A swarm of screeching Hawkeye students surrounded Ben McCollum as Big Ten Network’s Andy Katz fired questions into his ear. After the three-minute postgame interview, the Iowa head coach squirmed through the crowd and came out with blood on the sleeve of his white dress shirt.
The blood wasn’t his, nor did he care whose it was. That’s the result of the Hawkeyes securing its biggest win of the season – a 57-52 outing over No. 9 Nebraska on Tuesday night – followed by the first-ever court storm of his lengthy coaching career.
He’ll take a little bit of blood every time as long as the home crowd continues to show up.
“Every single time we have something positive like this happen, we always make sure that everybody knows this is what it can be. It can be fun like this every night,” McCollum said postgame. “And we appreciate again, the crowd support and the energy. I think that willed us to victory. I really do.”
It was just three days prior when Iowa hosted then-No. 13 Purdue midday Saturday in front of its first sell-out crowd. The crowd for Iowa-Nebraska was a few thousand short of that, yet the energy of the crowd said otherwise.
Pryce Sandfort’s return to Iowa City played a significant factor in that. Switching to the Cornhuskers after two years spent in Iowa City, fans showered the sharpshooting guard with “F*** Pryce Sandfort” chants throughout the night – something McCollum was quick to address postgame.
“The Sanford family means a lot to us, Pryce included,” he said. “All them are very, very welcome here, and [the Iowa men’s basketball team] certainly appreciates everything that they’ve done.”
Outside of that, it was all positive takeaways. The Hawkeye faithful deafened any external noise through several of Nebraska’s scoreless stretches, especially in the second half. The Cornhuskers scored just three field goals through the last 12 minutes of the game – one of those field goals made with one second left in the game.
Those cheers amplified with every rebound Iowa secured on the way to a 37-24 rebound differential, including a whopping 12 offensive boards. This is the same team that currently sits second-to-last in the Big Ten averaging just under 30 boards a game.
“It’s awesome to see a packed student section, packed [Carver-Hawkeye Arena],” Cooper Koch said. “We need that consistently. We need that for whoever comes here, whether it be top-10 opponent or last in the Big Ten. It creates a huge home court advantage.”
When McCollum sat at the podium for the first time as Iowa men’s basketball’s head coach in March 2025, he made it known how important a role the fans would play in the Hawkeyes’ success. That statement proved correct Tuesday night in the program’s first win over a top-10 ranked opponent since 2022.
However, what’s more important to the first-year Iowa head coach is not seeing fans show up for big games, but seeing fans show up consistently, regardless of wins and losses.
“They’re starting to trend, no matter what happens,” McCollum said. “We got our butts kicked against Purdue, and they came out again. And it’s not because we’re winning games. It’s because they can connect with our guys and they play the right way, and that’s what we want it to be about.”
