The tournaments are done and now it’s the season of coaching changes and transfer portal intrigue. The drama is palpable, rumors are being born and shared at breakneck speed, and rosters are full of question marks. In an attempt to cut through the offseason noise, we’re taking a look at some of the best coaching hires made across the country so far. These new bench bosses look like sure bets to steady their new programs – and in short order, get down to some serious winning!
Ben McCollum – Drake
It’s a terrible blow to lose as much as Drake has lost in the past few weeks. Head coach Darian DeVries and his superstar son Tucker have headed to Morgantown and multiple other key contributors have gone portaling. Their departures leave a program that has spent plenty of time mired in mediocrity feeling terribly bereft. You see, between 1970-71 and the arrival of Darian DeVries in 2018, Drake had won 20+ games exactly once; DeVries accomplished the feat in each of his six years at the helm.
Fortunately for Bulldog fans, Drake moved swiftly to hire a guy who is already quite familiar with both the job and consistent success. Ben McCollum is one of the best Division II head coaches of his generation, and nearly earned the Drake job a few years back. A five-time NABC National Coach of the Year and four-time NCAA Tournament champion at the Division II level, McCollum has been on the radar of administrators at the highest level of competition for years. Even so, McCollum has kept his sights on one prospective job above all others, and jumped when the Drake job opened up once more.
“Ben has had numerous other opportunities to become a Division I head coach over the past few years,” Drake’s athletic director, Brian Hardin, explained at McCollum’s introductory press conference. “But he waited for this position to open. He didn’t want to just be any Division I head coach. He wanted to be the Drake head coach. And that matters. That matters and it’s why he’s a tremendous fit for our campus and for our community.”
McCollum is an Iowa native who grew up in Storm Lake (about 2 hours from Des Moines) and played two years of junior college ball in his home state before transferring to Northwest Missouri State. There, he got his first taste of postseason success in helping the Bearcats to make their first ever Elite Eight run in the Division II NCAA Tournament. After his return to Maryville, MO, to become head coach in 2009, all that McCollum did was rip off an astounding 394 wins in 485 games. Over the past eight seasons, McCollum’s teams have been sublime enough to notch a combined 253-21 record; and the year Drake chose DeVries as coach instead of McCollum, Northwest Missouri State went 38-0 on their way to a natty.
It’s an interesting time in Division I for McCollum to make the jump. With upwards of 1,500 players currently in the transfer portal, many programs are pursuing proven veterans and looking to win instantly by luring players who are nearly finished products. The greatest hallmark of McCollum’s Bearcat program – aside from all of the titles – has been its ability to develop players over time and make them into consistent, standout performers. For example, two-time NABC National Player of the Year Trevor Hudgins and teammate Diego Bernard won three national titles in their time together at Northwest Missouri State, finishing a perfect 17-0 in the tourney.
That’s the type of meaningful growth which should be quite a pitch to players who may be overlooked in the mad dash of the portal. McCollum’s first Bulldog team will inevitably be dipping into the transfer market to fill out a roster which has been nearly wiped bare by graduation and the exodus of DeVries players. It’s unlikely to be the primary way McCollum will focus upon building his squads in the long run, though. For his part, Drake’s new coach is taking a pragmatic view towards entering the world of the Division I portal.
“I think the adjustment is just getting players to do what you want them to do earlier when you don’t have continuity,” McCollum told reporters at his inaugural presser. “So, how quickly can you implement a system, implement a culture, get them to play at the level you want them to play at offensively and defensively? That’s going to be the biggest transition.”
Though he may be adjusting to a different situation in a highly competitive league, McCollum’s reputation for developing great players and succeeding at a championship level are impossible to ignore. The state of Iowa produces plenty of talent, and McCollum’s ties to the state should bear immediate fruit on the recruiting trail as he looks to begin cultivating a new developmental system in Des Moines. Moreover, Drake’s administration understands exactly who McCollum is and how he intends to construct his program: and they are undoubtedly willing to give him the time and resources needed to build the Bulldogs back up.
There may be coaches who win more games at other schools in the upcoming season than McCollum will at Drake. Going forward, though, there don’t appear to be many better fits of coach-and-school across the nation than the patient McCollum and these Bulldogs.
Preston Spradlin – James Madison
This past season, James Madison broke out in a can’t-miss way. The Dukes piled up 32 victories, beat Michigan State in East Lansing, won the Sun Belt Conference tournament, and ran away from Wisconsin in an NCAA Tournament romp. One of the foremost side-effects of that sort of big, loud success is that the Dukes then lost their coach. With Mark Byington off to Vanderbilt and JMU looking to remain in the spotlight, the program had to make a quality hire.
Over the past eight years, Preston Spradlin has proven his quality at Morehead State, and now, he’s made the move to Harrisonburg, VA. After debuting as the program’s interim coach in 2016-17, Morehead State gave Spradlin the job full-time in 2017. It took a couple of seasons for the young coach to hit his stride, but over the past four seasons, Spradlin has made the Eagles into a consistent winner. Since 2020, Spradlin has twice been named the Ohio Valley Conference Coach of the Year, and over the past four seasons he’s led the Eagles to 94 wins, three OVC titles, and a pair of appearances in the Big Dance. That is the sort of high-end success that the Dukes are hoping to see become the norm, and the school’s athletic director, Jeff Bourne, declared as much when he officially welcomed the program’s new coach.
“Given our recent success at James Madison, our facility, our resources and the enthusiasm of our fanbase, we believe Preston is the right coach to build something truly special in Harrisonburg,” he told reporters at a press conference to introduce Spradlin.
Not only have Spradlin’s teams been consistently stout defensively, he’s got a track record for developing stars. Spradlin has signed such talents as Johni Broome, Jordan Lathon, Mark Freeman, Riley Minix, and Ta’Lon Cooper along with piling up the W’s lately. His teams have ranked among the nation’s best in opponent FG%, opponent 3FG%, and free throw attempts allowed, and Spradlin’s best Morehead State squads have been dominant on the glass. With that combination of attributes forming the core of his program in Harrisonburg, Spradlin will seek to maintain the Dukes’ continuity as a tough, defense-first group.
Still not yet 40 years old despite eight years as a successful head coach, Spradlin is the type of rising coach who should grow along with his new program. First up, Spradlin will look to rebuild his new roster’s core, as point guard and defensive ace Xavier Brown is the team’s only key returnee at this point. Once a part of John Calipari’s staff at Kentucky, Spradlin’s never had trouble attracting good players, and he figures to find some promising youngsters to fill out his first JMU team. With his familiar approach to what worked so well for the Dukes last year, Spradlin looks like a quality replacement for Byington who will carry JMU’s momentum forward.
Rob Lanier – Rice
Now that they’re headed to the Atlantic Coast Conference, SMU has decided that they are too good for the coach they hired just two years ago. So they fired a coach who had overseen a huge turnaround, threw a whole bunch of money at someone else, set the coaching carousel spinning recklessly across the college basketball landscape…and sent Rob Lanier towards a potentially exciting situation with an opportunity to build up a new program at Rice.
The Owls have only won 20+ games twice over the past 20 seasons in Houston, and Lanier went 20-13 in Dallas last year. That record marked a ten-game improvement over Lanier’s debut season, and yet SMU still chose to move on. It wasn’t the first time that Lanier had turned around a program in a hurry. In three seasons at Georgia State, Lanier won a pair of Sun Belt titles, and he took the Panthers to the NCAA Tournament in 2021-22. Twice an assistant at Texas before taking the SMU job, Lanier has established himself as a solid recruiter in the talent-rich state.
“I think (Lanier) is known for finding those right types of athletes that can fit the program and fit the needs and what the university likes,” said former NBA star TJ Ford, a onetime Longhorn during Lanier’s time at Texas, of the Owls’ new coach following his introductory press conference. “He’s going to turn things around…I just think having a stand-up guy with good character – a program builder – everybody’s going to love him here.”
Lanier’s teams like to press, and he likes to both feature his guards and utilize a deep bench in the pursuit of harrying the opposition. At Rice, expect Lanier to focus on adding experienced backcourt players to lead the way. After all, it’s what he’s done with Zhuric Phelps and Chuck Harris at SMU, and what Lanier did in putting the ball into the hands of Kane Williams, Corey Allen, and Justin Roberts while at Georgia State before that. The Owls are likely to feast upon turnovers and transition opportunities as the rest of their offense comes together – and in three out of the past four years, Lanier’s teams have featured enough rim protection at the back of their press to rank among the nation’s top 50 in blocks per game.
Though Rice never became a consistent threat to win Conference USA, their move to the American Athletic Conference has given the Owls a chance to reinvent themselves. It also doesn’t hurt that Florida Atlantic, Memphis, and South Florida – three of the league’s top teams last year – have been in considerable flux due to coach and/or player movement this offseason.
A coach looking to prove that he’s better than the way his old school viewed him and a program hoping to make its mark; Lanier and Rice seem like a great match to help one another grow. Don’t be surprised if this pairing ends up being one of the more mutually beneficial hires of this spring’s cycle.
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