It’s 5:30 a.m. While most of Iowa City is still asleep, the lights inside Ben McCollum’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena office are shining. Iowa’s new head men’s basketball coach prefers to start his day early, sometimes throwing in a morning run. 

Before he can enjoy his pregame meal — a Snickers bar and a cup of coffee — and take the floor in his infamous white button-down shirt, McCollum is hard at work preparing the Hawkeye program for one of its most anticipated seasons in years. 

Coaching the University of Iowa is a dream come true for McCollum, but he doesn’t have much time to enjoy it. His office still has unpacked boxes and a few pictures on the wall, which perfectly represent his personality. 

The coach presents a quiet, friendly demeanor off the court, but on it, he’s an intense teacher of the sport. Basketball may not be as popular as football for its physicality, but the sport’s competitiveness is why McCollum loves it so much. 

“I probably enjoyed competition the most, more than even just the game of basketball,” McCollum told the Daily Iowan in July. “Basketball was just the game that you kind of fell in love with through that competition — for that love of competition.” 

Growing up in the college basketball-crazed state of Iowa made that obsession easier to obtain. Iowa has no professional sports teams, so McCollum had to gravitate toward a college team. 

The choice was a no-brainer for McCollum. The Hawkeyes were one of the most nationally recognized college basketball brands of the era. Stars B.J. Armstrong, Roy Marble, and Chris Street dominated many local television sets in the state. 

One of those TV stations was KITV, the local NBC affiliate in Sioux City. The station serves the northwestern section of the state, including McCollum’s hometown of Storm Lake. The nearly four-hour drive made it difficult for McCollum and his family to attend many games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, but he was able to stay close to the Hawkeyes through the TV screen. 

“Probably didn’t come to a ton of the basketball games [at Carver],” McCollum said. “You just didn’t make your way up here. You just watch them on TV.” 

Though he couldn’t see them play during the season, McCollum was able to interact with the UI teams through the annual Iowa basketball traveling summer camps, which always made a stop in Storm Lake. Started by legendary head coach Lute Olsen in the 1970s, the camps allowed aspiring youth basketball players to learn new skills, compete against other kids in the area, and interact with their favorite Hawkeye players and coaches. 

The camps were easily one of the highlights of McCollum’s childhood, and he would always be the first to arrive early, sometimes as early as two hours before the start of the event. 

“It was what you look forward to every summer, just being from there, and you get five-on-five competition against some of the better players in northwest Iowa,” McCollum said. “Obviously, you had the coaches that came as well. And you got to meet some of those coaches and players. It was a blast to get there.”

The experience further instilled McCollum’s sharp competitiveness, which carried over into his playing career. McCollum always dreamed of playing for the UI, but in his own words, he “was never good enough” to play at the Division I level. 

After playing his first two seasons of college basketball at the junior college level for North Iowa Community College in Mason City, McCollum wanted a new challenge. With help from one of his best friends, McCollum tried out for NCAA Division II school Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, Missouri. 

“It went like, ‘Hey, I’m going to come down and try out for the team, essentially, and play with the guys,’” McCollum said. 

McCollum did, in fact, try out for the Bearcats and successfully made the team. He didn’t earn much playing time under longtime coach Steve Tappmeyer, but he made the most of his time on the bench, closely studying Tappmeyer’s coaching skills and learning the ins and outs of running a successful college basketball program. 

“I learned the importance of guys that don’t play as much as they like, and the value that they can bring to a team and the intensity and energy,” McCollum said. “I also saw what it means to be at an elite level, like to be able to be in first place consistently is really
difficult.” 

McCollum’s passion and love for the game were evident to many visiting recruits. Austin Meyer, who would later play and coach with McCollum, quickly picked up on it during a scrimmage with the recruits. 

“He was always communicating, even somebody like me as a 17,18-year-old coming on a visit, you’re kind of nervous and this and that, but he right away was great on the visit, making me feel at home,” Meyer said. 

From finance to film watching 

McCollum graduated from Northwest Missouri State University in 2003 with a degree in finance. He planned to move to Kansas City to work for Wells Fargo with his fiancée — now wife — Michelle McCollum, but soon realized he wanted to coach. 

Michelle was caught off guard, but quickly showed support for her future husband. 

“She goes, ‘OK, as long as it’s your passion,’” McCollum recalled. 

Family has always played a big role in McCollum’s life. His mother, Mary Timko, raised McCollum and his brother, Joe, as a single mom for McCollum’s first 11 years. If raising two young boys wasn’t enough, Mary also had to balance motherhood with her professional life. 

Foreshadowing her son’s future head coaching position, Mary earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and law degrees from the University of Iowa. She began her legal career in Iowa City as an assistant county attorney in Johnson County, where McCollum and his brother were born. 

Mary and her young family remained in Iowa City until 1988, when she was appointed as an associate juvenile judge for Iowa District 3. The district serves 16 counties in northwest Iowa, including Buena Vista County, where Storm Lake is located. 

Timko has lived in Storm Lake ever since, closely following McCollum’s coaching journey. McCollum credits his mother as one of the biggest influences in his life, and watching her go through her own path as a single mother has taught him a crucial lesson. 

“She just kind of taught you, you’re not a victim to your circumstances and to keep fighting, and she’s elitely competitive,” McCollum said. 

McCollum’s male influence came from his stepfather, Roger Timko, a 32-year veteran law enforcement investigator with the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement and the Division of Criminal Investigation. 

Mary and Roger met through their respective jobs in law enforcement. They married in 1992, when McCollum was 11, and remained together until Roger’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2024. According to his obituary, Roger treated his two stepsons as his own and was angry when COVID-19 ended McCollum’s chances of winning a second consecutive national championship. 

“[I’ve] been through a lot in regards to adversity and success, so family is a big deal to myself,” McCollum said. “A lot of people have done a lot of things for me, so I’m certainly appreciative of all.” 

McCollum leaned on his family’s support and stayed in Maryville for two years. The young coach was forced to pay his own way through his first year of graduate school before joining Tappmeyer’s staff as a graduate assistant for the 2004-05 season. 

McCollum’s first full-time position came the following season, when he was hired as an assistant coach for Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, under head coach David Moe. The job was both tedious and rewarding, as McCollum was the lead scout, recruiter, and even the team bus driver. 

“I think a lot of people in these kinds of professions, everybody wants to be the head coach at Iowa, but no one wants to pay for their own way of graduate school for a year,” McCollum said. “I think that’s the beauty of what I was allowed to do.” 

McCollum served on the Hornets staff through the end of the 2008-09 season. Tappmeyer, who had built Northwest Missouri State University into a perennial power by then, announced his retirement. The school began an immediate search for Tappmeyer’s replacement, but it didn’t have to look far. 

Tappmeyer had always wanted McCollum to succeed him in Maryville, and his advocacy was enough to convince Northwest to hire the rising 28-year-old coach. 

“He had built such a great legacy and obviously a great program, and so it meant more that he wanted me to have that job, that he thought that much of me to get that one,” McCollum said. 

Trial and error 

McCollum’s second stint in Maryville began on an inconspicuous note with two straight losing seasons, the first time the Bearcats had done so since the late 1970s. 

Yet despite these struggles, McCollum never panicked. While he doesn’t enjoy losing, the coach said one of the keys to building a program is to learn and adjust from tough campaigns like those. After all, Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke squads had consecutive losing seasons early in his tenure before becoming one of college basketball’s signature programs. 

“I almost feel bad for coaches who come in and finish third, because what happens sometimes is they don’t understand how far away they actually are, and they don’t improve,” McCollum said. “But when you hit rock bottom, then you have to figure it out, or you fail and get fired. One of the two.” 

McCollum’s persistence would quickly pay off, and Northwest became a DII powerhouse. The Bearcats would never suffer another losing season under McCollum’s watch, winning 20 or more games in each of his final 13 seasons in Maryville. 

“McCollum is just on another level, as far as watching film and calling you in to watch two or three clips and changing just the smallest detail that can put you in the best position for success that weekend,” Ryan Hawkins, one of McCollum’s former players at Northwest and later a star at Creighton, said. 

Tappmeyer’s Northwest teams reached the Elite Eight twice, but McCollum and his team broke through to the 2017 Final Four and secured the first national championship in program history with a 71-61 win over Fairmont State University in the final. 

Three more Final Four appearances followed in 2019, 2021, and 2022, and the Bearcats left with a national title in each one. The impressive run earned McCollum five NABC DII National Coach of the Year awards — the most in the award’s history. 

McCollum’s success at Northwest led many DI programs to call for his services. While McCollum’s goal was to coach at the highest level, the decision was always about what would be the right fit for him and his family. 

“Some of them were just more conversations, and some of them were job offers,” McCollum said. “ It’s just, obviously, none that were the right ones.”

It took 15 years for McCollum to find the right fit, but when Drake University called, the opportunity to return to his home state proved to be the right job. 

“I think the timing was right. I think just being from the state of Iowa, that’s a big deal,” McCollum said. “Being closer to home, it was from a financial perspective, was set up to be successful. I love Des Moines. Des Moines is awesome. So there’s a lot of factors in that.” 

Drake had become a Missouri Valley Conference contender under head coach Darian DeVries, but his swift exit for West Virginia left the cupboard bare. Bulldog fans were excited about McCollum’s arrival, but the expectation was that it would take him a few years to build the program.

McCollum needed only one season to return Drake to the top of the Valley. Led by star point guard Bennett Stirtz, the Bulldogs won a school-record 31 games, both the regular season and conference championships, and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time in 54 years. 

While Drake fans and the local media celebrated the unexpected season, McCollum and his team remained focused. Success is never a surprise for McCollum. He’s just trying to make sure his squad is prepared each night. 

“I don’t really think like that. I think more process-focused. You don’t really think, ‘OK, I’m trying to go 31-4 this year,’” McCollum said. “It’s more I’m just trying to be the best version of myself and have the best team that we could possibly have.”

McCollum’s rapid success led many national media outlets to tie him to various power-conference openings. Longtime UI head coach Fran McCaffery was fired just one week before Drake’s first-round matchup against Missouri, and the rumors began circulating that McCollum would fill the role. 

Despite the constant stories from the press, McCollum remained locked in on the Bulldogs. 

“You just have to stay focused, and you just have to hope that your team trusts that you’re focused on what needs to be, what needs to happen, and that’s what we were,” McCollum said. 

Following Drake’s second-round loss to Texas Tech, KCCI reporter Shannon Ehrhardt asked McCollum if he would stay in Des Moines for another season. The coach didn’t confirm or deny his plans, but his reaction
was telling. 

“Those are questions that I don’t probably want to answer right now,” a chuckling McCollum said. 

Forty-eight hours later, McCollum was named as the UI’s 23rd head men’s basketball coach. 

Living the dream 

McCollum is the first native Iowan to lead the Iowa program since Dick Schultz in the mid-1970s. The coach understands the state’s landscape and culture more than most people, but a position like this comes with great pressure from a loyal fanbase. 

“It’s cool just having grown up here, and obviously we’re super excited about that, but again, it’s still, ‘So now you’ve got the job, so what are you going to do to make it great?’” McCollum said.

Turning the Hawkeyes into a great program will not be an easy task for McCollum. The Hawkeyes were once a perennial postseason contender under McCaffery, but missed the NCAA tournament in his final two seasons, leading to dwindling fan attendance and enthusiasm. 

He has heavily emphasized the importance of reaching out to the Iowa faithful. The coach has been a frequent attendee at numerous Hawkeye sporting events at hiring, often shaking hands and talking with fans, even hanging out in the student section before UI football games. 

“Getting people excited about Iowa basketball is important, and that’s part of my job. So I’m going to keep doing that,” McCollum said. 

McCollum has carried the gesture over to the local media as well. He gave countless interviews with many outlets over the summer — including the DI — and opened his first media day press conference by thanking the media for their coverage. 

“Part of their job is to get those interviews, and part of my job is to publicize some of the cool things that are going on in Iowa basketball,” McCollum said. “It’s just about being a good person.” 

Promoting the program is one thing, but winning is what will ultimately keep Carver-Hawkeye Arena filled each winter. Many Drake players, including Stirtz, followed McCollum to Iowa City, but McCollum also found success in the transfer portal, adding Kansas State University guard Brendan Hausen and Robert Morris University forward Alvaro Folguieras, the reigning Horizon League Player of the Year.

Hausen, a career 39 percent three-point shooter who also played two seasons for Villanova University, should provide plenty of offensive firepower, while the 6-foot-11 Folguieras could be the necessary steady presence near the rim. Hausen has been in Iowa City for only a few months, but he credits McCollum for building a strong culture. 

“Coach Mac is the culture guy. He doesn’t let us have bad days,” Hausen said. “We win bad days here. The culture, it just doesn’t die.” 

Like the UI fans, McCollum and his coaching staff won’t have a great gauge on their team until the season begins on Nov. 4, but Hawkeye fans are already anticipating a scrappy, competitive squad. That style has been a trademark of McCollum’s teams and bolstered his reputation as an intense coach. 

Most of McCollum’s current players are used to his rigorous practice routines, but some of the newcomers to his system are still taking time to get acquainted with it. One of those players is forward Cooper Koch, one of only two players from McCaffery’s final UI squad to remain with McCollum. 

Koch, who credits McCollum for “lighting a fire” under him in practices, says the most significant difference between a McCaffery-coached practice and a McCollum practice is McCollum’s focus on defense, which was always the Achilles heel of the McCaffery era. 

“Just the emphasis on defense, because we practice that, I’d say, a little over half the practice,” Koch said. “So working on that will just help us that much more.” 

Though McCollum will likely always be known for his intense coaching, anyone who has worked or played with him sees the opposite off the hardwood. He maintains a close friendship with Meyer, who was an assistant coach with him for 10 seasons at Northwest and is now the head coach of the Northwest women’s basketball program. 

“Even though I haven’t worked with him in five, six years now, [he’s] just always checking in on how I am doing, and always if I had questions on things, but he’s just a great friend and a great mentor,” Meyer said. 

Stirtz, who received no DI offers out of high school, got engaged over the summer. Besides his parents, one of the few people to know about the proposal was McCollum, who gave Stirtz a brief pep talk.

While Stirtz admitted McCollum’s message made him more nervous, the fourth-year praised his coach’s honesty, which was one of the factors that led him to play for McCollum in the first place. 

“That’s the main thing that stuck out to me, just that he’s a heck of a ball coach, but he also cares about you off the court,” Stirtz said. 

McCollum’s Hawkeyes face a challenging schedule. The nonconference schedule is one of Iowa’s toughest in years, highlighted by contests against Xavier University, the University of Mississippi, and Iowa State University, while the Big Ten schedule features three preseason AP top-25 teams over the first six games. 

Winning national championships is the obvious long-term goal for McCollum and the Hawkeye program, but like many objectives, it won’t happen in one season. The coach is confident Iowa will be a competitive team this season, but his secondary goal is to make the state of Iowa proud of its basketball team. 

“The biggest thing that I want to do is make the state of Iowa and the University of Iowa proud of the kids that we coach and proud of the toughness that they show and the communication and the connectivity that they show,” McCollum said. “Hopefully, we have a community that will do that. We have fans that will do that. And I know we have players that will do that.”