Who will have a better career? Medved at Minnesota or McCollum at Iowa?

Who will have a better career? Medved at Minnesota or McCollum at Iowa?

  • Medved at Minnesota

    Votes: 76 67.9%

  • McCollum at Iowa

    Votes: 36 32.1%
  • Total voters
    112
Donate To GopherHole
PMWinSTP said:
I think both will have good careers...hoping Niko's is a bit better.
Click to expand...
I hope so....I was impressed by the news conference even though it is pretty much a rah rah,he felt genuine and really believes they can win here.,fingers crossed.
 

TwistingMyMelon said:
He wasn't in his earlier years. Maybe a power conference coach has to be pretty exceptional to avoid the fans souring on him over an extended period of time.

I have a central belief about sports fans: the better you do the better they expect you to do. If a team is poor, they want it to be decent. If a team is decent, they want it to be superior. If a team is superior, they want it to challenge for the national championship.
Click to expand...
I agree that sports fans sour too quickly on a good but not great coach.

Fran is an interesting situation. I think his overall performance was solid for a non blue blood B1G team. He never did bad enough over a long enough stretch to warrant firing, but also had a fairly low ceiling. It is bizarre to have had the record he did over that number of years and never having reached the sweet 16. So I think Iowa was in a position where replacing him probably makes the team worse, but as long as he stayed, there was no reason to think they'd take the next step.
 

McCollum to Minnesota was an interesting thought for awhile to me. So, like many, I've followed him from afar, so much so, that I even watched his introductory press conference too. What was clear (like Niko's), is that Iowa was the place that he's always wanted to be (and I don't think that's just him laying it on thick). He talked about going to youth basketball camps there. Knowing all the Iowa players because that was his basketball universe growing up; not following the NBA. He acknowledged he wasn't a good enough player to make it there, but now he's there as a coach.

Sure, if Iowa spurned him as a coaching candidate, maybe he would have ended up here and spite would have driven him to stick it to Iowa. But I think he ended up where he ideally wanted to be and the same for Niko. Let the rivalry begin!
 




We should change the title of the thread to the Maroon Colored Glasses Crystal Ball.
Niko is 51 years old. He has a career record of 222-172 for a .563 winning percentage.
Ben McCollum is 43 years old. He has a career record of 426 - 95 for a winning percentage of .818. That's .255 winning percentage points better. (and with 127 more games in the big chair.) And 204 more wins.
Niko won the SoCon conference in 2017. He won a MW tournament title this year. A coaching award in 2017 and 2024. That is it.
Ben has won:
Championships
Awards
4 NCAA Division II tournament (2017, 2019, 2021, 2022)
12 MIAA regular season (2012, 2014–2024)
8 MIAA tournament (2016–2020, 2022–2024)
MVC regular season (2025)
MVC tournament (2025)
5× NABC Division II Coach of the Year (2017, 2019–2022)
3× Clarence Gaines Award (2012, 2020, 2022)
5× NABC Division II Central District Coach of the Year (2017, 2019–2022)
Basketball Times Division II Coach of the Year (2019)
John McLendon Collegiate Basketball Coach of the Year (2019)
8× MIAA Coach of the Year (2012, 2015–2017, 2019–2021, 2023)
MVC Coach of the Year (2025)
I have no idea how any one would conclude Niko is the better coach. But, it would be nice if you are right.
I'm going to guess like Bill Musselman coming from Ashland...Ben is convinced Iowa will win the Big Ten this year. Will he? He and and his players I'm betting will think so.
Coaching, recruiting, winning would be my three tenets of coaching. You delegate fundraising.
 
Last edited:

60's Guy said:
We should change the title of the thread to the Maroon Colored Glasses Crystal Ball.
Niko is 51 years old. He has a career record of 222-172 for a .563 winning percentage.
Ben McCollum is 43 years old. He has a career record of 426 - 95 for a winning percentage of .818. That's .255 winning percentage points better. (and with 127 more games in the big chair.) And 204 more wins.
Niko won the SoCon conference in 2017. He won a MW tournament title this year. A coaching award in 2017 and 2024. That is it.
Ben has won:
Championships
Awards
4 NCAA Division II tournament (2017, 2019, 2021, 2022)
12 MIAA regular season (2012, 2014–2024)
8 MIAA tournament (2016–2020, 2022–2024)
MVC regular season (2025)
MVC tournament (2025)
5× NABC Division II Coach of the Year (2017, 2019–2022)
3× Clarence Gaines Award (2012, 2020, 2022)
5× NABC Division II Central District Coach of the Year (2017, 2019–2022)
Basketball Times Division II Coach of the Year (2019)
John McLendon Collegiate Basketball Coach of the Year (2019)
8× MIAA Coach of the Year (2012, 2015–2017, 2019–2021, 2023)
MVC Coach of the Year (2025)
I have no idea how any one would conclude Niko is the better coach. But, it would be nice if you are right.
I'm going to guess like Bill Musselman coming from Ashland...Ben is convinced Iowa will win the Big Ten this year. Will he? He and and his players I'm betting will think so.
Coaching, recruiting, winning would be my three tenets of coaching. You delegate fundraising.
Click to expand...
I would be willing to bet there are some AAU coaches with better win percentages than McCollum. They'd obviously be better coaches.
 

BleedGopher said:
This will be a fun thread to look back at and a fun comparison over the next many years. I think both programs should be happy with their hire and both programs will be fighting for many of the same recruits.

If for no other reason than I'd rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist and be right, I'll go with Medved.

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...
Year 1 to Iowa.
 






I don't know the long-term answer to this question but McCollum has had the best first year of an Iowa coach since Tom Davis in 1987. I don't think it's fair to grade Niko on his first year given the significant restrictions he faced due to injuries.

If one takes an institutional and recency approach to this question, then McCollum would have to be a strong favorite. Iowa has had only one failed coach this century: Todd Lickliter. Minnesota has had three (Monson, Pitino, and Johnson); obviously, they didn't all fail equally. I can't call Tubby a failed coach because he never had a losing season in 6 years.

Of course, I like what I see from Medved so far but he has a more difficult task trying to make his program consistently successful. I suspect that McCollum's achievements this season will only enhance his immediate recruiting prospects.
 

We knew McCollum would have a good go of it, especially once he recruited Stirtz to follow him. Fran left the program in good shape and, although it was a remade roster, there wasn't a Kyan Evans refusing to follow their old coach to a dumpster fire. The Minnesota situation was a different ball of wax from that. It's easy to forget how hopeless and bombed to smithereens this thing was. Niko recruited a decent roster and did an almost miraculous job guiding them through adversity. If you asked me who did the more amazing job this year between the two of them, I'd have a hard time picking one over the other.

The Big Ten has, top to bottom, the best coaches in the country, and both these guys have immediately shown they belong in that fraternity.
 




Every sophomore on up on Iowa's roster has played every game, minus one guy that looks like just didn't always play due to coaches decision. Their top 8 scorers have played all 35 games.

It appears they have stayed very healthy while the Gophers clearly haven't. I'm not saying Medved would have had the better season but it really isn't an apples to apples comparison. Injuries happen but the two programs were clearly on complete opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to being healthy or not.
 

GophersInIowa said:
Every sophomore on up on Iowa's roster has played every game, minus one guy that looks like just didn't always play due to coaches decision. Their top 8 scorers have played all 35 games.

It appears they have stayed very healthy while the Gophers clearly haven't. I'm not saying Medved would have had the better season but it really isn't an apples to apples comparison. Injuries happen but the two programs were clearly on complete opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to being healthy or not.
Click to expand...
It will be very interesting to see how Iowa does post Stritz. Stritz has been a fantastic player for McCollum and has a high usage rate.
 

Beerculees said:
It will be very interesting to see how Iowa does post Stritz. Stritz has been a fantastic player for McCollum and has a high usage rate.
Click to expand...
Just like I think Niko will be able to find someone to replace Tyson's production, I think McCollum will find a star player to replace Stirtz.
 

Bad Gopher said:
We knew McCollum would have a good go of it, especially once he recruited Stirtz to follow him. Fran left the program in good shape and, although it was a remade roster, there wasn't a Kyan Evans refusing to follow their old coach to a dumpster fire. The Minnesota situation was a different ball of wax from that. It's easy to forget how hopeless and bombed to smithereens this thing was. Niko recruited a decent roster and did an almost miraculous job guiding them through adversity. If you asked me who did the more amazing job this year between the two of them, I'd have a hard time picking one over the other.

The Big Ten has, top to bottom, the best coaches in the country, and both these guys have immediately shown they belong in that fraternity.
Click to expand...
Top to bottom the coaches in the conference are stronger than they've been since the early 90's when you had Knight, Henson, Heathcote, Keady, Clem, Dr. Tom, Steve Fisher, Gary Williams etc.
 



McCallum’s lead over Niko so far looks like Secretariat at the Belmont.
 










You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom