Photo courtesy of Iowa Athletics: The Iowa softball team celebrates its upset victory over No. 5 UCLA in Iowa City.

It all started in December, when veteran Iowa softball coach Renee Gillispie announced she would be stepping away from the program for the 2025 season due to a personal health matter.

Less than three months later, interim coach Brian Levin abruptly left the program in the middle of their Arkansas road trip, citing cultural and societal divides within the team that made the working environment untenable.

The Hawkeyes were two weeks away from their Big Ten opener, and two main leaders down on a staff that typically only has a head coach and a pair of assistants in the first place. Karl Gollan, who had just joined the program last August, moved to the head of the table for the rest of the year. Former player Sammy Diaz — like Gollan, a rookie to the staff — added more responsibilities to her plate. Lori Duncan, an ex-Pleasant Valley High School coach who worked with Gollan at Augustana College prior to this Iowa City stint, recently joined the staff for the second time in her career as a volunteer.

The main story here, though, is the players. There have been so many twists and turns, and dozens of reasons for Iowa’s season to go off the rails. Losing the program’s head coach and top assistant in real time while trying to prepare for and then execute during the year has to be incredibly demoralizing. The accusation of a fractured dugout only fanned the flames.

Instead of burning down, these Hawkeyes have used the fire as fuel. The squad is 9-4 since Golan took over, with victories in eight of their last nine games heading into a weekend series at Wisconsin. They swept Indiana in their Big Ten opener, then earned a dramatic split with No. 5 UCLA thanks to a heart-stopping comeback victory last Sunday.

Iowa is 21-9 overall — already three wins more than its 2023-24 total with five weeks left in the regular season — and former Fort Dodge Dodger all-state pitcher Jalen Adams ranks second in the nation with 15 victories. Tory Bennett — another ex-Dodger standout — has made a seamless switch to centerfield, regularly bats second or third in the lineup, and delivered the clutch hit to knock off the mighty Bruins last weekend.

Gollan and the current staff obviously deserve credit for calming the waters, but ultimately, it was up to the players to decide the fate of this campaign when everything started to unravel. A brutal Big Ten campaign still awaits, so the job is far from finished.

This is quickly and quietly becoming the story of the year in the conference, though: forced to grow up in a hurry and take ownership of the program in ways they never could have imagined, these Iowa student-athletes have turned to instead of against each other. Being short-handed and short-staffed hasn’t deterred them, but rather, inspired them to change both the narrative and the outcome in a 2025 campaign that could have easily become a lost cause.

CULTURE SHOCK? Fran McCaffery became a polarizing figure in Iowa City before his Hawkeye men’s basketball tenure ultimately ended in a cloud of apathy.

McCaffery was always a player’s coach. Even after the university announced his departure two weeks ago, many former Hawks rushed to his defense on social media. I’m not sure many athletes from the McCaffery era would support the school’s decision to move on from his 15-year tenure, even if they somewhat understood the time had come.

McCaffery did himself no favors with the media or fan engagement, especially near the end. He figured an entertaining product on the court would speak for itself, and for many years, it did. The “at least he isn’t Lickliter” crowd held on for as long as possible, and All-Americans like Luka Garza and Keegan Murray gave optimistic fans an extended reason for hope — even as McCaffery’s persistent NCAA Tournament struggles continued.

The epilogue to McCaffery’s tenure is complicated. Was he fiercely loyal to his players and did he provide a lot of fast-paced, energizing moments during his heyday inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena? Yes. Had he slipped past the point of no return because he didn’t shake enough hands and kiss enough babies as the program failed to reach 20 victories in his final three years as head coach? Also yes. The empty seats at CHA this year wound up being both the tiebreaker and the final blow. The patience and goodwill were gone.

Enter Ben McCollum, who was officially hired to replace McCaffery on Monday. A lifelong Hawkeye fan and Iowa City native, McCollum — who actually played his high school ball an hour west of Fort Dodge at Storm Lake St. Mary’s, and still has plenty of family in the area, including a brother who works in Sac City and a sister-in-law who is a patient navigator in oncology and infusion at UnityPoint Health–Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge — has been a big winner at every head coaching stop. He turned Northwest Missouri State into a Div. II powerhouse, then led Drake to 30 victories and a Round of 32 NCAA Tournament game for the first time since 1971.

In a lot of ways, McCollum is the antithesis of McCaffery. He’s a native son, a coach who is very defensive minded, and an Xs and Os maven who is widely-known for being both methodical and deliberate — if necessary — in his offensive sets.

McCollum checks a lot of boxes, and could very well be exactly what the Iowa hoop community has been yearning for with this fresh start and new approach. There are still plenty of questions, though, for a man who has never coached or recruited at a level anywhere near what the Big Ten will demand.

McCaffery defenders and detractors were both right and wrong to a certain degree. McCollum supporters and skeptics are to an extent, too. There’s just no way of knowing exactly how this will go, and it may take a while to see if athletic director Beth Goetz truly did the right thing by making this move for this coach at this point in time.

Change is a constant in life, and this is a big one for Iowa. College basketball is a complicated world in 2025. McCollum must find a way to establish an identity now that he’s in the big leagues and differentiate himself from the pack, while also staying true to his roots. Life in the fast lane is about to begin.

Eric Pratt is Sports Editor at The Messenger. Contact him via email at sports@messengernews.net, or on Twitter at @ByEricPratt