Ben McCollum  

He was born in Iowa City, but grew up in Storm Lake, Iowa, where he graduated from St. Mary's High School in 1999. He played basketball for two years at North Iowa Area Community College before transferring in 2001 to Northwest Missouri State, where he was part of the Elite 8 team. He was a graduate assistant for 2 seasons, before becoming an assistant coach at Emporia State University from 2004 to 2008, then joined Northwest Missouri State as its head coach in 2009. He led the team to four DII national championships. He was hired at Drake for the 2024-2025 season, where he led them to a 31-3 record, culminating in the regular season and conference tournament titles. His team upset the #6 seed Missouri in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but fell to Texas Tech in the 2nd round. On March 24, 2025, he was hired as head coach at Iowa.

Interesting facts: he played under former Hawkeye Steve Krafcisin, and grew up watching Iowa basketball under Tom Davis. He also followed in Davis' shoes by becoming head coach at both Drake and Iowa.