IOWA CITY, IOWA — After leading Drake to its first round-of-32 appearance in 54 years, Ben McCollum will move two hours east and take over the Iowa men’s basketball program, Hawkeyes athletic director Beth Goetz confirmed to The Athletic.
McCollum, 43, led the Bulldogs to a school-record 31 wins in his first season as a Division I head coach after an incredible run at Division II Northwest Missouri State. He takes over for Fran McCaffery, the winningest coach in Iowa history, who was fired March 14.
At Northwest Missouri State, McCollum won four national titles and 11 MIAA conference crowns while compiling a 394-91 record. This year at Drake, McCollum led the Bulldogs (31-4) to the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season and tournament titles. Drake, a No. 11 seed, beat sixth-seeded Missouri 67-57 on Thursday before falling 77-64 to No. 3 seed Texas Tech on Saturday.
McCollum took over a program that had won consecutive Missouri Valley Conference championships but lost coach Darian DeVries to West Virginia. All but two of the Bulldogs’ remaining players either went with DeVries or transferred elsewhere, including DeVries’ son, Tucker, who was the MVC player of the year in 2024. McCollum brought four players from Northwest Missouri State to Des Moines. Bennett Stirtz, who has one year of eligibility remaining, became this year’s MVC player of the year.
“People talk about culture. How do you build a culture? There’s no building it,” McCollum said after the loss to Texas Tech. “There’s getting the right people. It’s 100 percent the right people. I’ve been blessed to be around the right people.”
McCollum was born in Iowa City and raised in northwest Iowa, where he was a first-team all-state point guard at Storm Lake St. Mary’s in 1999. He then played two seasons at North Iowa Area Community College before transferring to Northwest Missouri State for his final two years.
After his playing career concluded, McCollum was an assistant at Division II Emporia State for four seasons. McCollum was hired as Northwest Missouri State’s head coach in 2010 by Wren Baker, who is now the athletic director at West Virginia.
The Hawkeyes finished 17-16 this season and 7-13 in Big Ten play, just the second time since 2012 they finished with a losing league record. The Hawkeyes’ average attendance plummeted to 9,161 this season, the lowest in 60 years. According to figures provided by the school through an open-records request, only 5,176 patrons used their tickets per game. Considering Iowa’s men’s basketball tradition and lack of revenue from a former money-making operation, a change was necessary.
Iowa lags behind many of its Big Ten competitors in providing name, image and likeness resources, which in part was because of a growing disconnect between the fans and the program. McCaffery had supporters and detractors but did not enthuse fans or potential donors beyond his inner circle and was viewed as reluctant to sell the program.
McCaffery finished 297-207 overall and 143-141 against Big Ten competition. The Hawkeyes competed in seven NCAA Tournaments with four first-round victories but never reached the Sweet 16 in his tenure, a dubious streak that dates to 1999.
(Photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
