The eccentric quirks and superstitions of Iowa basketball coach Ben McCollum
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HOUSTON — Minutes after the dramatic upset win over Florida, we are waiting to be let into the Iowa basketball locker room.
The Hawkeyes had just stunned the Gators behind Alvaro Folgueiras’ game-winning 3-pointer, which sent the program to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999. A group of reporters were huddled in the underbelly of Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Florida.
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That’s when Iowa coach Ben McCollum, still charged with adrenaline, came marching by.
I can’t remember the exact words because, like most of the next few hours, it was a blur. But as McCollum paced by me, he said, in his loud but raspy coaching voice, something like:
“Hey, nice, outfit!”
For those unfamiliar, this probably would’ve made no sense.
Let me provide some context.
McCollum, at some point this season, became invested in the button-down shirt I wore to games. It seemed kind of like a joke. But the more you understand who McCollum is, the more it makes you wonder.
Somewhere along the way, McCollum seemed to believe that my shirt was lucky. It might’ve been because I wore the same, navy-blue button-down to Iowa’s two-game sweep of Oregon and Washington in the Pacific Northwest.
I tend to take the navy shirt on the road. Because after being stuffed in my duffel bag, it’s more difficult to see the wrinkles than the light-blue one that I have.
To be clear, my shirt does not have magic powers. In fact, I have seen Iowa lose while wearing it, most recently in the Big Ten Tournament against Ohio State.
But McCollum does not seem to care.
The day before, Iowa’s matchup with Florida, we were about to start media availability with McCollum and he asked if I had the outfit ready. I did. It was the only one that I had brought to Tampa because I have a limited amount of space in my luggage.
So that’s why, after arguably the program’s biggest win since the turn of the century, McCollum complimented my outfit.
At some point this season, it occurred to me that I might’ve become a small piece of McCollum’s superstitions.
Behind the mastermind coach — the one who has won four Division II national titles, led Drake to a 31-4 season and has now taken Iowa to a Sweet 16 in his first season at the helm — there is a man with eccentric, and sometimes illogical, quirks.
He wears the same outfit to games — a white button-down and tie. The easy answer for why is because it looks professional. But the deeper answer for why he sticks with the same colors is because it’s a rigid routine and one less decision he needs to make that day.
McCollum’s food and drink choices on gameday reflect that. He eats a Snickers bar and drinks coffee. The team eats the same pregame meal before every contest, regardless of whether it’s a home game or on the road: pork chops, chicken, rice, vegetable. That has been the case since McCollum's days at Northwest Missouri State.
“It’s just the same thing,” McCollum said. “Makes your body feel the same way and that’s ultimately what you want. We found a niche that seems to work. I don’t know if our guys like it. But I like it. So, oh well.”
Mixed reviews, it turns out.
“Oh, 100%,” McCollum’s son Peyton, a first-year guard, said when asked if he gets tired of the meal.
Said Trey Thompson: “Sometimes, I don’t even eat it because I’m so used to just eating the same thing over and over.”
Said Brendan Hausen: “Nah, I can’t complain. It’s food, man. It’s food I get to eat, so I can’t complain.”
But here’s an important stipulation to the meal: No bread.
McCollum is, like many things, intentional about this.
“It was Olive Garden,” McCollum said. “The dudes, I swear each of them had a whole basket of bread and it was like two hours before the game. Oh, we got our butt kicked. It might’ve been 40. Never again. I can’t even eat it anymore.”
Exercise is a part of McCollum’s pregame routine. Before Iowa’s game at Iowa State in December, we were walking back to the media room and saw someone running the stairs in the depths of Hilton Coliseum. It was McCollum. Before Iowa’s last regular-season game against Nebraska, McCollum was running outside of Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln.
“One of my good buddies calls it the gameday misery, the misery of gamedays,” McCollum said. “And so, you’ve got to get rid of some of that. That’s where the workout helps. And if you do it close enough to the game, it sharpens you up mentally. I’ve always found that, anytime you really want to focus on something, the best thing to do is work out beforehand. It kind of helps sharpen your mind.”
Here’s something else rather uncommon about McCollum: His wardrobe choices in the brutal cold of the Midwest.
McCollum wore shorts as he shuffled toward Hilton Coliseum on that snowy December day. The next month, Iowa players were bundled up in jackets and sweatpants as they walked toward the plane that would fly them to Oregon. Meanwhile, McCollum wore a long-sleeve shirt and shorts.
The high that day was around 15 degrees.
“In the winter time, I never saw him wear a coat,” former Northwest Missouri State star Trevor Hudgins said. “Like it was weird … There’s been multiple times where he just gets off the bus with shorts and a long sleeve and it’s cold, 32 or something. He just hops off the bus and goes right to his car and I’m just like, this makes no sense. Just makes no sense. After games, just goes, walks to his car without a coat or pants on. It’s like, how do you do this with shorts and a long sleeve. And Maryville, Missouri, gets cold. I don’t understand it.”
Right before we start media availability ahead of Iowa’s Sweet 16 matchup with Nebraska in Houston, McCollum asks if I have the outfit ready. “Yessir," I responded. I could see that question coming from a mile away. I traveled directly from Tampa to Houston, so it's the only button-down I have with me.
It’s not easy to decipher the method to McCollum’s madness. But that might fit perfectly with this time of year.
It is March Madness, after all.
Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15, contact via email at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa basketball coach Ben McCollum's eccentric quirks, superstitions