Iowa men’s basketball will look for a new point guard next season. Why McCollum is up for the task ... but later

IOWA CITY — Ben McCollum knew Iowa guard Bennett Stirtz could play college basketball within the first few minutes of watching him in high school.

Specifically, Division II basketball.

It wasn’t until McCollum saw Stirtz play at Northwest Missouri State that the Iowa men’s basketball head coach realized Stirtz could play beyond that.

“His freshman year, I’m like ‘geez, this guy’s a high-major kid easy,’” McCollum said Tuesday. “And then he just continued to get better and better and better.”

The Hawkeyes face Maryland Wednesday evening, one of the final eight games remaining in the regular season. Though Iowa will still have a conference tournament and potential March Madness appearance beyond those eight games, the reality of next seasons looms in the not-so-distant future.

Stirtz scored a career-high 36 points against Northwestern Sunday afternoon, improving from a previous career-high 32 points against Oregon just last week. He’s the first Iowa player to be the Big Ten’s Co-Player of the Week in back-to-back weeks since Keegan Murray in 2022.

Since scoring the new carrer-high, Stirtz also earned the U.S. Basketball Writer’s Association’s Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week honor, and was one of five Big Ten players named to the Wooden Award Late Midseason Top 20 Watch List.

He’ll also be a highly sot-after NBA Lottery pick when this season ends, leaving the Hawkeyes without a point guard.

McCollum’s found a plethora of success recruiting point guards previously. He recruited DeShaun Cooper and Justin Pitts at Northwest Missouri State, both of whom helped McCollum bring in the head coach’s four Division II national championships.

McCollum will have to find a new starting point guard for next year. Is it on the immediate forefront of the head coach’s mind? Not when Iowa visits Maryland at XFINITY Center Wednesday night. But it is something he’ll look into, and already knows what the plan will be.

“It’s a pretty good place to play point guard, I would say,” McCollum said on the Hawk Talk radio show Monday evening. “It’s probably a good opportunity for somebody. I think it’s the best recruit available ... whether it’s high school or the portal, we’ll find somebody that’s efficient enough to be able to replace that.”

The bigger focus has been on finishing this regular season — the one with Stirtz dressing in a Hawkeye jersey.

The matchup against Maryland provides Iowa with an opportunity to sweep the Terrapins during the regular season for just the second time in program history. Maryland was Iowa’s first Big Ten win of the season, an 83-64 win in Iowa City on Dec. 6, which was McCollum’s first Big Ten win.

McCollum’s also one win away from tying Bucky O’Conner’s 19 wins he collected as a first-year head coach back during the 1951-52 season — putting him at second-most wins by a first-year leader in program history.

And of course, there’s always protecting the six-game win streak Iowa’s held since ending its three-game skid in January. With No. 13 Purdue immediately following the mid-week East Coast visit, Iowa hopes to avoid a repeat of the Minnesota-into-Illinois turnaround, too.

“It's just a matter of knowing what the recipe is to be able to win on the road, and making sure that you're fully prepared, fully ready to go take something,” McCollum said. “Because you can't just go on the road and just say, ‘hey, we're just going to play better and try to win.’”

It’s like every coach’s saying: focus on what’s immediately in front, and the distant projects fall into place when the time comes. Immediately in front of Iowa is Maryland, and the expectations for point guard will be answered in due time.

But McCollum will know when he’s got his guy. That is guaranteed.

“We’ve just had a knack, I guess,” McCollum said. “Kind of got a little bit lucky in finding the right point guards, finding the ones that you know are ready to go, ready to perform. Hopefully we'll do that again, and we'll find a couple and see what happens.”

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