What Iowa’s first year under Ben McCollum reveals about what Darian DeVries is building at Indiana
Saturday’s game against Iowa isn’t just another Big Ten matchup. It’s a meeting between two programs living in the same season of their lives — guided by first-year head coaches who arrived from outside the league’s traditional power structure, both trying to build identity before chasing outcomes.
Ben McCollum and Darian DeVries didn’t come to the Big Ten with celebrity résumés. They came with blueprints.
McCollum isn’t just a promising hire — he’s one of the most accomplished program builders in modern college basketball. At Northwest Missouri State, he won four Division II national championships, reached seven title games, and turned a regional program into a national standard, compiling nearly 400 wins and one of the best winning percentages in the sport.
DeVries earned his own reputation at Drake, where he guided the Bulldogs to multiple NCAA Tournament appearances and sustained success in one of the country’s toughest mid-major leagues, proving he could build and maintain a winning culture before stepping into high-major challenges at West Virginia and now Indiana.
Both earned their way here by constructing programs, not just winning games. Both talk about habits before highlights.
From a distance, Iowa’s early season suggested McCollum had arrived fully formed. The Hawkeyes were ranked. They looked disciplined. They felt “ahead of schedule.”
But January has told a truer story.
As of this week, Indiana sits at 3–3 in Big Ten play. Iowa is 2–4. Indiana is 1–3 on the road. Iowa is 0–4.
Different brands. Different rosters. Same winter.
Even a coach as accomplished as McCollum — returning home to what he called a dream job — is discovering what this league does to first-year builds. The Big Ten does not care how ready you looked in November. It asks the same questions of everyone:
Can you defend for forty minutes? Can you rebound when the game turns physical? Can you execute when the building tilts against you?
Those are the same questions DeVries has been naming in Bloomington.
At Michigan State, DeVries said empty possessions “turned into transition points.” Tom Izzo talked about defense, rebounding, and turning stops into momentum. They weren’t disagreeing. They were describing the same reality from opposite benches.
What Michigan State showed was what “finished” looks like — when habits are backed by size, depth, and a program that has lived on this stage for decades.
What Indiana — and Iowa — are learning is what becoming still requires.
McCollum’s Iowa is trying to control games. Slow the tempo. Defend. Own possessions. It’s a quieter build, and it has real substance. But it hasn’t exempted them from the grind. Road nights still bite. Runs still happen. The league still teaches.
DeVries’s Indiana is trying to connect games. Share the ball. Touch the paint. Defend without fouling. The Hoosiers have already shown growth — fewer turnovers in wins, better rebounding against Washington, balance on the road at Maryland. But they’ve also seen how thin the margins are when pressure multiplies mistakes.
That’s not a failure.
It’s the curriculum.
This season was never about arriving fully formed. It was always going to be about learning how this league works — how runs start, how they’re stopped, how possessions are owned instead of borrowed.
Iowa’s record reminds us of something important: there is no skipping that winter. Even a ranked team with a proven builder must walk through it.
Saturday isn’t about which coach is “ahead.”
It’s about watching two builders in the same storm.
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