Chicago Bulls expected to announce Fred Hoiberg as new head coach

For the second time, Chicago’s NBA team has plucked a coach from Iowa State. The Bulls are hoping for greater success on this occasion.

Fred Hoiberg, who has led the Cyclones for the past five seasons, is expected to be announced as the Bulls’ coach on Tuesday.

He met with media in Ames on Monday afternoon at an airport in Ames, telling reporters that he was going to Chicago to “finalize things,” according to the Ames Tribune.

ESPN reported that Hoiberg told several Iowa State players that he is leaving, and the Bulls said they would make a major announcement on Tuesday at 2 p.m.

In 1999, the Bulls hired Tim Floyd from Iowa State to replace Phil Jackson and entered a dismal period the year after Michael Jordan retired. Floyd never won more than 17 games in each of his three full seasons and resigned before Christmas of his fourth.

The Bulls anticipate a much greater return with Hoiberg, who inherits a team that lost a six-game series to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference semifinals and expects many of its key players to return.

Hoiberg’s deal with the Bulls is for $25 million for five years, according to multiple reports.

The loss will be painful for Iowa State. If a 42-year-old can be a school legend, Hoiberg is one.

He was the starting quarterback and basketball captain for Ames High and turned down a football scholarship at Nebraska, where his grandfather Jerry Bush was a former basketball coach, to play hoops for the Cyclones.

Hoiberg became one of the greatest players in school history, scoring 1,993 career points, good for third on the Cyclones’ career chart, and Iowa State went to the NCAA Tournament in three of his four years under coach Johnny Orr.

A 10-year NBA playing career took Hoiberg to Indiana, Chicago and Minnesota, and he led the league in three-point shooting in his final season at 48.3 percent. When his career was cut short by a heart ailment, Hoiberg started a four-year turn in the Timberwolves’ front office. He underwent open-heart surgery this April to replace a damaged valve.

A year into his front-office tenure at Minnesota, after Wayne Morgan was fired at Iowa State, Hoiberg called Cyclones athletic director Jamie Pollard to inquire about the opening. The conversation didn’t go far.

Five years later, when Greg McDermott was fired, Pollard sought out Hoiberg to take over.

Iowa State went 16-16 in Hoiberg’s first season, but the program has soared since then. The Cyclones won 23 games in 2012 and 2013 and won an NCAA Tournament game each year.

In 2014, the Cyclones really broke through, winning 28 games and reaching the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual national champion Connecticut. Iowa State fans still wonder what if … as in, what if one of ISU’s top players, Georges Niang, hadn’t broken a foot earlier in the tournament.

This season, Iowa State repeated as Big 12 Tournament champion, overcoming a 17-point second-half deficit to beat Kansas in the championship game.

But Iowa State was upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, falling as a No. 3 seed to Alabama-Birmingham. Hoiberg’s 115-56 career record gives him the greatest winning percentage (.673) in school history.

Hoiberg didn’t hide his desire to one day coach in the NBA, and the Bulls appear to be a good fit. General manager Gar Forman was an assistant at Iowa State during Hoiberg’s senior season.

And unlike other college coaches who have made the jump to the NBA without pro experience, Hoiberg is taking over a team, led by guard Derrick Rose, that should compete for a conference title.

Iowa State, meanwhile, figures to be a national powerhouse this season with the return of top players Niang, Monte Morris and Jameel McKay.

As for the question of who will lead them, Pollard, because of the timing of the transition, might stay in-house and elevate assistant T.J. Otzelberger, who recently rejoined the program after spending two years at Washington.

Otzelberger was an Iowa State assistant from 2006-13, serving under McDermott and Hoiberg, and was named associate head coach in 2010.

This story was originally published June 1, 2015 at 9:30 PM with the headline "Chicago Bulls expected to announce Fred Hoiberg as new head coach."