HOUSTON — Iowa star Bennett Stirtz said head coach Ben McCollum’s screaming match with Florida‘s Todd Golden in the second round of the NCAA tournament gave the Hawkeyes a boost of confidence that they’ll carry into their Sweet 16 matchup against Big Ten rival Nebraska in Houston on Thursday.
“He’s a lead-by-example dude, and if you see him getting intense and trying to fight the other coach, you’re going to want to do the same thing to the players,” said Stirtz, who is averaging 19.7 points per game this season, at Wednesday’s pregame news conference. “So we just follow his lead and he does a great job.”
McCollum had to be held back by his staff after Golden got upset and approached him with a demonstrative demeanor after Iowa’s Alvaro Folgueiras appeared to throw a punch at Alex Condon during a scrum in the 9-seed Hawkeyes’ upset of the 1-seed Gators on Sunday. Both players were given technical fouls.
With Iowa preparing for its first Sweet 16 game since 1999, McCollum said he quickly moved on from that dustup with Golden but added that the intensity was necessary.
“I didn’t understand what was going on, and then [he] just kind of started yelling at us, and so then I yelled back and that was that,” McCollum said. “I have kind of moved on from it, moved on from it five seconds later, to be honest. You’re also not going to, you can’t just let people do that either. So there is a fine line between the two. But you can’t sit there and get into arguments with other coaches all the time either, so I need to make sure that I use a little discretion. In that situation, I felt like it was appropriate, but I’m not going to get into a habit of that.”
McCollum added that his intensity is inherited from his mother, who is a retired judge and is “very competitive, psychotically competitive, worse than me, to be perfectly honest.”
In Houston, Iowa and Nebraska are familiar foes. They split their series 1-1 in Big Ten play. In their most recent game, Nebraska won 84-75 in overtime in the regular-season finale for both teams. Stirtz finished 4-for-10 that night.
Last week, Nebraska won the first NCAA tournament game in school history and is subsequently in the Sweet 16 for the first time too. Iowa is making its first Sweet 16 appearance in 27 years. This has become a trend for McCollum and Stirtz.
The duo has advanced in the NCAA tournament for the fourth consecutive season together. At Division II Northwest Missouri State in 2023 and 2024, they won multiple NCAA tournament games. They also orchestrated an upset over Missouri in the first round last season at Drake before Stirtz followed McCollum to Iowa.
Stirtz said McCollum never holds back, which has helped him earn the trust of his players.
“He never lies to anyone on this team, including me. He shoots it straight. Even when it’s tough and even when it’s hard,” Stirtz said. “He pushes you past your limit and I think that’s where the trust comes in and he cares about you a lot and wants to make you a better person. Even in the wins that he’s had throughout his career, he doesn’t get complacent. So that’s what we need to do and continue to do is even though we beat a 1-seed, we can’t get complacent.”
For McCollum, Stirtz represents him on the court at Iowa, which makes his job easier.
“You see him on the floor and then you see me on the sideline, it’s polar opposites in personalities. Not polar opposites in values,” McCollum said. “He’s super competitive. I’m super competitive.”
McCollum’s emotions on the sideline are proof of that competitive spirit and according to his players, it’s also encouraging. McCollum’s exchange with Golden exemplified the attitude Iowa has had all season, as it prepares to chase history on Thursday, said Cam Manyawu.
“Our thing is we’re all fighters and he’s the main one,’ said Manyawu, a junior forward. “I mean he’s going to go down swinging, we’re all going to go with him. So knowing that we’re going to follow him wherever he goes. He’s our leader. We’re going to follow him to where he’s trying to take us and he’s trying to take us to the top.”
