2025-26 Big Ten basketball season preview: Iowa Hawkeyes

Iowa basketball coach Ben McCollum greets fans.

With the start of college basketball season in early November, Inside the Hall is taking a team-by-team look at the Big Ten and a player-by-player look at IU basketball’s roster over the next two months.

Today, our team previews continue with Iowa.

Previously: Penn State, Rutgers, Minnesota, Northwestern, Washington, Nebraska, Maryland

The Fran McCaffery era in Iowa City came to an end last spring after 15 seasons.

McCaffery missed the NCAA tournament for a second straight season and was fired by athletic director Beth Goetz. A week and a half later, Iowa announced the hiring of Drake coach Ben McCollum.

A four-time national champion at the Division II level as the head coach of Northwest Missouri State, the 44-year-old McCollum had a successful Division I coaching debut last season at Drake.

McCollum led the Bulldogs to a 31-4 record and a round of 32 NCAA tournament appearance. As a native of Iowa City who grew up in Storm Lake, the move by Iowa to hire McCollum makes a lot of sense. He’s considered one of the best young coaches in the sport and his style of play is a swift departure from McCaffery. The Hawkeyes will play a deliberate pace and will be far more disciplined defensively.

The Hawkeyes will have one of the Big Ten’s best players for McCollum’s first season at the helm. Bennett Stirtz, who followed McCollum from Northwest Missouri State to Drake, is now at Iowa for his senior season.

The 6-foot-4 guard was one of the best point guards in college basketball last season and will now get a chance to shine in the Big Ten. Stirtz averaged 19.2 points, 5.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 2.1 steals in 39.4 minutes per game last season. He shot 39.5 percent on 3s and is one of the best playmakers in the country.

He’ll have a proven high-major running mate in the backcourt in Kansas State transfer Brendan Hausen. The 6-foot-4 Hausen attempted seven 3-pointers per game last season and connected on 38.8 percent of those attempts. He averaged 10.9 points and 2.5 rebounds in 27.6 minutes per game.

Senior wing Tavion Banks arrives in Iowa City after earning MVC sixth man of the year honors last season at Drake. The 6-foot-7 Banks scored in double figures 20 times last season and averaged 10.1 points and five rebounds in 20.1 minutes per game.

The Hawkeyes also added Robert Morris transfer Alvaro Folgueiras, last season’s Horizon League player of the year. The 6-foot-9 forward shot 41.5 percent on 3s and averaged 13.8 points, 8.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.1 blocked shots in 29.1 minutes per game.

Another Drake transfer, Cam Manyawu, is the likely starter at the five. Manyawu started his career at Wyoming and was a starter all season for the Bulldogs last winter. Manyawu is only 6-foot-8 but averaged 7.1 points and 5.3 rebounds in 18.8 minutes per game while shooting 57.8 percent from the field. He was the best offensive rebounder in the MVC and second-best defensive rebounder, per KenPom.com.

Two other Drake transfers, Isaia Howard and Kael Combs, should figure prominently into the Iowa rotation.

Howard, a 6-foot-5 sophomore, came off the bench last season and averaged 4.5 points and 2.5 rebounds in 15.2 minutes per game. Combs, a 6-foot-4 junior, began his career at Wyoming and had 13 points in the NCAA tournament last season against Texas Tech.

McCollum was able to retain Cooper Koch, a 6-foot-8 sophomore who averaged 4.6 points and 2.1 rebounds in 13.6 minutes per game last season for the Hawkeyes.

The rest of the roster will be made up by a solid freshman class that includes Trey Thompson, Trevor Jirak, Tage Sage and Peyton McCollum.

Thompson moved up to the 2025 class and the Tennessee native was considered a top 100 player in the 2026 class before the reclassification. At 6-foot-8, he could provide frontcourt depth.

Jirak, a 6-foot-11 center, was Mr. Basketball in Iowa and chose the Hawkeyes after initially committing to Northern Iowa.

Sage, a 6-foot-7 wing, signed with Drake and chose to follow McCollum to Iowa City. Peyton McCollum, the son of Ben McCollum, is a 6-foot-2 point guard and should add to the roster’s guard depth.

The move from McCaffery’s free-flowing offensive style to McCollum’s deliberate, grind-it-out style will be a jarring change for Big Ten fans. McCollum’s Drake team was 364th nationally in adjusted tempo, per KenPom.com. The new-look Hawkeyes will focus on limiting possessions, hitting the offensive glass and getting to the free-throw line while forcing turnovers and limiting second-chance points.

Bottom line: Iowa is a potential NCAA tournament team under McCollum, who has one of the best point guards in the sport in Stirtz to lead his first Hawkeye roster. The Hawkeyes will be undersized in the frontcourt and don’t have top half of the league talent. That, however, might not matter with McCollum at the helm. He showed himself capable of beating an opponent with superior talent in last year’s NCAA tournament win against Missouri and has national championship-winning experience at the D2 level.

Quotable: “Returning to Iowa City as the head coach of the Hawkeyes is a dream come true for me and my family. The passion of Hawkeye fans is unmatched, and I am incredibly excited to get started on this new journey together.” – McCollum last spring after being named Iowa’s head coach.

(Photo credit: Iowa Athletics)

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