How Beth Goetz landed Drake’s Ben McCollum in her first major search as Iowa’s AD

IOWA CITY — Beth Goetz had a phone call three years ago with Ben McCollum.

Goetz, then the athletics director at Ball State, was looking for a men’s basketball coach. McCollum, meanwhile, was on his third consecutive Division II national championship run as the head coach of Northwest Missouri State.

Goetz was “pretty far along in the process when they were finishing up there, when his name came on the radar,” she said, and instead hired UCLA assistant Michael Lewis.

But the future Iowa athletics director saw something in the future Iowa head men’s basketball coach.

“Before his name was known outside smaller coaching circles, people were taking notice of what he was able to achieve on the court and the way he was going about it,” Goetz said. “It was impressive then, and it's well known now.”

Three years later, the right opportunity finally came for Goetz to go through with hiring McCollum — with the coach and some students wearing Hawkeye gold ties at his introductory press conference on Tuesday instead of any Ball State red.

Goetz worked with Parker Executive Search out of Atlanta on what was her first major coaching search since becoming Iowa’s permanent AD in early 2024. (She also tabbed Jan Jensen as head coach for Iowa women’s basketball after Lisa Bluder’s retirement, but that was an internal promotion that did not necessitate an outside search.)

Iowa had a “good handful of conversations” with several coaches during the 10-day search, Goetz told reporters after the formal press conference. She did not specify the exact number, but said it was “more than one hand of individuals.”

“Now, the level of conversation is obviously a little bit different, depending on where they are in the process,” Goetz said. “But we certainly did our due diligence. … No matter what your gut tells you at the beginning, our responsibility is to do the due diligence and to make sure we’re really going down the right track.”

It was clear, though, that McCollum — coming off a 31-4 record in his first season at Drake and having won four Division II national titles before that — was always on Goetz’s radar.

“When you start these things, you sort of go through and you’ve got certainly a list of people,” Goetz said. “And he was on it from the beginning.”

The first conversation between Goetz and McCollum was on the morning of March 15 — the day after Goetz fired McCaffery. McCollum said he “had no idea that that was going to happen.”

The Iowa AD and then-Drake coach spoke again on the following Monday, March 17.

“I said, ‘Hey, I really need to focus on my team,’” McCollum said. “Like, I can’t be divided. I can’t be in decision-making mode while I’m coaching. I have to put as much energy as I can into that. And she respected that as much as any athletic director can respect that.”

Drake athletics director Brian Hardin said in a Monday press conference that there were “some schools that were certainly wanting (McCollum’s) attention” before the season was over, but his agent “protected Ben from that.”

McCollum’s Drake Bulldogs then lost on Saturday in the second round of the NCAA tournament and returned to Des Moines on Sunday morning.

“Ended up making the trip to Iowa City Sunday, and then Monday morning at I think maybe 6:45 a.m., I signed the papers and committed,” McCollum said. “So that was it.”

Drake’s Hardin also “took our swing” at trying sway McCollum to stay, having rallied significant financial resources for the Missouri Valley Conference program.

“He said he needed time to think about it,” Hardin said in a Monday press conference. “We texted late into the night.”

Hardin refuted a 247 Sports report — shared on social media at 9:57 a.m. on Sunday morning — that said Iowa was in the “process of finalizing a deal” with McCollum.

“Ben was landing in an airplane at 10 a.m. back to Des Moines from Wichita,” said Hardin, whose undergraduate degree was in journalism. “That post was eventually correct. But at that time, it was not correct. And that unfortunately impacted a lot of people on that Sunday.”

On Monday, nonetheless, the Goetz-McCollum partnership was finally official almost exactly three years after Goetz went in another direction with her Ball State coaching vacancy.

“It’s been fun for that to come full circle,” Goetz said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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