati. He was an assistant coach for the Bearcats for the last two seasons, but he comes in with more than three decades of coaching experience. The 62-year-old also previously worked with Otzelberger at UNLV from 2019-21. Before working at UNLV, he was a scout for the Minnesota Timberwolves from 2017-19.
Most of his experience comes as an assistant, with previous stops at Wisconsin, Marquette, Iowa, Indiana, UNLV, South Carolina and Cincinnati. He was also an assistant coach at Ball State from 1994-99 before being promoted to Cardinals’ head coach from 2000-06, his lone stretch leading a Division I program. Buckley has built a reputation for player development and recruiting. Some of the top talent he had worked with and recruited include Dwyane Wade, Yogi Farrell, Victor Oladipo, Cody Zeller and Noah Vonleh.
“We’ve got a background together,” Otzelberger said of Buckley. “He’s been really good for us defensively at a previous stop, and so there’s a tremendous synergy. He and I are great friends. We’ve stayed in communication. There’s a shared vision of how we do things and so as much as anyone can come into our program, he was in the league, he played against us, he continued to watch, we worked together, so I think there’ll be a similar responsibility to what Coach Green was doing defensively and what Coach Buckley was doing.”
As for Hanson, he was previously an assistant at Bradley for one season. He worked closely with Jaquan Johnson, a guard who transferred to Iowa State during the offseason. He also spent two years at Southern Utah and made his Division I coaching debut as an assistant at Western Illinois during the 2022-23 campaign.
He was also a successful high school basketball coach, compiling a 117-39 record at Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, from 2016-22. The Wauwatosa, Wisconsin native also played college basketball at Milwaukee. He appeared in 114 games and made 57 starts from 2004-08. He was a part of Milwaukee’s Sweet 16 run in 2005.
At Bradley, he worked on point guard development and coached ball-pressure from a defensive standpoint. Those responsibilities are similar to the ones Blount had at Iowa State, so Otzelberger is optimistic for Hanson to make a smooth transition.
“Always been familiar with him, being from Milwaukee, he’s had a great reputation,” Otzelberger said. “He’s one of those guys that everybody likes and everybody’s pulling for, because he’s such a hard worker. He’s so committed to student-athletes and their development. He’s got a dynamic personality, just a great guy to be around. He’s somebody that I’ve been aware of for a number of years. … He had been at Southern Utah and when you’re back at Bradley, you’re in the Midwest. So a lot greater sense of familiarity to what he’s doing and how he’s doing that every single day. Cyclone fans are going to be really excited for what he contributes to our program.”
Although there are new faces and names on both the coaching staff and the player roster, the philosophy, demands and goals all remain the same.
“Play the same defense,” Otzelberger said. “To me, that’s our calling card, it’s something that we built this on when we came in six years ago and continue to evolve and develop based on the personnel. I think a lot of times, people look at offense and understand playing with the strengths of the offense. We try to do that same thing defensively, leveraging the strengths of what do we have on defense and how can we be at our best?”
Eugene Rapay covers Iowa State athletics for the Des Moines Register. Contact Eugene at erapay@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @erapay5.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: New assistant coaches settle into Iowa State basketball roles
Reporting by Eugene Rapay, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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