From Bulldogs to Hawkeyes: Why six players chose to follow Ben McCollum and join Iowa men’s basketball

IOWA CITY — Every former Drake-turned-Iowa men’s basketball player knew it was happening without a second thought.

They were following their head coach.

Iowa men’s basketball opens its 2025-26 season with first-year head coach Ben McCollum, who brings six players from last year’s Drake team. Some of them followed McCollum to the small Des Moines-area school from the Northwest Missouri State two years ago, too.

There wasn’t any hesitation. The modern era of the college sports transfer portal allowed them to hop from Division II, to the Missouri Valley Conference to the Big Ten in the span of three years.

“I mean, I put my name in with a ‘do not contact tag,’” Hawkeye guard Bennett Stirtz said. “I just knew I was coming here.”

Iowa had a near-complete roster turnover when McCollum was hired. Of the 14 players on this season’s roster, two wore the Hawkeye jersey last season. It’s not the first time McCollum had to reset a program, he’d already done so at Drake, but he had a veteran group of players helping.

“They coached the team essentially,” McCollum said. “I felt like I did a good job of coaching. But they were able to really instill that.”

This year, he has veterans, but there’s still a bit of youth to the Hawkeyes.

“You always have to start from ground zero, when you do that, you can't skip steps,” assistant coach Bryston Williams said. “Regardless if you have a lot of returners or no returners, the work is the work, and the standard is the standard. But when you have six guys that came with you, you can now, when you're installing stuff, show the other guys what the tempo is supposed to be like, the energy you need to play with.”

Stirtz, forwards Joey Matteoni and Cam Manyawu and guards Tavio Banks, Isaia Howard and Kael Combs all bring in the experience of playing for an NCAA tournament-caliber team with McCollum last year.

In some cases, these new Hawkeyes never expected to wear a Division I program’s jersey, let alone a Big Ten one. It was McCollum’s belief in them, and growing their confidence, that’s helped give those six their opportunity to follow their head coach from one school to another.

“He's just been lifting that up, and that's been just with the assistant coaches coming in and getting workout, getting workouts with them, and just getting reps on reps, on reps, has obviously helped my confidence,” Stirtz said. “But I know Max told me a lot of times that I belong in the Big Ten, and I can be a good player in the Big Ten, and that's just been a big thing for me, is just knowing that I belong here and that I can excel.”

The Hawkeyes may face the comparison from McCollum’s transition into the Drake head coaching position throughout this year, but there’s a sense of excitement for Iowa to try and make a statement with those six new Hawkeyes playing together again.

There’s no need to build chemistry with them, they’ve already proven they blend on the court.

Now it’s about blending in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

“What we really try to focus on is trying to consistently improve,” McCollum said. “Trying to focus on that process piece, trying to, if we have a successful day, not focusing on that necessarily but making sure that the next one is just a little bit better.”

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