Todd Whitaker

Fred Hoiberg with the season on the line

I coached against Ben McCollum across six seasons. We built our roster and our defensive system with the goal of taking them down. While we beat them three times in a row, they always flexed greater winning four D2 National Championships and beating us a large majority of the time. There is no team we studied more as a staff than McCollum’s teams. Here is what he does better than most coaches in the country: *Point guard development: Ben McCollum is to college basketball what Andy Reid is to NFL football. Reid is widely considered the best QB coach developing Donovan McNabb, Alex Smith, and Pat Mahomes. If you think Bennett Stirtz is good for Drake, you should have seen McCollum’s point guard Trevor Hudgins (2x National POY) who signed and played with the Houston Rockets. Before Hudgins was National POY Justin Pitts. Simply put, McCollum always has the best point guard in the country. He develops them and they play the entire game. Stirtz leads the country at 39.4 MPG; Hudgins was at 37.7 MPG. McCollum’s methodical and controlled style of play protects them from injury and their team defense protects them from foul trouble. Stirtz was a second team all-conference player in our D2 league last season. He is now one of the best players in the country in NCAA D1 and a serious NBA prospect. No one develops PG’s better than McCollum. *Team Defense: No one gets players, who shouldn’t be able to guard, to be better on D than McCollum. Mitch Mascari should get blown by every possession. Daniel Abreu shouldn’t be able to guard 6’10+ big men. Bennett Stirtz should be attacked off the bounce constantly to wear him out and get him in foul trouble. Opposing coaches know these things and try them. But it doesn’t work well. McCollum’s best, and most underrated strength, is coaching team defense. His guys are tough, physical, legal, smart, play for each other in the gaps, take pride in winning their individual defensive matchup, and they don’t get tired. Plus, he always has one bona fide elite on-ball defender on his roster (see Isaiah Jackson and Diego Benard) to shut down elite guards. *Shot developer: Many college coaches don’t develop or change their player’s jump shots. Shots typically get worse for months at a time before they get better and most players are stubborn and/or not there long enough before transferring to their next school. McCollum develops shooters. One example is Mitch Mascari. Here is his shooting splits over the past five seasons: *Fr: 7/27 3PT - .259 *So: 20/60 3PT - .333 *Jr. 56/120 3PT - .466 *Sr. 82/171 3PT - .480 *Gr. 87/214 3PT - .407 (vs. D1 closeouts) It isn’t just Mascari either. A key reason Stirtz went from second team all-conference at the D2 level to the Larry Bird MVP of the Missouri Valley Conference is because of his improved perimeter shot. His last season in D2, Stirtz was 36/110 from 3PT (.327). This season at Drake he is 62/156 3PT (.397). He is perhaps shooting 80% from 3PT on “big shots” too. For perhaps McCollum’s best shot development job, see Ryan Hawkins, who starred for four years at NW Missouri State before transferring and being All-Big East at Creighton his final season. *Master in-game manipulator: As Ben’s former assistant Austin Meyer says, “You’ll play the game the way Ben McCollum wants you to play.” I’ve never seen, or coached against, someone who manipulates pace the way that Ben does. He can play his point guard the entire game as a result. Most players don’t want to play this way. It’s slow, sometimes boring, it’s controlled, there isn’t a lot of freedom, and the point guard usage rate is amongst the highest in the country (I.e. the PG gets to create in this system while others don’t). However, McCollum’s innate ability to identify selfless, no-ego players during the recruiting process allows him to get the buy-in needed to operate this way and at his pace. “Press them.. just speed them up”… Good luck with that.