Iowa might not be an NCAA Tournament Cinderella, but the Hawkeyes’ Elite Eight trip is quite a tale

Iowa might not be an NCAA Tournament Cinderella, but the Hawkeyes’ Elite Eight trip is quite a tale originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Two years ago, Ben McCollum was the head coach and Bennett Stirtz was the star player for an institution known as Northwest Missouri State. It’s a Division II program so lacking in self-consciousness they’ve declined to abandon the directional aspect of the name, unlike Southwestern Louisiana and Central Florida.

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Two years ago, Alvaro Folgueiras was a freshman at Robert Morris who’d come from Spain to play a year of high school ball, and essentially no one but RMU coach Andy Toole noticed his promise, but even at that understood he was ready for only 17 minutes a game – 17 minutes at the Horizon League level – his freshman year.

Now, McCollum, Stirtz and Folgueiras are together at Iowa.

And they are March Madness heroes.

MARCH MADNESS HQ:Live NCAA bracket | TV schedule | Latest news and more

Seriously, this March Madness. Not the DII one where McCollum and Stirtz combined for two national titles, but the one with Duke, Arizona and Michigan as No. 1 seeds. Cinderella is not dead in the NCAA Tournament. There’s just been a change of slippers. Or jerseys. Whatever, it’s your metaphor.

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Thursday, they earned a 77-71 comeback victory in the Sweet 16 against Big Ten rival Nebraska. Stirtz scored 20 points, passed for 4 assists and did not commit a turnover. Neither did he come out of the game, even though he was the primary defender assigned to NU star Pryce Sandfort.

Folgueiras scored 16, including the decisive and-1 layup with 56 seconds left and the clinching dunk on a devastating baseline drive 22 seconds later. He missed only a single shot and finished the game at plus-12.

McCollum did a lot right in helping Iowa to recover from a 10-point first-half deficit and finish the game on a 15-6 run, but the key to breaking open a 3-point game inside…

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Publish date : 2026-03-27 03:10:00

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