Sports Commentary
When news dropped that Ben McCollum agreed to become the head coach at the University of Iowa, it was deja vu for Drake men’s basketball fans. They’d seen this story before: Drake basketball coach leads the team to a conference championship and March Madness, only to get poached by a power conference school. Not ideal.
It was a Monday morning, March 24, when McCollum’s hiring at Iowa became official, and similar questions kept popping up in conversations around campus. “Why can’t Drake convince a good coach to stick around?” “Will we be able to recover?” “Is mid-major basketball ruined?”
All these questions are valid; the collective hearts of Drake basketball fans were hurting. But there was another sentiment floating around, too. One that sheds a positive light on an unfortunate situation.
At least we got to watch history this year.
After losing a coach, Drake men’s basketball fans are allowed to grieve, but they shouldn’t let McCollum’s departure overshadow the excellence and excitement of the 2024-25 season.
In McCollum’s one year at Drake, he led the Bulldogs to a school-best 31-4 record, won 17 games in the Missouri Valley Conference (a school record) and led Drake to the March Madness Round of 32 for the first time since 1971. Heading into the season, the conference preseason poll picked Drake to finish fifth in the MVC. Most people didn’t think the Division II crew of McCollum, Bennett Stirtz, Daniel Abreu, Mitch Mascari and Isaiah Jackson would even finish top four in the conference, much less win it. But they brought their winning style of basketball from the Division II level to the mid-major Division I level, while picking up wins against schools in power conferences like the Southeastern Conference (Mizzou), the BIG 12 (Kansas State) and the Atlantic Coast Conference (Miami) along the way.
As a result of winning these big games, the team collected awards and gained national recognition. In the MVC, McCollum won Coach of the Year, Stirtz won Larry Bird Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year and forward Tavion Banks won Sixth Man of the Year. Nationally, Stirtz was a finalist for multiple awards and was on the Associated Press Honorable Mention All-America Team, joining Tucker DeVries (2024) and Adam Emmenecker (2008) as the only other Bulldogs to crack this list. McCollum was a Naismith Coach of the Year Semifinalist and received the Joe B. Hall Award, an annual award given to the top first-time head coach in Division I college basketball.
The Darian DeVries era (2018-2024) and its three March Madness appearances put Drake on the map; McCollum’s season solidified Drake as a top mid-major college basketball school. This is remarkable because, for a while, Drake basketball was nothing special.
Between 1969 and 1971, Drake went to the March Madness Elite Eight twice and the Final Four once, but between 1971 and 2021, the team only made it to March Madness once. So these past few years have been the modern-day golden era for Drake basketball, and any current student has been lucky to witness it. After all, losing two coaches in two years because they were too successful is a good problem to have.
So, it shouldn’t be all gloom and doom for Drake men’s basketball fans. The team has a new coach, Eric Henderson, who led South Dakota State to two March Madness appearances in six years. Former Drake head coach DeVries even said in a statement on the Drake men’s basketball Instagram page, that Henderson is a terrific coach and “his teams are very connected, tough and unselfish. Drake fans are going to love watching his teams play.”
And no matter how the team performs next year or in the coming years, fans will always have the historical 2024-25 season to remember. It should not be forgotten.
