KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Drake head coach Ben McCollum paced in the coaches’ locker room before speed-walking in to address his team.

His assistants had told him the players were a little quiet during warmups for the Wildcat Classic, a mid-December game against Kansas State in downtown Kansas City. Star point guard Bennett Stirtz attended the event they were about to play in as a fan a year ago. Isaiah Jackson, whose childhood home is 15 minutes from T-Mobile Center, had watched many games in the building but never stepped on the floor. When he walked through the tunnel for the first time, he took out his phone and captured the moment, then FaceTimed his parents after practice so they could see.

Stirtz and Jackson are two of the four starters who followed McCollum from Division II Northwest Missouri State when he was hired by Drake this offseason. They’d played in big games, but no environment like this. So McCollum decided to recycle a speech he’d given before the 2021 Division II national title game when he’d had a similar feeling.

“It’s always fascinating in these kinds of environments, what some people can do and what some people quite frankly can’t do, that they can do in a regular environment,” McCollum said.

He told his players to imagine there was a balance beam on the floor — four inches wide, five meters long. Could they walk across it? “Hell yeah you can,” he said.

Now raise it 10 feet in the air. You may think twice, but most could still make it.

Now what if it was 150 feet in the air?

“The same balance beam that you just told me you could walk across when it was on the ground because there was no repercussions to it, all of a sudden it lifts a little bit and you can’t walk across it anymore? Why?” McCollum asked. “Because you lost the ability to walk? No. You can still do that. Because you’re distracted by everything else around you.”

McCollum’s point: Block it out — the crowd, the noise — and just put one foot in front of the other.

A few hours later, the Bulldogs sprinted back into that locker room, knocking off a Big 12 team on a shot by Stirtz with 3.4 seconds left in overtime.

Drake opened 2025 as one of the final four undefeated teams in Division I, playing with a confidence reinforced by the results its leaders brought from the D-II ranks. The Bulldogs faced their first setback Wednesday, dropping their Missouri Valley Conference road opener 74-70 to UIC, but they’re off to a 12-1 start that no one saw coming, with three wins over high-major programs.

“They look good on film, but when you watch them in person, they’re even better,” said Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington, who called McCollum after Drake beat Vandy in November to ask if he’d get on a Zoom and talk through how he did it. “And what they’re better at in person is some details that you might not catch by watching film. And then when you see them in person, they hit every single detail.”

In 15 seasons at Northwest Missouri State, McCollum won 12 regular-season conference titles and four national titles. Long before he was coaching at their level, Division I coaches would mention that they’d been studying Northwest Missouri State’s offense. They expected McCollum to succeed in D-I, but not this much and this fast.

Meanwhile, McCollum’s players expect to win because they know McCollum is going to put them in the right places and always know exactly what to say.

“They’re a well-tuned machine,” Byington said. “I shook his hand after our game and told him this group can make a deep run in the (NCAA) Tournament. Not just win a game; they can make a run.”

Why did it take so long for McCollum to get a Division I job?

“I’m a slow trigger by nature,” McCollum said, “because I evaluate every decision quite a bit.”

In the last few years, McCollum was in the mix for several low- and mid-major openings, but he was always hesitant to move his family. Drake was a job he’d always eyed — he’s originally from Iowa, and it’s a program with a winning history in a strong league — but it still took him five days to accept after it was offered. “We had a good setup,” McCollum said. “And, you know, your culture doesn’t necessarily travel.”

That wasn’t necessarily true, because all it took to get three of his returning starters to go with him was one visit each to his office. If he were to go, would they come along? Stirtz, Jackson and Daniel Abreu said yes immediately.

Stirtz and Jackson both wanted their shot at D-I, too. They had the same two offers out of high school: William Jewell College and Northwest Missouri State.

Abreu, who did have two D-I offers in high school (Abilene Christian and Jacksonville), was ready for a challenge. “I was getting bored of the scouts after year two, playing the same teams over and over again,” Abreu said. “I can’t believe (McCollum) did it for that long.”

Those three yeses got McCollum off to a head start building the lineup he needed. Stirtz is the point guard who can do a little of everything; Jackson is the distributor and lockdown defender; the 6-6 Abreu plays with a physicality that allows him to guard up. McCollum had a big on the way in Cam Manyawu, a Wyoming transfer who followed assistant Bryston Williams to Drake.

The final piece needed was a shooter. McCollum had one at Northwest Missouri State but thought he was finished playing. Mitch Mascari had his MBA after five years in Maryville and had accepted a job as a credit analyst in asset management at First Trust Portfolios in Wheaton, Ill. He was supposed to start in two weeks, but after McCollum accepted the Drake job, Mascari started thinking maybe he too wanted his shot at D-I and put his name in the transfer portal on the final day it was open. McCollum called him right away, and Mascari asked McCollum what he thought he should do.

“Naturally, when you coach somebody for five years, you build up a level of trust and whatever probably opinion that I would have given him, he probably would have done it and listened,” McCollum said. “And so I couldn’t give him my opinion. I could just give him the positives and negatives of both. And then it was ultimately his decision to make and he chose to come and play.”

The one starter McCollum could not bring with him was Wes Dreamer, the conference player of the year who is now the leading scorer for a professional team in Germany. That meant McCollum had to do more teaching than his former Bearcats had witnessed before, and he had to rethink the team’s style of play.

Making this hot start even more unlikely is the possibility that McCollum may have as little depth as he’s ever had. Mascari has played every minute in five of the 13 games. Stirtz has come off the floor twice in the 11 games against D-I opponents — both in the final minute of comfortable wins over Stephen F. Austin and Belmont.

The offense is built around getting Mascari 3s and Stirtz a gap to drive, with Abreu making the occasional 3 and always looking for openings to cut. Whichever big is on the floor is a roller/cutter, and Jackson distributes while also providing timely drives or cuts to the basket. The former Bearcats have found in D-I that sometimes it takes more time to find a quality look, but they will exhaust every opportunity to get a great shot.

“We have to move it,” McCollum said. “All five guys have to connect to be able to create windows and avenues, to be able to get to the paint and get below the defense. We’ve had to invest in five or six different ways, where it’s just like if they guard this, then we have to go to this and this and that.”

Jackson says the difference between Division II and Division I is that these big schools play at a quicker pace and take “early, average shots.” McCollum has always believed that to beat good teams, you’re going to have to score against a set defense.

“We play a slower tempo because we don’t take bad shots, and we won’t take bad shots,” McCollum said. “We refuse to take them. And so it naturally slows the game down.”

McCollum’s players always feel like they have the answers to the test, and the coach has always been willing to scrap plans if the opponent throws a curveball. The offense is like a decision tree.

“A lot of our offense is predicated on how the defense reacts,” Mascari said. “So if a defense is reacting in a different way than we anticipated, we’re just going to do something else. Sometimes we’re walking down the floor, and we have no idea what we’re about to do. So how is the defense supposed to?”

Drake may lead the country in shot clock violations, which is part of the reason Drake is turning the ball over at one of the worst rates in college basketball — 20.5 percent of its possessions against D-I competition. The Bulldogs would rather run out the clock than take a mediocre shot, and they stay composed when the seconds tick away late in a possession. Against Vandy, they had three shot clock violations. “That never fazed them,” Byington said, noting Drake also made three late-clock 3s.

Defensively, the Bulldogs seem to rarely ever make a mistake, and McCollum is meticulous in demonstrating how to guard every action they will see, from the footwork to body position to where to be on the floor. He gives his players easy cues to remember.

“It’s not really what you know,” McCollum said. “It’s what they can comprehend and then execute.”

This may be the most impressive stat for Drake this season: Without one player taller than 6-8 in the rotation, Drake ranks 15th nationally in defensive rebounding rate and 17th in offensive rebounding rate. After getting out-rebounded by Stephen F. Austin in its first game against a Division I opponent, the Bulldogs have won the battle of the boards every game since. That aspect of this start astonishes even McCollum.

“They’re just destroying people on the boards,” McCollum said. “Defensive rebounding, we’ve always been No. 1 in the country (in Division II). Offensive rebounding, we’ve just been physical. We just go get the ball. Little chip on our shoulder.”

Three years ago Northwest Missouri State entered the season as the defending national champs with four starters returning. The Bearcats had gone 97-3 the previous three seasons. It was star guard Trevor Hudgins’ senior season.

And McCollum wanted them to fail.

Every preseason he puts his team through an exhausting conditioning test. Every player has to run 20 line drills and 20 down-and-backs in 20 minutes. You have to do both in one-minute windows and can’t start again until the beginning of each minute. If you don’t pass, you try again the next day. Before the test three years ago, the Bearcats had a hard lift — squats and resistance bands. They were being set up to fail.  “Our legs were done,” Jackson said.

Jackson was the only player who made time, but McCollum still made him run the next day with all of his teammates because he wanted to see them all pass it together.

“They need to teach themselves to respond,” McCollum said. “You don’t just respond to failure well. You’ve got to develop that habit through failing and then figuring out the response to it.”

Against K-State, Drake found failure. After leading 29-9 early, K-State started to chip away late in the first half, going on a 14-2 run. “That crowd popped,” Stirtz leaned over to tell Mascari at halftime.

Mascari had been on fire, making all six of his 3s in the first half. But K-State mostly took him away in the second half, face-guarding him and Stirtz. Midway through the half, K-State sharpshooter Brendan Hausen got a clean look for the first time and buried it to tie the game. It felt like K-State was in control, with Drake looking tired and hopeless in the half court.

With 23.9 seconds left, Abreu went to the free-throw line, the Bulldogs’ first loss looming if he missed. During the under-16 timeout of the second half, Drake had broken its huddle early, and Abreu was joking with a security lady stationed at the free-throw line. McCollum affectionately calls him Buddy the Elf because he’s always in a good mood. A day earlier, Abreu said that he never watches basketball — he prefers movies — and his ignorance of the basketball world is a gift. “The nerves aren’t there because I just don’t know,” he said.

He buried both free throws to force overtime.

“They’re tough. I mean they’ll outlast ya,” McCollum said. “That’s the thing, like there’s a level of toughness. There’s a level of outlast. There’s a level of, you know, who’s going to take it further? And we’ve just tried to train them to be able to create those habits to take it a little bit further and fight a little bit more.”

In overtime, Stirtz found the little bit more.

He scored five of Drake’s first seven points in OT, and after K-State’s Coleman Hawkins buried a 3 with 12.3 seconds left to tie the game, Stirtz got the inbound pass and calmly jogged the ball up the floor. Drake set up with all four teammates lined up on the baseline and let Stirtz go to work. Stirtz crossed over, got Hausen on his heels and buried the game-winner.

That was a response.

Stirtz and the Bulldogs have been undaunted by high-major competition so far. (Jay Biggerstaff / Imagn Images)

The hero returned to his locker stall and sat. He leaned back, hands on his lap and stared straight ahead in a daze.

Stirtz is a K-State fan. His grandparents are football season-ticket holders. Both his older brothers went to K-State, and his younger brother plans to enroll there next year. His mom wore a K-State shirt under her Drake shirt in support of Stirtz’s girlfriend, a K-State dancer who watched his game winner from the opposite baseline. In high school, Stirtz sent his film to K-State coaches. Once he got his Northwest Missouri State offer, the only ones he would have considered were Division I offers. Those never came. When Stirtz committed to the Bearcats, McCollum told friends he thought he’d stolen one.

Byington marveled at how Stirtz and the three other former Bearcats ever ended up at that level: “Those guys are probably starters on most SEC teams.”

Hyperbole? Maybe. But not with Stirtz. He’s so good that NBA scouts are starting to take notice. And college basketball is taking notice of the Bulldogs. They were picked fifth in the Missouri Valley in the preseason coaches’ poll. They were projected to win the league before Wednesday’s loss at UIC, according to Ken Pomeroy’s metrics, and nationally they’ve been on the verge of getting ranked. In this week’s Associated Press poll, they received the second-most votes among teams outside the Top 25.

Stirtz is as unassuming a star as you’ll find. He never celebrates a made bucket. He’s quiet off the floor. But in that overtime, Stirtz wanted the ball and he wasn’t going to let the Bulldogs lose. Against the school he had dreamed of playing for, Stirtz realized the fact that he was being face-guarded meant the Wildcats didn’t think they could guard him, and he started to believe it himself.

“I ain’t one for individual s—,” McCollum told his team once he got to the celebratory locker room, “but damn, that’s a big shot.”

Then McCollum reminded his players of the satisfaction of what they’d just accomplished. He nearly went into the next challenge, before catching himself, “I’m not even going to ruin the moment,” he said. “Let’s just get our prayer and get out of here.”

The Bulldogs knelt, and Abreu delivered the perfect line. “Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for Bennett.”

Stirtz then headed to the news conference, where he informed the media that his game winner was the first buzzer beater of his life. Technically, there were still those 3.4 seconds on the clock, but that’s just about the only flaw in this script, which somehow keeps getting better.

(Photo: Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)