By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The announced attendance for the Iowa-Xavier men’s basketball game on Friday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena was a very respectable 11,678.

It just took a while to get there.

About 15 minutes before the 7 p.m. tipoff, the arena still had empty seats all over the place.

It was a Friday night, the weather was unseasonably warm and delightful for mid-November, and the semifinals of high school football playoffs were being played, so there was a lot of competition.

By tipoff, however, the arena was way more than half full, clearly passing the eye test.

Iowa came out flat against Xavier, so that obviously didn’t help energize the fans.

But the players, and the fans stuck with it.

And by the time the game had ended, Iowa was celebrating an 81-62 victory, and was 3-0 under first-year head coach Ben McCollum.

The players and coaches have made it a point to celebrate with the fans at courtside after each of the first three games.

McCollum doesn’t just have to rebuild the program, almost from scratch, he also has to rebuild the fan base, starting with the UI students.

Iowa already has provided some assistance by having recently built a new student section that is located behind the south baseline. The section holds about 200 students and it has been full and filled with energy for all three games so far.

“Again, thanks to the crowd,” McCollum said to the media after Friday’s win. “I think we’re starting to slowly to build a crowd. I think again, and I say it ad nauseam, it’s a build for everybody, the whole community of Iowa City, the state of Iowa and the University of Iowa, obviously.

“We got to do this together because it’s going to take time, and it’s not always going to be perfect like we’ve said. But if you can keep coming out, we’re going to work on some cheers.”

There were multiple times in the first three games in which McCollum turned to the fans and pleaded for them to stand up and unleash the energy that has been missing from the arena in recent seasons.

“The problem is every time I get them fired up, we get scored on,” McCollum said. “It’s ridiculous. Every time.

“My staff’s like, ‘get them fired up.’ And I’m like, ‘so we can get scored on.”‘

McCollum was sort of half joking because he fully understands the challenge he faces, both on the court, but even more so in the stands.

McCollum has had to rebuild the roster almost from the ground up, with only one scholarship holdover from the Fran McCaffery era.

But McCollum also replaced the all-time winningest coach in program history, a coach who recruited and developed some of the best players in program history, and a coach who had led Iowa to the Big Ten Tournament title in 2022.

The program was in shambles when Fran McCaffery was hired in 2010, but not when he left last March.

It was the fan base that was in shambles.

Rosters are so fluid in this age of the the transfer portal and NIL, and Iowa is a prime example, with hardly any reminders from the Fran McCaffery era still present.

Fran McCaffery didn’t have the luxury, or some might say the burden, of having to rebuild the Iowa roster almost from scratch when he took over in 2010 because there was no NIL or transfer portal.

He added pieces as he moved along and eventually lifted Iowa back to respectability.

But again, somewhere along the line the fans became disconnected from the Iowa men’s basketball team under Fran McCaffery.

The unprecedented rise of the Iowa women’s basketball team might have been a factor.

But probably the biggest factor was Iowa’s failure to advance past the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 14 seasons under McCaffery.

The point of no return might have been Iowa’s 67-63 loss to Richmond in the first round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, because home attendance really seemed to get worse from that point on.

Of, course, the best and really the only way to fix the disconnect is to win games.

McCollum will be given some time to implement his plan, but at some point the honeymoon will end and he will have to meet the challenge.

McCollum has won consistently throughout his coaching career, including finishing 31-4 in his only season as the Drake head coach last season, and winning four Division II national titles in 14 seasons at Northwest Missouri State.

This is by far his biggest challenge, partly because of how big the stage is now. But also because he’s trying to re-energize a fan base that is now used to not attending Iowa men’s basketball games.

So to have nearly 12,000 fans for the Xavier game was certainly a step in the right direction.

It doesn’t matter when the fans get to the arena, as long as they get there on time.