After another underwhelming season the Iowa Hawkeyes will look drastically different in the upcoming 2025-26 season. Long time head coach Fran McCaffery was let go at the conclusion of the season after Iowa missed the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row. During his 15 year tenure with the Hawkeyes he never made it passed the second round of the NCAA Tournament and was notorious for some of the league’s worst defensive units.

Iowa moved on quickly, hiring Ben McCollum to take over the reigns as head coach. McCollum was a long time head coach at Division II Northwest Missouri State, where he won four titles. In his first season at the D-I level McCollum coached Drake to a 31-4 record and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

As expected and becoming commonplace in the current market of transfers and NIL money, the Hawkeyes saw a mass exodus of players in the transfer market, including forward Owen Freeman and guard Josh Dix, as well as the graduation of standout Payton Sandfort. Basically every key contributor and rotational player will be not be back heading into the upcoming season.

As expected McCollum was going to have to retool his team on the fly and has quickly done so to start constructing a roster moving forward. He started by flipping center Trevin Jirak from Northern Iowa. Jirak is an unranked big measuring in at 6’11” that mainly saw interest from several mid-majors. McCollum also picked up a commit from unranked guard Tate Sage, with the Oklahoma native linked to McCollum while he was still at Drake.

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The roster currently sits at 11 players, with two incoming freshmen, the return of Cooper and Jacob Koch and seven incoming transfers. That slim roster means Iowa will likely still be open to a few additions before the season tips off in November.

To little surprise McCollum pulled heavily from his last stop with five of the seven incoming transfers coming over from Drake. That includes Bennett Stirtz, who led the team with 19.2 points per game while shooting almost 40% from three. Tavion Banks was the only other Drake transfer to average double figures, averaging 10.1 points and 5 rebounds per game.

Another two big pick ups for McCollum were Brendan Hausen and Alvaro Folgueiras. Hausen started for Kansas State where he averaged 10.9 points and shot 38.8% from three. Folgueiras was a bit more productive, averaging 14.1 points, 9.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game at Robert Morris. In the NCAA Tournament the Spain native recorded 15 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists in a nine point loss to two seed Alabama in the opening round.

Iowa’s current construct as Drake-lite still could use some additional depth and scorers heading into McCollum’s first season, but Stirtz and Folgueiras could be two solid pieces to build around. Drake had a slower tempo and a top 50 defense last season which would contrast greatly compared to an Iowa program that typically yielded a strength in numbers offense that played little defense under Fran McCaffery.

It’ll be interesting to see what McCollum will add to the roster over the next few months. He’s been a proven winner throughout his coaching career but the Big Ten is an incredibly deep league that should provide a much bigger challenge.