New Iowa Coach Ben McCollum Discusses the Power of Process

PHOTOS: HAWKEYESPORTS.COM Iowa men's basketball coach Ben McCollum brought six players with him from Drake to build his first Hawkeye roster.

Ben McCollum returned from his first family vacation in nearly two years with an eager look in his eyes. The well-timed getaway followed a frenetic spring where he led Drake to the NCAA Tournament’s round of 32, became the Iowa men’s basketball coach, and rebuilt a roster while balancing time between Iowa City and his family’s home in Des Moines. Just days before his inaugural Hawkeye team assembled on campus in June to begin preseason conditioning, McCollum sat down with Iowa Magazine to discuss his mindset and method in preparing his student-athletes for success. Here’s the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

What influence did your experience as a basketball player have on your coaching style?

I always had an extreme work ethic because I wanted to pursue Division I basketball. That was always there, and then throughout my career, our team didn’t finish first as much as I would have liked. I always thought I was close to being able to break that, and then I went to Northwest [Missouri State] and realized there’s a different level of intensity and culture associated with it. I learned a lot from my old head coach, Steve Tappmeyer. He taught us what it meant to be first place, just from an effort standpoint, being ready every day, and toughness.

How do you prepare your team to be ready every day?

You have to practice the habit of being ready when you don’t want to be. And those are the times that you can really make the biggest jumps. Whether it’s the weight session we just started, where we’re trying to get those guys going immediately. If they can practice that habit, then eventually it will show up in games to where they’re always ready to go.

What other habits do you preach to your student-athletes?

Being in a good mood and having a servant’s heart are probably two of the bigger ones. Being competitive obviously impacts winning, but being in a good mood is a big thing and creating energy through that. And then you have to have that little edge to you. I think there’s a quote, ‘You can tame a fool a lot quicker than you can resurrect a corpse.’ And so making sure you have a little edge to you, and you’re not afraid to compete and fight for things.

It seems you prioritize strength and conditioning more than a lot of other coaches, and you’ve personally joined some team workouts. Why is that important to you?

I try to stay in shape and challenge myself; a few years ago, I ran a marathon. I enjoy—I don’t know if it’s suffering—but I guess that suffering component of it. I think that’s what makes you that much better—working hard and going through some pain and tough stuff. The best way to do that sometimes is just through conditioning because you can choose that rather than some type of adverse situation happening in your life.

Some of your former student-athletes have talked about the intense preseason conditioning workouts in your program. Beyond building fitness, is there an ulterior motive with those?

A lot of people can run a long way and kick the door down, but can you do that and support your teammate? What we always say when our guys get tired is making sure that they don’t think about themselves but think about your teammate and getting your teammate through it. And naturally, that unselfish heart comes out, and you get through it because you’re not so worried about how tired you are. It’s like, ‘Well, this guy’s tired too, so I’m going to help him.’ It trains you to get a little less emotional in regard to how you’re feeling.

What do those workouts entail?

Sometimes I don’t know what we’re going to do, so I just make it up as I go. You look at your guys, and you can figure out where they’re at from a fatigue perspective. Whether it’s to go run stairs, then change to hills, then maybe change to sprints, then maybe run a 400, and then back to stairs. And so you’re just completely unpredictable because, quite frankly, you don’t know what’s going on.

The guys that get emotional in that really struggle because they’re just trying to get through it and hope that it’s done. The guys that are good in those attack each individual rep and just figure it out as it goes. But if you get too far ahead of yourself and you get emotional, it’s not going to work.

What’s the desired effect with that unpredictable approach?

The biggest thing with that is just [our student-athletes’] ability to stay present and process focused. When you know there’s an end in sight, you might go a little bit harder—or a little bit slower if the end’s a long way away. Your objective is to just make that rep the best rep you’ve made all day long and not worry about the future or the past. Just stay very present on that thing.

What that allows you to do in a game setting is just take it one possession at a time, stay process focused, and understand that those results take care of themselves. You don’t have any control over that. You just have control over what’s right in front of you. So if we can get those guys to focus on that, a lot of times that’s helpful in game situations to handle adversity or success.

How else do you instill a process-over-results mindset into your players?

I’ve got to be an example of that. I get excited about wins but not a ton. I don’t get upset with losses that much. I just stay pretty process focused. I get more upset with a bad workout than I do anything else. I just want the guys to give elite effort every single time and really pay attention to that.

What I’ve found is that if you do that consistently, it takes a lot of pressure off those results that you don’t have control over anyway—and then you naturally get better and better.

How do you embody the motto, “impose your will,” that you instill in your team?

It’s just making sure that everything you do, you’re not a victim to your circumstances. Whether things go against you in life—or the job isn’t perfect, the house isn’t perfect, or whatever it may be that isn’t perfect that day—not allowing that to impact your mood and how you’re going to respond and act.

You’ve described the University of Iowa as an opportune place to build a program and culture that attracts student-athletes who want to stay. Why do you believe that’s possible here?

Iowa has a true campus feel to it, and it’s a fun place to be. I think the community will embrace it and make [our student-athletes] want to stay here. I think it does attract some Iowa guys and those from outside the state who have Midwest personalities, who want to be about something bigger than themselves, and who want to win championships. I think we can do that here, and we’ll find out shortly.