Iowa
Iowa students now majoring in insurance coverage classes
IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – The University of Iowa has seen big success in its new ‘Risk Management and Insurance” program.
Iowa has had classes for insurance for decades, but students would only be able to obtain a certificate for completing the courses. In the last year, the school said it was ranked 8th in the country.
“I have one more to take next semester, and I am taking three currently,” said Will Eastman, an Iowa senior.
Eastman is one of 200 students currently taking part in the University of Iowa Tippie College of Finance ‘Risk Management’ major. Before this year, Eastman studied finance, but when he learned adding a second major would include 5 classes, he jumped at the opportunity. He plans to get into the health insurance field when he graduates next Spring.
“Everyone was jumping on it because of how easy and how good of a sale it is,” said Eastman.
Tippie School of Finance Professor Martin Grace said being ranked 8th in the country was a novelty this year – that next year would be the real test, but the program was something he said brings a lot more to the state of Iowa than people might think.
“In most states, the insurance industry is around 2% of the state’s economy, here, it’s five times that or more,” Grace said.
The new program comes at a time when some Iowans were starting to see insurance companies pulling out of the state of Iowa. We reported that 5 companies left Iowa last year due to losses of billions of dollars from storm damage. That included the 2020 derecho, which caused $10 billion in damage in Iowa.
“The whole world is having larger and larger claims because we live in more dangerous areas, more risky areas,” said Grace.
It’s challenges like this that Eastman said he had learned about and was ready to take to his new career when he graduates.
“A lot of us students were drawn in because we weren’t just talking about definitions and how auto or home insurance, we were talking about unique real-world problems that are happening now in current events,” said Eastman.
Copyright 2024 KCRG. All rights reserved.
The Iowa Hawkeyes have landed a new coach in Ben McCollum, beginning a new era in Iowa City. McCollum certainly has his work cut out for him given all of the departures Iowa has had recently, but perhaps he could bring in some big additions via the transfer portal?
Black Heart Gold Pants has speculated on a few potential Drake Bulldogs players that could potentially make their way to the Hawkeyes, as McCollum coached Drake to a 31-5 record and an NCAA Tournament appearance this past season.
The top name that surfaced was guard Bennett Stirtz, who just led the Missouri Valley Conference in scoring.
“His abilities on full display in the tournament should help to ease concerns over McCollum’s ability to recruit,” Black Heart Gold Pants wrote. “Stirtz very clearly belongs, even getting some NBA buzz on Thursday, but was overlooked by D1 coaches out of high school.”
Stirtz averaged 19.2 points, 5.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 2.1 steals over 39.4 minutes per game on 49.8/39.5/79.4 shooting splits this past season.
He has spent his entire collegiate tenure with McCollum, as he began his career at Northwest Missouri State, but transferred after his sophomore campaign after McCollum made the jump to Drake.
It’s only natural to wonder if the 6-foot-4 sharpshooter will follow McCollum once again, especially now that McCollum is at a Big Ten program.
Iowa has lost a massive chunk of its roster to the transfer portal after the firing of Fran McCaffery, so now, it’s up to McCollum to repair the damage. Perhaps he could convince Stirtz to come on board.
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Oklahoma 96, Iowa 62: OUtmuscled
NORMAN — Sixth-seeded Iowa fell in the round of 32 on Monday, losing 96-62 to third-seeded Oklahoma in Norman to close the 2024-25 season. In what was a physical contest from the tip, the Sooners were the aggressor against the Hawkeyes.
Oklahoma’s size, strength and speed were simply too much for Iowa, who didn’t have the physical prowess to matchup with the Sooners. OU not only out-rebounded Iowa, 64-33, but the Hawkeyes couldn’t match Oklahoma’s shooting. OU shot 33-of-81 (40.7%) from the floor and 19-of-27 from the free throw line to Iowa’s 24-of-66 (36.3%) from the field and 4-of-7 (57.1%) from the free throw line.
“They’re really good. They’re athletes. They hit the portal hard,” head coach Jan Jensen said following the loss. “They’re bigger, faster, stronger. I told you yesterday the degree of difficulty to guard all that.”
The rebounding margin was the strongest indicator of the difference between the two teams.
“I think going into the game, that was definitely something we knew was going to be a key. They definitely got a majority of the second-chance points. That was from the rebounds,” said Kylie Feuerbach, who finished with 14 points and six rebounds. “They did a great job at positioning. We probably could have done a little better. But we knew going into the game their box-outs and rebounds would be really important.”
Sydney Affolter, Iowa’s leading rebounder against OU with nine, added that the game was more physical than the Hawkeyes were used to.
“The refs definitely let us play,” she said. “They have some big girls, big posts and big guards all around. We could have done a lot better on the boards. I thought we did a little bit better in the second half. They crashed pretty hard.”
“We knew going in that SEC teams are really physical — a lot more than the Big Ten,” starting center Hannah Stuelke said. “They’re just an amazing rebounding team. That’s something they hang their hat on.”
The boards weren’t the only place the Hawkeyes had a disadvantage.
Though it certainly wasn’t all at the hands of the officials, — and no one on Iowa’s roster will tell you it was — Stuelke and the Hawkeyes definitely didn’t benefit from the officiating on Monday evening.
The most glaring call came in the beginning of the second half, when Stuelke made a reverse layup and inadvertently made contact with Raegan Beers‘ face with her off hand. The officials went to the monitor and handed Stuelke an “intentional foul” that not only gave the Sooners two free throws (which were made by Payton Verhulst, who finished with 16 points) and the possession, but shifted momentum heavily in the favor of OU.
“It was an accident,” Stuelke said after the game. “I have no control over that, so I don’t know. I’ve never been called for an intentional before. That was my first one. I elbowed her in the face on accident.”
Stuelke added that the officials didn’t explain the reasoning for the call to her. Jensen was disappointed with the decision by the officials for several reasons.
“I didn’t have a chance to see it,” she said. “I just asked some unbiased people at the scorer’s table, and I don’t know if they were NCAA [officials], one was an Oklahoma [official]. I said, ‘What’s your gut on that?’ They were like ‘We’re a little surprised it got upgraded.’ … I think our players were pretty frustrated. I was trying to calm them down, but I thought that was a big swing in the game.”
OU shot 20 more free throws than the Hawkeyes, who shot a total of 11 between Monday night’s game and their matchup with Murray State on Saturday.
“Oklahoma, they’re going to win. When it’s called like that — and it was not why we lost the game; let that be clear — but 27 to seven,” Jensen said. “So I think that’s part of it. I don’t think we thought about it much at the time. I don’t think the players did. I think we were really hitting. I don’t think you can really — without some bigs, really big bodies, you can’t really slow or stop Oklahoma. You’ve got to score with them.”
Looking into the future of the Iowa roster, though they won’t be able to control the problems with officiating, Jensen plans to adjust and address the issues that faced them against the Sooners.
“I think it has to be a change now,” Jensen said. “I think we have a lot of great pieces, but they’re young. … I love our pieces. I think we can develop them, and that will always be my model. We’re graduating Syd and we don’t have a lot of depth at the one. We have Aaliyah Guyton. Addie Deal plays off the ball and on. You’re going to look and see what we need.”
The transfer portal opens tomorrow.
“We’ll be really busy,” Jensen added. “I love the pieces we have coming back, I just think we need a little more size. You saw them — Beers changes the game. Then you’ve got 24 [Skylar Vann], 34 [Liz Scott], 0 [Beatrice Culliton] who are all big bodies, and then you add Sahara Williams. We’ll look in the portal.”
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Ben McCollum on Drake basketball’s loss to Texas Tech in NCAA Tournament
Ben McCollum breaks down Drake basketball’s loss to Texas Tech in the NCAA Tournament and reflects on his 31-win season with the Bulldogs.
IOWA CITY — When Iowa and Ben McCollum agreed to make him the school’s next men’s basketball coach, just a few scholarship players remained on the Hawkeyes’ roster.
Four to be exact, as of Monday morning. Carter Kingsbury, Seydou Traore, Isaiah Johson-Arigu and Chris Tadjo.
McCollum, the former Northwest Missouri State and Drake head coach, is replacing Fran McCaffery as the leader of the Hawkeyes program. The development comes shortly after McCollum’s Drake Bulldogs were bounced from the NCAA Tournament on Saturday.
McCollum takes the reins of an Iowa roster that has mostly dwindled. It’s difficult to blame Iowa players for examining their options when there literally wasn’t a head coach in place.
As John Calipari quipped after taking the Arkansas job in 2024, “I met with the team, there is no team.”
Iowa isn’t quite in that territory. But McCollum does have a significant amount of work ahead of him to get Iowa’s roster intact for the 2025-26 season.
Iowa is tasked with reconstructing the roster in a way that the program hasn’t been accustomed to. It will likely be much more reliant on the transfer portal — whether that be via Drake, re-recruiting Iowa players, or adding firepower from elsewhere.
Iowa’s philosophy under McCaffery was pretty clear. The Hawkeyes would build the foundation of the program through the high school ranks and filled holes through the transfer portal when needed.
Here’s a look at Iowa’s (scholarship) transfer portal additions in recent years:
- One ahead of the 2021-22 season (Filip Rebraca)
- Two ahead of the 2023-24 season (Ben Krikke and Even Brauns)
- Two ahead of the 2024-25 seasons (Drew Thelwell and Traore)
- One during the 2024-25 season (Johnson-Arigu)
In the modern landscape of roster movement, Iowa was able to maintain a fairly high level of roster stability. The Hawkeyes have no choice but to take a different approach now.
Before any additional departures, the Hawkeyes were already set to lose a few players who had exhausted their college eligibility. That trio came in the form of Payton Sandfort, Thelwell and Brauns, all of whom played roles on Iowa’s 2024-25 team to varying degrees.
As of Monday morning, seven Iowa players had decided to enter the transfer portal since the departure of McCaffery — Owen Freeman, Brock Harding, Pryce Sandfort, Riley Mulvey, Josh Dix, Cooper Koch and Ladji Dembele.
Sandfort, Koch and Dembele have publicly left the door open for a return to Iowa.
Joshua Lewis and Dezmon Briscoe, two members of Iowa’s 2025 high school class, have re-opened their recruitments. Lewis was one of the top high school prospects to commit to the program in the modern recruiting era.
Drake men’s basketball coach Ben McCollum reflects on job rumors
Drake lost to Texas Tech, 77-64, in the second round of the 2025 NCAA men’s basketball March Madness tournament. Drake coach Ben McCollum has been a popular name for college basketball coach openings.
Iowa had seen roster turnover under McCaffery. But not to this degree. This is a new dilemma for the program, which was able to navigate the uncertain waters of an evolving landscape with the stability of a long-tenured head coach.
That changes now.
Hawkeye fans can find some solace in the fact that McCollum has been in a very similar situation. Roughly one year ago, in fact.
This is uncharted waters for the Iowa program, yes. But not for McCollum.
McCollum took over at Drake in 2024 and revamped the Bulldogs’ roster. More than half of the players on Drake’s 2024-25 squad (active or not) started their college careers at a different school. McCollum brought some from his previous home at Northwest Missouri State, including star Bennett Stirtz (who has a year of eligibility remaining). McCollum also landed transfers from Wyoming, Indiana State and Northwest Florida State College.
McCollum showed he could make that formula work. The Bulldogs finished the season 31-4 and were one of college basketball’s feel-good stories after making it one step short of the Sweet 16. Drake went 4-1 against power conference programs — with the lone loss coming to Texas Tech on Saturday.
“It’s a lot of work to get it to this point,” McCollum said after Drake’s loss to Texas Tech in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32. “It’s a lot of sleepless nights. Lot of phone conversations trying to get players. And then trying to get guys to buy into something. Just have a level of blind faith. It’s hard.”
There could be at least some level of familiarity for those who choose to join the Hawkeyes’ 2025-26 roster. Whether that be with McCollum as a head coach or the University of Iowa. But as a unit, it won’t be the same level of continuity that the program has experienced in the recent past.
At least for one season, Iowa’s roster-building process will likely be more reflective of the modern times.
Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15, contact via email at ttachman@gannett.com
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