Ben McCollum just might have been born to be Iowa’s basketball coach.
On April 12, 1981, McCollum entered the world at what was then known as Mercy Hospital in downtown Iowa City — just four blocks from several dorms and 2.4 miles from Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Though McCollum and his family moved 250 miles away to Storm Lake in northwest Iowa when he was 5 or 6, his love for the Hawkeyes only grew stronger. He wore No. 10 like his idol, Iowa point guard B.J. Armstrong. He attended Hawkeye summer camps. He and his friends kept the same enemies list.
“Oh, you just hated the Cyclones growing up,” McCollum told Hoops HQ with a laugh. “There was no Big Ten team you had a lot of hatred for. It was always anti-Cyclones and anti-Cornhuskers.”
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He would have loved to stick it to Iowa State and Nebraska while wearing an Iowa uniform, but his playing career took him to North Iowa Area Community College and then Div. II Northwest Missouri State, which inadvertently created the coaching path that has led him back to Iowa City as Fran McCaffrey’s successor.
In McCollum’s two seasons playing for Steve Tappmeyer at Northwest Missouri State (2001-03), he was no more than an eighth man on teams that went 52-12 and reached the Div. II NCAA Tournament Elite Eight and Sweet Sixteen. But in his 11.3 minutes per game for the Bearcats, McCollum embodied the traits that his teams display. He shot 44.3 percent on threes, turned the ball over rarely and played defense like he was a bruising power forward instead of an undersized guard.
“He was a good player and he was skilled, but tough is what comes to mind first,” Tappmeyer said. “He just had a mental toughness to fight through any of the fatigue stuff. Injuries, any of those things, he was a tough guy. He played with two other really good guards at that time. Had one of them not been there, his numbers would have been higher — but he was a great team guy.”
“Coach Mac is first-class and pushes guys. There’s a standard and he gets guys to that point. It’s hard, again, to argue his resume.”
Brendan Hausen, incoming Iowa guard
“I thought (not playing much) actually helped me become that much better of a coach,” McCollum said. “Because you’re got to understand the value of everyone and understand the value of what you can bring, regardless of how much you’re getting in the game.”
Not that McCollum intended to be a coach. Not at first, anyway. When he graduated from Northwest Missouri State with a Finance degree in 2003, he took a job with Wells Fargo pitching investment products.
“I felt like I was pretty good at it,” McCollum said. “I think I was our leading salesman.”
Yet he lasted just three months.
“He was working for them and he came in one day, shut the door and we started talking,” Tappmeyer said. “He said, ‘I think I want to coach.’ My first impression was, ‘Well, lay down and let’s put a cold compress on your head and maybe it’ll pass.’”
It didn’t. McCollum quit Wells Fargo. And because Tappmeyer already had promised his lone graduate assistant position to someone else, McCollum paid his own way toward a Master’s degree so he could serve as an unpaid grad assistant.
“Obviously I was thrilled to have him on staff,” Tappmeyer said. “He was great for us. He was kind of what we stood for.”
Dr. Andy Peterson, Northwest Missouri State’s athletic director, has been close friends (and frequent Noon Ball Association teammates) with McCollum for more than 15 years. But when they met, McCollum was in his first year as a GA and Peterson was one of three redshirting freshmen. He soon learned what the Bearcats stood for.
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“We didn’t get to travel to the away games. And neither did he, typically,” Peterson said. “So we would stay behind and he would just try to kill us over the weekend while the team was out playing two games.”
Fast-forward a fistful of years. McCollum went to Emporia State for four seasons as an assistant before returning to Northwest in 2008-09, Tappmeyer’s 21st and final year as the head coach and Peterson’s first year as a GA. McCollum ascended to the head-coaching job in 2009 when he was 28 years old. It wasn’t long before Northwest Missouri State became the gold standard in Division II.
The Bearcats won the national championship in 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2022, which included a 38-0 romp in 2019 when all but six wins were by double digits. NMSU might have reeled off a six-peat, but COVID shut down the 2020 season with the Bearcats ranked No. 1 in the nation. The 2018 team was great, too, but reigning Div. II National Player of the Year Justin Pitts broke his foot in the final game before the NCAA Tournament, which led to top-seeded NMSU getting shocked in the first round on their home floor.
By the way, you’ll never hear any of these details come from McCollum’s lips. Peterson shared them to explain how Tappmeyer’s teachings have rubbed off on so many who played for him.
“He had a Tough Enough list,” Peterson said. “I’ve got it hanging on my wall. ‘No Excuses.’ ‘Be Responsible.’ ‘Be Accountable.’ ‘The Disease of Me.’ I mean, I could list off a million things that he pummeled into us that was through the ruse of basketball, but were unbelievable life lessons.”
After piling up a 394-91 record (.812) and three National Coach of the Year awards in 15 seasons at Northwest Missouri State, McCollum got the callup to Drake last year. He brought five NMSU players with him, including star point guard Bennett Stirtz, and the Bulldogs promptly set school records for wins (31) and winning percentage (.886) while earning the program’s first NCAA Tournament win since 1971.
“No, I didn’t have any concerns that what we did wouldn’t translate,” McCollum said. “A lot of times, people get overly anxious about that stuff. It’s like, you overthink it. We made sure we didn’t do that. We knew that what we were doing is successful at any level. I think toughness still wins. I think defense still wins. I think all the little things that we did throughout, all that stuff is winning basketball. That doesn’t change based on the level.”
In early February, Tappmeyer visited the McCollums in Des Moines. On Friday night, he watched Ben’s son Peyton (a first-team all-state guard who’s now a freshman on Iowa’s roster) play for Waukee Northwest High School. On Saturday night, he watched Drake beat Indiana State. In between, he attended Drake’s shootaround.
“Ben spent about an hour and 15 minutes on the floor, going back over their scout and what they were going to do and everything,” Tappmeyer said. “They got done and, of course, I know his staff. (Assistant) Jesse Shaw played for me also. I told them, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt this dumb on a basketball court in my life.’
“He is so detailed. It was like a Ph. D in basketball you were watching. It was really impressive. He has thought out every angle.”
Before other schools (Indiana?) could angle their way into negotiations, Iowa locked down McCollum with a six-year, $22.75 million contract. For this move, he’s bringing six Drake players with him, including AP honorable mention All-American Stirtz, and has enhanced the roster with Horizon League Player of the Year Alvaro Folgueiras (a 6-foot-9 junior forward who averaged 14.1 points , 9.1 rebounds, 3.2 assists per game at Robert Morris) and sweet-shooting 6-foot-4 senior guard Brendan Hausen (90 threes for Kansas State last year).
Hausen, a top-75 prospect who was part of Jay Wright’s last recruiting class at Villanova, bought into McCollum’s vision without visiting the campus. Three weeks into summer workouts, he’s even more sold.
“I’d say the culture stands out,” Hausen told reporters this week. “Coach Mac is first-class and pushes guys. There’s a standard and he gets guys to that point. It’s hard, again, to argue his resume.”
If you’re curious how McCollum’s resume might look after a few years at Iowa, Tappmeyer offers this story.
“I remember after his first national championship,” he said. “Where most people would be just enjoying the moment for a month or so, the first thing he did was try and get ahold of Billy Donovan to see how you win back-to-back national championships.
“That’s just kind of how his mind works. He won’t take his foot off the gas.”
