By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – At first, Ben McCollum sort of dismissed the personal achievement that came with Wednesday’s 74-57 victory over Ohio State at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The win improved Iowa’s record to 20-8 overall and 10-7 in the Big Ten as McCollum became just the second head coach in program history to win at least 20 games in his first season, joining Tom Davis, who led Iowa to a 30-5 record in the 1986-87 season.

McCollum was first asked in his post-game press conference what it means to get 20 wins in his first season and he tried to downplay it.

“With all due respect, not a lot,” he said. “That stuff really doesn’t do it for me. But I think maybe at some point I’ll look back.”

That point would come much sooner than expected, though, as McCollum was told a few minutes later in the press conference that he had joined Tom Davis as the only Iowa head coaches to win 20 games in year one.

So out of respect for Tom Davis, and for Iowa’s tradition, McCollum let down his guard and opened up a little bit.

“I’m not a big that, but I do respect history and I do respect coach Davis and how good a coach he was,” McCollum said. “I respect him and I respect all the coaches that were here, and I completely understand all of that stuff. I’m humbled by it.

“For me, I think when you get to far down those paths of patting yourself on the back, I think sometimes you get yourself into trouble.”

McCollum might come off as sounding paranoid, but lots of head coaches try to downplay personal achievements because everyone likes humility, but also because they’re obsessed with living in the moment and with the challenges that lie ahead.

Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz has been trying to downplay his achievements for years, at least publicly, because he doesn’t want it to be just about him, or to be a distraction.

Ferentz is the Big Ten’s all-time winningest football coach with 213 wins, but when asked about it, he usually deflects the praise to his players and coaches, or he might joke about having coached long enough to break the record with 27 seasons under his belt.

Of course, Ferentz is proud to have more wins than Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler and Hayden Fry, and Ferentz should be proud because it’s a testimony to his staying power, consistency and his willingness to change with the the times.

McCollum should also be proud of winning 20 games in year one because it isn’t easy.

If it were easy, more Iowa head coaches would have done it.

There are some advantages to coaching these days in that teams play more games than previous decades. Iowa currently plays a 31-game regular-season schedule with game No. 29 coming Saturday at Penn State.

Bucky O’Connor, on the other hand, won 19 games in his first full season as the Iowa head coach in 1951-52 while only playing a 22-game schedule.

Iowa only played a 24-game regular-season schedule in Ralph Miller’s first season as head coach in 1964-65; a 26-game regular-season schedule in Lute Olson’s first season as head coach in 1974-75; a 28-game regular-season schedule in George Raveling’s first season in 1983-84; and a 28-game game regular-season schedule in Steve Alford’s first season in 1999-00.

Miller and Alford both won 14 games in their first season at Iowa, while Raveling won 13 and Olson 10.

Todd Lickliter won 13 games in his first season in 2007-08 while playing a 31-game regular-season schedule, and Fran McCaffery won 11 games in his first season in 2010-11 while playing a 30-game regular-season schedule.

It also could be argued that McCollum benefits from having more roster-building flexibility in this age of the transfer portal and NIL.

And while that is true, it also works both ways as evidenced by Minnesota and Maryland both having records below .500 under first-year head coaches.

Indiana is also just 8-9 in Big Ten play under first-year head coach Darian DeVries.

So just because there is more roster flexibility and fewer restrictions doesn’t guarantee instant success.

McCollum’s roster rebuild almost from the ground up could have easily been a bust.

He took a chance on taking six players from Drake, which he led to a 31-4 record last season, and a transfer from Robert Morris. But so far, the good has outweighed the bad.

Point guard Bennett Stirtz has been as good as advertised, and four of the other Drake transfers have also played significant roles throughout the season.

McCollum believed in the six players from Drake, where he only coached for one season, and he trusted his coaching instincts enough to build the roster around them despite moving to a higher level.

As for the Robert Morris transfer, 6-foot-10 junior forward, Alvaro Folgueiras, he finished with 20 points and five assists in the win over Ohio State.

Iowa is currently on track to the make the NCAA Tournament, though there still is work to do, with in addition to playing Penn State, Iowa will also face Big Ten leader Michigan next Thursday in Iowa City before closing the regular season at Nebraska on March 8.

Iowa will likely be an underdog in its final two regular-season games.

Iowa is also just 3-7 against Quad 1 opponents, but 7-0 against Quad 2 opponents.

Tom Davis is also the last Iowa head coach to make the NCAA Tournament in his first season as he led the Hawkeyes to the Elite Eight in 1987, and did so with a talent-packed roster that was mostly recruited by Raveling, his predecessor at Iowa.

Davis convinced players such as B.J. Armstrong, Roy Marble and Ed Horton to stay at Iowa, and all three would go on to achieve stardom as Hawkeyes.

It certainly helped that it was more difficult to transfer in those days, but Davis still had to convince B.J., Roy and Ed to stay because they had other options.

Davis convinced them to stay and then helped to build them into star players.

McCollum is also building as he nears the end of year one as the head Hawk.

He will have a massive hole to fill when Stirtz moves on to the NBA after this season.

Stirtz is nearing the end of his fourth season playing point guard for McCollum with three different teams. Stirtz played his freshman and sophomore seasons under McCollum at Division II Northwest Missouri State, and his junior season at Drake where Stirtz was named the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year.

Stirtz and McCollum have sort of been a package deal with Iowa now reaping the benefits in year one under McCollum.

Born in Iowa City and raised in Storm Lake, McCollum is now coaching the team for which he cheered as a kid.

He dreamed of being an Iowa basketball player, but that didn’t work out.

But to be one of just two Iowa head coaches to win at least 20 games in year one is a pretty nice consolation prize,