Iowa Basketball: And Now For Something...Completely Different
Many thanks to our favorite Hawkeye and frequent guest writer, Mr. Grizz, for putting together like 4k words on Iowa football and basketball!
Here's a thought: Kirk Ferentz's football philosophy at Iowa was unintentionally legitimized (at least to much of the Iowa fanbase) by Fran McCaffery. Kirk's early aughts teams actually had some good offensive teams, the Ricky Stanzi Americanzi teams of 2009 and lesser extent 2010 could score. Since then, coincidentally about the time when Fran was hired, its been mostly defense and not much offense. But this philosophy has won, consistently. Flipping that philosophy, mostly offense and not much defense won occasionally with Fran and was somehow more soul-crushing at critical moments. Granted, the two sports' barometers are different; bowl game wins have a different dynamic as opposed to making the NCAA tournament and winning a game, or preferably more games, in the tourney. Kirk's teams have made a few top-tier bowls. Fran's teams never won regular season but did win the B1G tournament in 2022 and entered the NCAAs as a 5-seed. Of course, Fran never made the Sweet Sixteen and the 5-seed team crashed and burned against a team of Spiders after winning said tournament. But you get the idea.
Fran pulled Iowa basketball out of an abyss from which the depth is easy to forget. It was bad, historically bad. He deserved and got all credit for that, and for making Iowa basketball entertaining, if not winning quite as much. He won enough to frequently get that 7, 8, or 10 seed in the Tournament. But, never making the Sixteen hurt, and having Luka Garza and Keegan Murray and still not getting there made it worse. Fran liked to talk basketball but was not a good glad-hander with most of the fans, though maybe a few donors. He was not great on the I-club circuit; one report was that he did his little presentation at one of those get-togethers, shook a few hands and then retreated to sit and wait alone in the back of the car by himself while Kirk and Tom Brands kept pressing the flesh and backslapping for half an hour. A couple of separate reports by individual fans related that to strangers, Fran displayed the personality you might expect of a rural American trying to strike up a conversation with a Wharton man, which Fran is.
The Iowa administration did not fire Fran; the fanbase did. The attrition from Carver-Hawkeye last year was stunning, everybody simply quit coming to games. Average attendance was in the range of 6,400 for a 15,000 seat arena. He had 15 generally good but not great years at Iowa, which revealed him as a benevolent and caring man with his players and in the fight against cancer, hot and cold in press conferences, and unable to convince the Money to give him NIL funds to compete. There were some fun teams (for example, Jordan Bohannon ruined pretty much everybody's night at one point or another) but didn't win enough in the Tournament or tend to the fans enough. He landed back where he played, at Penn, and I, for one, like to see people who are fired, whatever their foibles, find a decent landing spot. Fran did.
Iowa fans thought Darian DeVries was coming, assumed he was a sort of pre-arranged successor. A lot of it made sense; Iowa guy, younger brother of a great Iowa defensive lineman, coached most of his time in the Midwest. But Indiana alums/rich fans now seem to be throwing money at its sports programs more than possibly anybody in the B1G but the Big 4 (Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, Penn State) and maybe USC. They bought DeVries, with money for him to spend on top of it. Which led us to the guy who was probably more of an 'Iowa Guy' than anyone who could have been chosen.
Ben McCollum is from Storm Lake, Iowa, which I also consider my hometown. It's around 10,000 people, a packing plant town with Buena Vista University, county seat, area center of commerce with a 3,000 acre lake, one of the most southern of the glacial lakes which carved up Minnesota. Geographically, it is surrounded by Iowa State and some Nebraska fans, but the Storm Lake area, as well as the Okoboji lakes area to the north, are a bit of an Iowa stronghold in Northwest Iowa. McCollum's mom is an alum and has additional University of Iowa ties, which I think may go back to one of her parents, don't remember. He grew up an Iowa fan and attended everyone's favorite small hardware store general manager-lookalike Tom Davis' basketball camps. He worked his way up the coaching ladder, found immense success in Div. 2, and did a Drake, meaning making Drake good and relevant for about a year, maybe more until inevitably another school takes the coach. I truly feel for Drake.
So, as Drake coaches go, is he Darian DeVries, or is he Keno Davis?
He is, I think, something completely different. Different from Fran in that he is charging into the I-club outings with zeal, shaking as many hands as he can find and being affable, personable, and patient with all the people who come wondering just who was hired. He's different from DeVries and Davis in that he has won a national championship, make that 4 national championships, albeit in Division 2. For all of DeVries' experience, particularly as a longtime Creighton assistant, arguably McCollum has a better resume. He has an absolutely gaudy 81.8% winning record as a head coach. I think a lot of Iowans also believed Indiana might go for McCollum; they struck gold with a smaller school coach in football, why not basketball as well?
The focus, fairly or unfairly, on McCollum, and in part what may have played a role in where everybody landed, was perception of style of play. Drake under McCollum was a low scoring team, but a high-efficiency team. They took their time on a possession but were very good at making the possession translate into points. We're talking scoring at a clip of from 57 to 64 points a game. But at Northwest Missouri State, his teams often had a more 'typical' scoring average. He's also known for his development of point guards. It appears that he is willing to adapt style to players, though how that applies to his first class of players at Iowa is unknown.
A fair number of 'his guys' at Drake have moved with him, which is cause for celebration and for concern. The one name everyone knows, guard Bennett Stirtz, has rave reviews nationally, but time will tell how he (and the rest of the Bulldog transfers) fares against a different level of competition night after night, as opposed to the NCAA tournament. Pretty much everyone is new, the only bigger name player who stayed was Cooper Koch, whose Dad played for Iowa years ago. I won't even try to analyze this completely re-made team except to point out one thing--no big post guy. How they will deal with Purdue, for example, is lost on me. They still have a roster spot, I believe, and have reached out overseas regarding a big man, but nothing yet.
However, McCollum made a big splash with the commitment of 4-star guard Trey Thompson, beating out some power basketball schools. Fran tried for guys like this for years and the only nationally regarded guys out of high school he got were in-staters Adam Woodbury and son Patrick, who unfortunately didn't reach his potential due various physical issues in his time at Iowa. With the possible exception of Kentucky Mr. Basketball C.J. Frederick, Fran couldn't land someone like Thompson in his 15 years, McCollum did before year 1.
What will this year bring? A lot of intrigue and interest, maybe resulting in more money, but otherwise there's absolutely no way of knowing how year 1 will go. I see a couple of early polls have Iowa just at the edge or outside of the top 25, making the Tournament, but that's making a lot of assumptions. As the roster currently sits, I expect initially a style a lot like Drake of last year, until McCollum gets a team with a bit more (on paper) athleticism.
The signs are all good; the recruiting victory moves the needle, and word out of practice and team activities that there is a focus on weight training which was never there with Fran. So far, everything about the change looks promising. But will fans miss the press-the-ball down court style that Fran employed? Again, the Kirk analogy. The style won't matter as much as the wins. If McCollum can build a team that plays methodically but consistently wins and can get a Tourney seed below, say, a 7 with any frequency, and gets to a Sweet Sixteen sometime in the next few years, it will indeed be something completely different.
