WVU Candidate Ben McCollum Delivers Interesting Response When Asked About His Future

With all signs pointing to WVU wrapping up their coaching search soon, one of West Virginia’s top candidates made some interesting comments after his current team’s exit from the NCAA Tournament. Believed to WVU’s top choice, Drake’s Ben McCollum was directly asked if he will be back with the Bulldogs next season.

“Those are questions that I don’t probably want to answer right now,” McCollum told reporter Shannon Ehrhardt of KCCI News in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Those are questions I probably don’t want to answer right now.” https://t.co/GTYHEtjV5H

— Mike J. Asti (@MikeAsti11) March 23, 2025

McCollum then added that he’s just been focused on leading his Drake team, hinting that he didn’t want rumors about his future to be a distraction. And to his credit, McCollum did lead Drake to one NCAA Tournament win, beating Missouri before eventually falling to Texas Tech on Saturday.

From our current reporting based on what WV Sports Now has heard from sources, Ben McCollum and Jerrod Calhoun are WVU’s top choices. It’s also believed West Virginia director of athletics Wren Baker has them ranked as McCollum as his No. 1 choice and Calhoun as his fallback plan.

McCollum would represent hiring the top available coach left, and ironically, stealing away Drake’s coach for the second consecutive year.

In contrast, Calhoun would represent bringing in a coach with clear ties to the state and school. It would also signal reestablishing a connection with Bob Huggins in a way. While Huggins is not a candidate to return to his old position at the helm of the Mountaineers, hiring one of his former assistants would mean Baker is not turned off by the idea of a head coach with a clear connection to Huggins, who was forced to end his career unceremoniously after multiple scandals in the spring of 2023.

More about McCollum

McCollum has only been a Division-I coach for one season, but he would shoot to the top of the watchlist for WVU basketball for two reasons. First, he was highly successful in his first year at this level, leading Drake to the NCAA Tournament with a 30-3 record.

Second, his familiarity with Baker. McCollum spent 15 seasons as the head coach of Division-II Northwest Missouri State, where he overlapped with Baker for four years from 2010-13. Baker did not hire McCollum to NWMS — McCollum started there in 2009 — but the two did overlap. Baker has already hired a coach at WVU with ties to his old job as current WVU women’s basketball coach Mark Kellogg was hired by Baker at NWMS in 2012.

Ben McCollum was on WV Sports Now’s initial coaching candidate hot board.