HOUSTON — Ben McCollum was furious. Saliva sat on the edge of his lip, but he didn’t wipe it off. He was midtirade, and his Iowa team was down 10 points to Nebraska early in Thursday’s Sweet 16 meeting.
Next to him stood Bennett Stirtz, the Hawkeyes’ stoic star who had seen multiple McCollum outbursts. Stirtz wasn’t fazed.
“He slammed his whiteboard and broke his marker on the hardwood floor. Ink everywhere,” Stirtz said after Iowa’s come-from-behind win over Nebraska. “That’s what he likes to do. He’s the negative guy, and then our assistant coaches are the positive people. He was just telling us we sucked and we were soft.”
McCollum had a different interpretation of that pivotal moment against the Cornhuskers.
“They were moving and cutting, and I didn’t even know what was going on. So … we called [the team] into the huddle and just said very nicely, ‘I would like you to play harder, guys,'” McCollum said. “And it seemed to work. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that how that went?'”
Stirtz nodded his head.
“Yes,” he responded.
McCollum is admittedly demonstrative. Look no further than last Sunday’s near clash with Florida coach Todd Golden during Iowa’s upset of the No. 1 seed in the Round of 32.
Stirtz is the opposite. He’s perpetually cool.
That fire-and-ice pairing of McCollum and Stirtz — who are at their third school together, following stints at Division II Northwest Missouri State (2022-24) and Drake (2024-25) — has fueled Iowa’s surprise run to the Elite Eight. The Hawkeyes went just 10-10 in the Big Ten, yet are on the brink of their first Final Four appearance since 1980. It’s the fourth time in four years that McCollum and Stirtz have advanced in an NCAA tournament together. It’s also the furthest they’ve advanced at any level.
First, they made it to the second round of the 2023 Division II NCAA tournament, where Stirtz scored seven points in a loss to Southern Nazarene. A year after that, they reached the Division II Sweet 16, where Stirtz scored 12 points against Minnesota State before losing to the eventual national champion on a buzzer-beater. And after making the Division I jump to Drake last season, they won a first-round game as Stirtz carried the 11-seeded Bulldogs to a first-round upset of a 6-seeded Missouri with 20 points before running into an Elite Eight-bound Texas Tech in the second round.
There was no surprise when Stritz followed McCollum to Iowa — or when the 2024-25 Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year continued to thrive in McCollum’s system. The senior guard earned second-team All-Big Ten honors after finishing fifth in the conference in scoring (19.7 PPG) but has saved his best for the NCAA tournament. His 3-pointer with 2:10 to play in Thursday’s win over Nebraska gave Iowa its first lead of the game. The Hawkeyes never trailed again, closing out the win to set up Saturday’s matchup against Illinois (6:09 p.m. ET).
“You see him on the floor, and then you see me on the sideline — so polar opposites in personalities. Not polar opposites in value,” McCollum said. “He’s super competitive. I’m super competitive. I feel like he works with a level of humility. I feel like he’s a really tough kid. I feel like he serves others, all those different things.”
Added Stirtz: “He shoots it straight. Even when it’s tough and even when it’s hard. He pushes you past your limit, and I think that’s where the trust comes in … he just pushes everyone on this team, and honestly, you can see the benefit from that.”
Minnesota State head coach Matt Margenthaler isn’t shocked by the duo’s success this March. He still has nightmares about Stirtz and McCollum’s Northwest Missouri State squad nearly derailing his team’s Division II championship run in 2023.
Their rise, Margenthaler argues, is a beacon for Division II basketball — proof that players and coaches at that level can be stars at the next, too.
“You always question, I think, when you go up a level, ‘Can he do it at that next level in the Missouri Valley Conference?’ And then he proved that in one year,” Margenthaler told ESPN. “And then, ‘Can he do it again in the Big Ten?’ And then he just continues to amaze the coaching world with what he can do.”
“[Stirtz’s] confidence has grown and grown and grown,” Margenthaler said. “He is obviously a Division I basketball player, but one that has made himself better each year. I mean, what a story: those two guys together and what they’re doing.”
And if you ask McCollum and Stirtz, they’re not done yet.
“In 20 years, it will be an insane story. A guy that goes from Division II with his coach and then goes to Drake and then goes to the University of Iowa and actually makes it farther in the tournament in Division I than he did in Division II,” McCollum said. “I think when you’re a player-coach [relationship] sometimes, you obviously care for each other and love each other and all of that, but you don’t get to connect on [this] kind of level. But it’s been a hell of a ride, but it’s far from over.”
