By Tyler Tachman, Des Moines Register
Houston, TX – No, this isn’t a fever dream.
Alvaro Folgueiras’ game-winning 3-pointer to slay 1-seed Florida. The resilient 77-71 win over rival Nebraska in the Sweet 16, a game in which Iowa didn’t take its first lead until a little more than two minutes remaining.
It all seems almost too good to be true — like some Iowa basketball dream. The type where, eventually, you wake up disappointed, because you realize that it wasn’t real.
Except, all of it — the clutch 3-pointers by Bennett Stirtz and Tate Sage, the timely buckets by Folgueiras, the hugs on the court after the win over Nebraska — is real.
This isn’t a dream. The Hawkeyes are in the Elite Eight.
Considering where Iowa was — and where it is now — it’s difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that this is reality.
Around this time last year, the program had been almost completely turned upside down. The roster was depleted. The future was hopeful but uncertain. Imagine the reaction if someone at Ben McCollum’s introductory press conference had said that in about one calendar year, Iowa would be one win away from its first Final Four since 1980.
This was a program whose postseason success had been fleeting. The magical Big Tournament Championship in 2022 was memorable, but also an outlier. The Hawkeyes had not made the NCAA Tournament since 2023. The last time they had even won a game in the Big Dance was 2021.
Iowa has now won three games in the 2026 NCAA Tournament alone — with the chance to add to that tally against Illinois in the Elite Eight on Saturday, March 28 (5:09 p.m. CT, TBS and truTV).
This Iowa team is going to heights that the program hasn’t seen since the turn of the century. The Hawkeyes had not been to a Sweet 16 since 1999. They had not been to an Elite Eight since 1987. This team has ended both of those lengthy droughts.
This story is difficult to believe, considering how much has changed so quickly, for those making this improbable run happen.
Two seasons ago, McCollum was still the head coach at Northwest Missouri State. McCollum has been a rocket ship since leaving the Bearcats in 2024, spending one memorable season at Drake before taking the job at Iowa. Because of his winning pedigree at Northwest Missouri State, it might be easy to forget this is just his first season coaching at the power-conference level and only his second in Division I.
“It’s been a lot,” McCollum said. “I don’t want to totally reflect on it just because we’ve got a lot of season left. But what I don’t think people understand is the toll it takes on your family. That’s the biggest toll. My wife, Michelle, who runs everything. (My kids) Peyton, Tate, Grace — I don’t get to spend as much time with them. But they are the reason that I’m here from a supportive standpoint, particularly my wife.”
Bennett Stirtz has been by McCollum’s side on this wild ride. Stirtz, who played his first two college seasons at the Division II level, is now an All-Big Ten performer and a projected first-round pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.
After a couple of uncharacteristic shooting performances to open the NCAA Tournament, Stirtz got back on track against Nebraska, scoring 20 points on 7-of-15 from the field. He drained a deep, contested 3-pointer with a little bit more than two minutes remaining to give the Hawkeyes their first lead of the game.
On Iowa’s next offensive possession, freshman Tate Sage drilled a 3-pointer to push Iowa’s lead to six. Sage was originally signed to play for McCollum at Drake. Sage was, get this, ranked tied for 365th nationally in the 2025 high school recruiting class, according to the 247Sports Composite. On Thursday, he dropped 19 points, hitting four 3-pointers and grabbing a team-high eight rebounds in the Sweet 16.
“My high school coach sent me a picture before the game,” Sage said. “Right outside our locker door, it has a sign that says, ‘Play like underdogs.’ That was our saying in high school … He just reminded me of that. I carried that with me and kept that in my head all throughout today.”
Folgueiras, who followed up his Florida heroics with a 16-point performance against Nebraska, was averaging 5.3 points per game as a freshman at Robert Morris two seasons ago. Tavion Banks was at a junior college in Florida. Kael Combs and Cam Manyawu were at Wyoming.
“Every single one of us has something to have a chip on our shoulder about, whether it was being underrecruited or not wanted at a certain place,” Manyawu. “So I think we just played with that chip on our shoulder and we’ve carried that throughout the whole entire year.”
Even entering the NCAA Tournament, running through a gauntlet of 8-seed Clemson, 1-seed Florida and 4-seed Nebraska seemed borderline delusional. This was an Iowa team that was just 3-7 over its last 10 games, including perplexing duds on the road against Big Ten bottom-feeders Maryland and Penn State.
Iowa had been so close against high-level competition, but more often than not it came up short. After the Hawkeyes’ loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament, McCollum’s locker-room message was that he believed in the team, but the players themselves had to believe in what they were capable of.
“Trying to get them to understand that you’re not just a win-a-conference-tournament-game team,” McCollum explained. “You’re not just a make-the-NCAA-Tournament team. You need to be able to win those games.”
Iowa has done so in the three games since, all of which the Hawkeyes have found ways to execute down the stretch in contests decided by single digits. The Hawkeyes are making the types of plays they hadn’t against Iowa State, Purdue and Michigan.
“Our concentration is 10 times better,” McCollum said. “It’s big moments and our guys really focus in big moments. We could’ve probably done a little bit better throughout the year if we just had this kind of habit built. But everybody arrives when they’re supposed to. We talked the whole season about process and getting better, creating habits and it takes time and it takes time and it takes time. It takes time. And so, we’ve gotten a little bit better at habit creation and being more ready. You see the result of that now.”
The Hawkeyes are one win away from a Final Four, two from a national championship appearance and three from climbing the mountaintop. For the Hawkeyes to even be this close to immortality barely feels real.
But it is.
No, this isn’t a fever dream.
It’s Iowa basketball.
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