Ben McCollum starts Iowa men’s basketball era with “chip on my shoulder”

IOWA CITY — It’s the heart of football season. College basketball season sneaks up on us in the first week of November, and it takes a while for it get to gain traction with the public.

That may be Iowa men’s basketball’s specific story. The Hawkeyes are a blank canvas to the world, a team with a new head coach and a roster full of players who are unfamiliar to Iowa fans and to Big Ten opponents, and vice versa.

Season ticket sales are up, with 7,710 sold as of Wednesday morning. The announced average attendance last season was 9,161, and there weren’t close to that many people in Carver-Hawkeye Arena for some of the games.

Iowa has seven players from Missouri and metro Kansas City. It has one from Oklahoma, one from Tennessee, one from Spain. Guard Brendan Hausen of Amarillo, Texas, came to Iowa via Villanova and Kansas State.

“Who are these guys?” is one question for this team. As is “How good can they be?” The first query will be answered soon. The second? It will be a 31-game work-in-progress.

What is known, however, is that there are accomplished Division I players on the Hawkeyes who have experienced winning and NCAA tournament appearances. Now, we’ll see if they get similar experiences in Ben McCollum’s maiden season at Iowa after 15 years at Northwest Missouri State and one at Drake.

Ben McCollum: Don’t have an edge of arrival

“I’ve always worked better with the chip on my shoulder,” McCollum said Wednesday at his first media day. “I think that when you take over a program, there’s naturally a great deal of excitement. I think if you’re not careful, it can create a sense of arrival.

“Understanding that I've always worked better with a chip on my shoulder, either (been) doubted or whatever. … making sure that we continue to have that edge and don't have a sense of arrival, more so than anybody in the league, that's what we're going to need to have to be successful in the Big Ten.”

His roster’s focal point is senior point guard Bennett Stirtz of Drake. He’s someone who talked Wednesday about having that proverbial chip on his shoulder, though he was a preseason-All Big Ten selection last week.

Stirtz was the Missouri Valley Conference’s Player of the Year last season for a 31-4 Drake team coached by MVC Coach of the Year McCollum. Can he get the better of high-major players? Can they hang with him?

Defense will be the highest priority

Things definitely are different here after Fran McCaffery’s 14-year run as Iowa’s coach with the focus on offense. “Defense first,” seems to be a McCollum mantra.

What the offense will look like remains to be seen. Drake overcame a lack of perimeter shooting to accompany Stirtz last year. Hausen made 90 3-pointers at Kansas State last season. The lone holdover scholarship player, redshirt freshman Cooper Koch, showed a good 3-point eye last year before injury shorted his season.

McCollum has done nothing but win. His career record is 426-95, with four NCAA titles in Division II and one league championship, one league-tournament title and one NCAA tourney win at a Division I mid-major. This, now, is college hoops’ highest level.

“it's actually supposed to be hard,” McCollum said. “It's supposed to be a struggle, and that's the cool part about being able to win championships. It's not the actual championship itself that's great, but it's the struggle and the fight to be able to get to that level.”

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