Iowa Eyes More Difficult Schedule in 2026

One of the biggest arguments for the Iowa Hawkeyes No. 25 ranking is the simple fact they haven't beaten anyone notable. Sure, they took down teams like Xavier and Ole Miss, but those are really the only quality wins on their schedule.

Blowing out mid-major teams doesn't do much, and that's something first year head coach Ben McCollum acknowledged. He recently spoke to the media about Iowa's strength of schedule and how he wants to fix that moving forward.

That said, Iowa continues to do everything right. They took one of the nation's top teams, No. 4 Iowa State, to the limit, and their only other loss is to No. 7 Michigan State.

With their 10-2 record, Iowa has one final non-conference game before B1G play kicks into high gear. Starting on January 3, it won't take long to see if this Iowa team is legit or not.

McCollum Speaks On Iowa's Schedule

Ben McCollum on non-conference scheduling philosophy: "You probably want to play enough of the buy games to build your confidence and to get more bodies in. So, you don't want to eliminate those because you can play your depth. But we want to play more power conference teams next…
— Tyler Tachman (@Tyler_T15) December 27, 2025

"You probably want to play enough of the buy games to build your confidence and to get more bodies in," the first-year head coach said. "So, you don't want to eliminate those because you can play your depth. But we want to play more power conference teams next year than we did this year, (that's) our goal. It doesn't always happen that way, but that would be the objective."

McCollum isn't coming out and saying the Hawkeyes are going to schedule teams like Duke or UConn, but it wouldn't hurt to see them get tested a bit more in their non-conference slate.

No offense to the likes of Western Illinois, Southeast Missouri State, Chicago State, and Bucknell, but what are those wins really doing to a team? While it's great to see the offense come alive and run up the score, everyone knows that isn't going to happen once the calendar flips to 2026.

McCollum Has a Clear Vision for This Team

Iowa is ranked No. 25 in this week's AP Poll.

This is the first time the Hawkeyes have been ranked since November 2022. pic.twitter.com/ZOyROLqvEz
— Sean Bock (@SBock247) December 22, 2025

Since coming to Iowa, McCollum has made a few things crystal clear. He wants the Hawkeyes' fans to come out to each and every game, and has since started a post-game tradition that gets the fans more involved. At the end of the day, he just wants Iowa to be a basketball school.

Iowa being ranked No. 25 will get more eyes on the program, but now the work really begins. Once they get past UMass Lowell, they'll have a challenging January against the likes of No. 20 Illinois, No. 5 Purdue, and No. 24 USC.

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