NCAA Basketball: Top 10 best coaching hires from 2024 offseason

9. Ben McCollum (Drake)

Great hires are rarely defined after less than a month, even if a new head coach and his staff are really active early on in recruiting. That being said, McCollum landing at Drake is certainly a move that jumps off the page. This hire really stands out for the combination both of McCollum’s success in his own career and the recent surge that the Bulldogs have felt under predecessor Darian DeVries.

McCollum is an Iowa native who returns to his home state after extreme success at the D2 level. A former player at Northwest Missouri State, McCollum would return to his alma mater first as graduate assistant and later as head coach. Over 15 years, he’d build that program from mediocre to a national juggernaut, winning four D2 national titles in a six-year span.

Obviously jumping from D2 to D1 is always something of a challenge, but McCollum has clearly established himself as the premier coach at that level. He now returns to his home state, taking over a Bulldogs program that has multiple trips to the NCAA Tournament in recent years and should continue to be a top squad in the MVC even under new leadership. Seeing what Josh Schertz did at a dormant Indiana State program paves the way for McCollum to be even better at this other MVC school.