HOUSTON — Ben McCollum knows a thing or two about playing in the Sweet 16. The first-year Iowa men’s basketball coach coached in eight Division II Sweet 16s during his 15-year tenure at Northwest Missouri State.
Iowa head coach Ben McCollum calls out during a practice ahead of their NCAA men's basketball tournament Sweet 16 game at the Toyota Center in Houston, on Wednesday, March 25, 2026.
So, when Iowa steps on the floor on Thursday against Nebraska, its coach will not be completely out of his depth when attempting to navigate a deep postseason run. He’s been there before.
Looking back on his Division II days on Wednesday, McCollum highlighted just how important it was for him to be able to cut his teeth at a level few analyze as closely as those breaking down his every decision in Iowa City.
“The beauty of being at Division II is you’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes and do a lot things wrong and a lot of things right without external noise,” McCollum said. “Initially, when you become a head coach, there’s a lot of things that you really have zero clue on and there’s still quite a few things that I have zero clue on, but, certainly, when I took over it was like, man, I really don’t know anything. But, there wasn’t noise associated with that from other people. It was me. It was the pressure that I put on myself or our staff or whatever it may be.”
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Before the eight Sweet 16 trips, or the four that turned into national championship trophies, McCollum got the opportunity to fail. The Bearcats struggled through 12-15 and 10-16 seasons during his first two years at the helm. They finished ninth and 10th in the Mid-America Collegiate Athletics Association (MAIAA) standings.
In his current post, McCollum values the opportunity to experience those early shortcomings and learn from them without the scrutiny of media or a rabid high-major fanbase.
“You see a lot of coaches take over, it’s their first year, and they finish fourth or fifth, and it’s almost like the kiss of death,” McCollum said. “Like, the higher you finish, the worse you’re going to be as a coach because you never hit rock bottom.
“We were dead last my first two seasons. You kind of hit rock bottom, you better figure it out. We figured it out, and now we’re able to continue to figure it out as we go forward.”
A 22-7 year and a first-place finish in the MAIAA ended with a first-round exit in year three, and then NWMSU missed out on the Division II tournament again in 2013 with a 21-10 record but a sixth-place finish in the MAIAA.
The failure was a learning process for McCollum, who led his program to three straight Sweet 16 appearances in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Then, national titles followed in 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2022.
His success at Northwest Missouri State has followed him to Iowa, where he has the Hawkeyes in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999.
“Over time, you create a level of confidence in what you do and how you do it,” McCollum said. “We were fortunate to play in a lot of NCAA Tournament games, a lot of high-pressure games, and we figured out what it took to actually win those games and play in them, which we were able to take to the University of Iowa and be able to perform in postseason play.”
The Hawkeyes (23-12, 10-10 Big Ten) and Huskers (28-6, 13-7 Big Ten) tipoff at 6:30 p.m. with broadcast coverage on TBS/TruTV and the Hawkeye Radio Network.
Ethan Petrik is a University of Iowa beat writer for the Lee Enterprises network. Follow him on X or send him an email at ethan.petrik@wcfcourier.com.
