Ben McCollum’s Hawkeyes Take Rare Heavy Loss, Highlighting Just How Dominant His Coaching Career Has Been
Ben McCollum is no stranger to winning. In fact, he’s built a reputation on it. With a staggering 432-96 career record as a head coach, his .818 winning percentage ranks fifth all-time among men’s college basketball coaches. Success is the standard for McCollum. That’s why when the Iowa Hawkeyes fell 71-52 to Michigan State on Dec. 2, it was so jarring.
McCollum’s coaching résumé reads like a blueprint for dominance. At Northwest Missouri State, he compiled a 395-91 record over 15 seasons, capturing four NCAA Division II national championships along the way. He then spent a single season at Drake, guiding the Bulldogs to a remarkable 31-4 record. Transitioning to Iowa, McCollum’s first Hawkeye squad stormed out of the gate with a seven-game winning streak. But the lopsided loss in East Lansing served as a reminder that even the most accomplished coaches face setbacks.
To put Tuesday’s 19-point loss into perspective, we dug into McCollum’s history to find when one of his teams had last taken such a beating.
At Drake, the largest margin of defeat under McCollum came in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in March 2024, when Texas Tech bested the Bulldogs 77-64—a 13-point margin. Aside from that, Drake’s other losses were narrow affairs: by 4, 7, and 2 points. Hardly the kind of blowouts that make headlines.
Northwest Missouri State, however, had a few more slip-ups over the years. Their most recent double-digit loss came on Jan. 12, 2023, when Central Oklahoma beat McCollum’s Bearcats 69-58, an 11-point margin. Stretching back a bit further, the last time McCollum’s team lost by 19 or more points before the Michigan State game was on Feb. 8, 2022, when Emporia State routed Northwest Missouri State 75-56. That was nearly four seasons ago.
As for losses of 20 points or more? Those are exceedingly rare in McCollum’s career. The last time it happened was all the way back on Oct. 27, 2017, when Northwest Missouri State opened its season with an exhibition at Duke and lost by 33 points. Context matters: it was an exhibition game against one of the blue-blood programs in college basketball, hardly a reflection of McCollum’s teams under normal circumstances.
Even in his final season at Northwest Missouri State, losses were few and far between, and the margins were tight. The Bearcats dropped five games that season, and each was by a single-digit margin: 7, 3, 8, 6, and 1 point. That consistency underscores McCollum’s ability to keep his teams competitive, even in tough situations.
The Michigan State loss is a stark contrast to that kind of dominance. A 19-point deficit is a wake-up call, both for McCollum and for Hawkeye fans, signaling the adjustment period involved in transitioning from a dominant Division II program and a stellar year at Drake to the grind of Big Ten basketball. But for a coach of McCollum’s caliber, this isn’t cause for panic it’s an opportunity.
What makes McCollum unique isn’t just his winning record; it’s the way he builds programs that rarely collapse, the way his teams consistently perform under pressure, and the way setbacks are used as learning experiences. For Iowa, the season is young, the Hawkeyes are still undefeated before that game, and the loss to Michigan State is just one chapter in what promises to be an exciting story under McCollum’s leadership.
Even the best stumble occasionally, but Ben McCollum’s track record shows that a single loss even one that stings doesn’t define a team. It’s how they respond that matters.
