Iowa head men's basketball coach Ben McCollum is pictured at his introductory press conference Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa. Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Iowa Finally Predicted to Reach March Madness Again

Originally posted on Iowa Hawkeyes on SI
By Connor Mardian | Last updated Sep 24, 2025 2:00 PM ET

Iowa Hawkeyes basketball is maybe back? To say that the Hawkeyes struggled under Fran McCaffery would be wrong. Under McCaffery rang in 297 wins and took Iowa to seven NCAA Tournaments, and had Iowa ranking as high as the No.3 team in the nation.

Yet last season saw the worst record for the Hawkeyes since McCaffery’s first season, as Iowa totaled just 17 wins last season. That led to the push for head coach Ben McCollum.

McCollum only has one year of Division I coaching experience, as he led Drake to a superb 31-4 record and the NCAA Tournament last season, but has acres of coaching at Northwest Missouri State, where McCollum amassed a 395-91 record, which included 4 NCAA Division II championships (2017, 2019, 2021, 2022).

Will things be easy for McCollum? No, this is a team that will be incorporating a number of players. Iowa is coming off a transfer portal cycle that reeled in eight transfers that will pose as one of collegiate basketball’s best, as 247Sports ranked the Hawkeyes as having the 8th-best transfer class in the nation, which is led by Bennett Stirtz, who was touted as the No.3 overall transfer in the nation according to 247Sports. Stirtz is one of five transfers who followed McCollum to Iowa City from Drake.

To make matters worse, this is not a cake-walk non-conference schedule. Nor is it an especially easy Big Ten schedule. Yet the momentum is not just bubbling around Iowa City; last week, 247Sports predicted a fifth-place finish.

Earlier today, ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi released his latest seed projections, and Lunardi thinks change is incoming for this Iowa team.

The Hawkeyes were touted as an 11th-seed. The problem with the East region, that Iowa was selected in? They have some daunting competition. This is a region that has Duke, Kansas, Maryland, Auburn, North Carolina and Michigan. Not a promising outlook.

If you were to run through the potential matchups listed by seeding, you wouldn’t have to look very far, as UNC would knock off the Hawkeyes in the first round. Obviously, this is still just one of many projections that will be made through the rest of the season, and there will be plenty of peaks and valleys with this revamped squad.

The first chance to see Iowa in action is against Robert Morris on November 4th in the Carver-Hawkeye Arena, which will mark the beginning of the McCollum era.

This article first appeared on Iowa Hawkeyes on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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