By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

It’s as much what is going on off the court as it is on the court for the Iowa men’s basketball team, and it had to be that way.

Three games at home — all wins — have ended the same way, with first-year coach Ben McCollum and the Hawkeyes walking around the court to shake hands with as many fans as possible.

It’s a fun meet-and-greet lap everyone seems to enjoy, especially McCollum, who grew up a Hawkeye basketball fan and now has the chance to revive a program that has starved for attention.

“I certainly appreciate the crowd,” McCollum said after Friday’s 81-62 win over Xavier. “So there’s a heavy appreciation for the excitement that people have shown myself, my family. You know, we just talked about this other day. We feel so welcome here. So there’s an appreciation there.”

But McCollum said he isn’t just appreciating the moment, because this has never been about the moment. It’s about this season, the next, and the next. It’s about changing the opinion of a program that was suffocated by apathy over the last few seasons.

The average attendance for Iowa’s first three games is 10,629 in the 14,988-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Last season’s average was 9,161, so there’s improvement.

McCollum, though, doesn’t want improvement. He wants sellouts, and noise, and a return to the days when the Hawkeyes were a tough ticket.

That isn’t going to come overnight, and the coach understands that. What he wants the fan base to understand, though, is this isn’t going to be easy.

“You know, I think we’re starting to slowly build a crowd,” he said. “I think, again, I say it nauseum. It’s a build for everybody — the whole community of Iowa City and the state of Iowa, and University of Iowa. Obviously, we got to do this together, because it’s going to take time, and it’s not always going to be perfect, like we’ve said.”

McCollum has stressed after each game that this is a “work in progress,” which comes from a near-total rebuild of the roster and the coaching staff. The wins right now are fun, the way this team is playing right now is fun, but in a season of 30-plus games, there are going to be a few clunkers.

“Whenever you take over something, and you build it from scratch essentially, a lot of people are excited, which I am too,” McCollum said. “You have to make sure that part of that excitement is there’s a long game to it too, where it’s like, hey, there’s going to be ebbs and flows to all of this. And that’s the really fun part of it. You know, if everything is just good, the good doesn’t seem as good, because there’s never any bad, if that makes any sense.”

It is a long game, something senior guard Bennett Stirtz noted after Friday’s win. Stirtz was with McCollum in his last two years at Northwest Missouri State, then followed him to Drake last season and was part of a 31-win team that won the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season and tournament titles and played in the NCAA Tournament.

Stirtz has witnessed the success at different spots and is seeing what is going on now. He wishes he could be a Hawkeye longer than just this season, just to see where this goes.

“It hasn’t really hit me yet, and I don’t think it will until after I’m done playing for (McCollum),” Stirtz said. “I hope it continues (with) success here, and I just hope to be just a part of it, just a little bit. But it’s definitely special, just playing for him and his culture.”

The Stirtz-McCollum dynamic is fascinating to watch. Stirtz is one of the nation’s best players, but when he went the wrong way and a pass became a turnover in Friday’s game, McCollum let Stirtz hear about it.

“It keeps me humble,” Stirtz said. “Keeps me focused as well. And I need that. I need someone to push me throughout the season. He does that, and it makes me better.”

“I think over time, people get used to me because I’m half nuts — fully nuts, if you ask my wife — but I coach with a lot of intensity,” McCollum said. “It’s not always telling people, ‘Hey, you made that mistake. Don’t do that.’ It’s really telling them what to do and with him, you know, I’ve coached him for four years, and if you’re going to be a point guard for me, you’re going to hear it. A lot of people get on the 12th player on their bench, and I get on the player that’s supposed to be the best player, and that’s who I get after. Because I know if I can get him going, I can get the rest of them going.”

The Hawkeyes are going, and there’s a feeling of momentum surrounding the program. It’s been a fun first couple of weeks, but the college basketball season is much longer than a couple of weeks, as is McCollum’s long view.

“It is going to be hard, and being good is hard, and that’s what makes it fun,” McCollum said. “But if we don’t have everybody invested in this thing, we can’t get it to where we want to get it to.

“And, you know, I’d love to be able to do that.”

Photo: Iowa coach Ben McCollum smiles as he thanks fans after Friday’s win over Xavier. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)