Iowa men's basketball returns to action in just 22 days, and head coach Ben McCollum and his team previewed their 2026-27 campaign at Iowa's annual media day on Monday morning. 

Here are a few things we learned from McCollum's press conference: 

The sky is the limit for Iowa after it reached the Elite Eight last season, but now that we're just weeks away from the start of another season, it's time to flip the page to 2026-27. Every coach hopes to be lucky enough to cut down the nets in March, but only one coach gets that distinct honor. The Hawkeyes feel very good about their basketball team this season, but when it comes down to it, what are McCollum's main goals for his team? 

The coach joked that he abandoned setting goals for a season after his first team (2009-10 Northwest Missouri State) went 12-15, but once the laughter in the room subsided, McCollum's goal for his 2027 Iowa team is simple: play really hard and have a great day every single day. 

According to McCollum, that's going to be the key for sustaining the success last season's team had. 

"I think our group has done that, but that's how you build a real program that sustains itself, is you really focus on all your daily habits and how it feels to be around your program," McCollum said. "If we focus on those, we think that the external goals will take care of themselves." 

If there's been one common sentence McCollum has used throughout every media availability we've had with him in the offseason, it's the fact that he feels his team has the pieces to put together a complete game for 35 minutes. 

Having consistency for 87% of a basketball game is a good thing, but McCollum knows that's simply not going to cut it in the Big Ten. A basketball game is 40 minutes, after all. Last season it was Bennett Stirtz who was able to be Iowa's go-to scorer in crunch time, but that's not going to be the case this year. 

McCollum knows he has a good roster, but identifying the player who can deliver in the final five minutes is a process that remains ongoing and probably won't be revealed until the ball is tipped. 

Even though we have ten returners, it's just so new because everybody's role is completely different than what it was the year before just because you don't have a Bennett," McCollum said. "We're still trying to figure that out, but I think we're moving in the right direction."

Most of the players on this Hawkeye team (Cooper Koch, Tate Sage, Kael Combs, etc) are well-established names by this point, but there's four players that Iowa fans won't really learn about until the season begins.

Who are the players you ask? That would be the freshman - true freshman Jaidyn Coon and Ethan Harris and redshirt freshmen Trey Thompson and Peyton McCollum (Ben's son). 

Coon, probably the most-anticipated of the four because he's an in-state prospect, has impressed McCollum with his athleticism. McCollum called Coon "freaky" because of his dunking abilities, but he also said Coon's 6-foot-6, physical frame could be useful for defending the point of attack. 

Harris, a four-star prospect from Washington, was praised for his fiery personality and improvement throughout the summer. Harris' versatile skillset - outside shooting, but good passing and ball-screen setting - resulted in him taking a little longer to figure some things out, but the personality trait has really shown. 

The younger McCollum didn't see any game action last season, but in classic McCollum fashion, he praised his son for his defense and three-point shooting, which he jokes comes from his wife, Michelle. 

And then there's Thompson. The former four-star prospect reclassified to the Class of 2025 and committed to Iowa over his in-state powerhouse Tennessee, but didn't play a single second last season. All signs point to Thompson earning a role off the bench this year, especially if he can shoot the ball as well as McCollum says he's been doing in practice. 

"Trey, his ball goes in. That's what we keep saying. He can really shoot it, can really finish, and has done a good job of that," McCollum said. 

Iowa's non-conference schedule at the end of the Fran McCaffery era was below-average, at best. McCollum has made a point to change that, and it's safe to say his Hawkeyes have a tough non-con slate in 2026-27. Alabama (in Des Moines), Creighton (in Des Moines), Virginia Tech (in Sioux City), and Xavier all join in-state mainstay Iowa State on the schedule this season, and McCollum said that level of scheduling should be the expectation moving forward. 

The Hawkeyes had chances to play in both the Maui Invitational and the Battle 4 Atlantis tournaments this year, but McCollum wanted to play neutral site games in the state of Iowa instead for two reasons: he likes neutral site games and allowing Hawkeye fans to see their team. 

Last season's multi-team invitational in California (the Acrisure Classic) resulted in a championship, but there were only a few Iowa fans in attendance. McCollum knows that will change this year, though. 

"We did schedule more difficult. I just think that's what I'd prefer in the future, is just to continue to grow our schedule and get better and better from an NCAA tournament perspective. If you want to be a real program, that's what you're going to have to do," McCollum said. 

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HawkeyeRoundtable publisher Brad Schultz has covered the Iowa Hawkeyes since 2023. To send him story ideas, scoops, or criticize his writing, reach him at [email protected]