Big Ten play kicks off for a trio of new men’s basketball coaches

While Indiana’s Darian DeVries won’t meet the Minnesota Gophers’ new head man, Niko Medved, until Wednesday night in the Twin Cities, Big Ten play kicks off Tuesday for one of the conference’s newest names, Ben McCollum.

The three are inheriting vastly different situations – more on that later – but will be inextricably linked for joining the same group of 18 teams in the same hiring cycle for the rest of their Big Ten tenures, and possibly well after.

Indiana, No. 22 in the latest AP Poll, is already reaping the benefits of its latest hire, reaching its highest Kenpom ranking in nearly a decade with convincing wins over Marquette and Kansas State. Compared to the other programs with new coaches, the bar is going to be the highest at Indiana.

Indiana has more resources than Iowa and Minnesota, and a longer history of basketball success than either of the other programs. Neither McCollum nor Medved will inherit a program with as much at its disposal as DeVries, but DeVries will be held to a standard that his peers won’t be.

It’s Indiana, after all.

Iowa is also seeing immediate dividends for making the tough decision to move on from program stalwart, Fran McCaffery, for an up-and-comer like McCollum. The Hawkeyes are heading into their matchup with the longest tenured coach in the conference, Tom Izzo, undefeated, having beaten Ole Miss and Xavier on the way.

Unlike Indiana, who hasn’t had an identity for the last nine or so seasons, Iowa is looking to forge a new identity with an emphasis on defense, something McCaffery neglected for the better part of his 15 seasons at Iowa. So far this year, McCollum’s defense is the 28th most efficient nationally. Fran only finished in the top 30 twice.

Further entangling DeVries and McCollum is the fact that both cut their teeth as head coach at Drake before reaching their current destinations.

DeVries took over a Drake team in desperate need of a rebuild before leading them to back-to-back conference titles and an AP Top 25 ranking before McCollum took over for a year, bringing Drake to the round of 32 in last year’s NCAA Tournament.

Then there’s Niko Medved, who was also at Drake for one year before DeVries took over. In his one year there, he got the Bulldogs from Kenpom’s 258th team nationally to a much more respectable 155th ranking before DeVries brought them consistently within the top 100.

Medved spent the last seven years at Colorado State, where he took the Rams to NCAA Tournament appearances in three of the last four years and twice nabbed second place in the Mountain West. He won’t have the resources that DeVries or even McCollum will have, but he’s shown that he can win at places that aren’t traditional basketball powerhouses.

The next chapter for all three coaches begins in earnest this week, with Medved and DeVries facing off Wednesday. McCollum will be in Bloomington January 17th for what could well be a matchup between ranked teams.

How things progress beyond this point is impossible to know now, but we can say for certain that the three will be measured against each other for as long as they last in the conference. It’s happened before with Chris Holtmann and Archie Miller, and arguably even more intensely with Curt Cignetti versus the rest of the country.

It might not be fair given the resource discrepancy and range of expectations levied upon the three, but that’s college sports in 2025.