It took Ben McCollum 15 years to jump to D-I. His next move should come a lot sooner
Drake got the look it wanted to open the second half of its NCAA Tournament second-round game against Texas Tech. But Isaiah Jackson’s runner in the lane banged off the back iron and the Red Raiders were on the go.
The shot was bothered like so many Bulldogs attempts against a stronger, more athletic team. Drake coach Ben McCollum said he believed Thursday’s opponent, Missouri, was more physical, but Tech found a way to impose its will where the Tigers could not.
So advance the Red Raiders to a Sweet 16 date against Arkansas after their 77-64 triumph at Intrust Bank Arena, and move Drake into the unknown when it comes to the future of its first-year coach.
It took McCollum 15 remarkable years at Division II Northwest Missouri State to get what he believed was the ideal job opportunity, coaching a Missouri Valley Conference team in his home state.
It took only one season in Des Moines — a conference regular-season and tournament championship, school-record 31 victories and the program’s first trip to the second round of the NCAA Tournament since 1971 — to zoom McCollum up the ranks of attractive candidates for a major job.
Iowa is the most obvious opportunity. Two Fridays ago, the Hawkeyes fired Fran McCaffery after too many of his 15 seasons ended without March Madness. McCollum seems like a no-brainer successor there.
He was born in Iowa City. He started his college playing career at North Iowa Area Community College. The job seems made for him.
While McCollum was winning four NCAA Tournaments at Northwest, he turned down plenty of overtures from other schools. He had a good thing going in Maryville, McCollum said, and it had to be an ideal fit, preferably a Division I job in Iowa.
McCollum was thinking Missouri Valley Conference at the time, and even that move shook his comfort zone by uprooting his family. But who could blame him for making Drake a one-year stop?
After Saturday’s loss, McCollum said all the right things about what could be next.
“I don’t really have much to say about it necessarily outside of I put everything into these guys and stuff like that,” McCollum said. “And I’ve done it for eight years. And so, that’s what I’ll continue to do.
“But as far as the rumors, I’ve already taken eight jobs already. So it is what it is. But it floats around every year and that’s what it is. It comes with success. That’s what happens with success and it’s just one of those things that’s tough. But it is what it is.”
The eight years is when the interest in his services started bubbling from low to mid majors, about the time Northwest Missouri State won its first title in 2017. The record says McCollum made the right decision to stay put.
Starting in 2019, the Bearcats won the next three NCAA titles over a four-year stretch because the 2020 tournament was canceled by the pandemic. Northwest was 30-1 when the season was called. The 2019 team went 38-0.
Over the past decade, no NCAA men’s coach has won at McCollum’s rate, and the recent changes in the college sports landscape should soften the concerns major programs might have in hiring a coach with his resume.
One year in Division I? With a roster that included four Northwest transfers, Drake went 4-1 against power programs beating Vanderbilt, Kansas State, Miami and Mizzou.
Bulldogs standout Bennett Stirtz from Liberty averaged 15.2 points as a Northwest sophomore. He jumped to 19.2 points as a Drake junior, finishing with 21 on Saturday, and has eligibility remaining. Why not test his skills against Big Ten competition?
Roster building also is a product of NIL management, and power programs like Iowa will spend what it takes.
What those programs need is a coach with proof of concept, and in NCAA basketball no one fits that qualification better than McCollum. Drake’s 31-4 final record? It matches the fifth-best winning percentage in his career.
The 13-point loss to Tech? Since 2017, that’s the third-worst loss by a McCollum-coached team, and when the Red Raiders opened a 15-point lead late in the game, that was Drake’s biggest deficit of the year.
Building a program at Drake remains an option, and the track record says McCollum would succeed.
But if he moves on to a bigger, richer program, the idea of cutting down nets after a Division I Final Four to match his net snippets from the Division II Elite Eights has to be enticing.
For the last few years at Northwest, the basketball world wondered when McCollum would make the next move. One year later, the same question is being asked.
This story was originally published March 22, 2025 at 9:37 PM.