By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

Iowa’s men’s basketball team heads into Big Ten competition this week, starting with Tuesday’s game at No. 7 Michigan State, which won the conference regular-season title last season.

Which is fine, coach Ben McCollum said.

“If you’re going to start the league off, why not go to the champs?” McCollum said on Monday. ” I mean, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to. Just go straight to it. We’re getting straight to the action.”

It’s been a good start to McCollum’s first season as Iowa’s coach. The Hawkeyes (7-0) are just outside the Associated Press national rankings — they were the first team among those receiving votes — and came in at No. 25 in the coaches’ poll. They also were 16th in the first NET rankings released by the NCAA on Monday morning.

But they’ll get that brief taste of conference play this week that everyone gets in early December in the 20-game league schedule. The Hawkeyes come back home on Saturday to play Maryland, so it’s an early chance to see where this almost entirely new roster stacks up against the kind of teams they’ll see in January and February.

“A lot of the environments are big time,” McCollum said. “But we’re starting at the biggest one. … We’re going to the defending champs and obviously one of the toughest places to play in America.”

Michigan State went 7-0 in November, the first time the Spartans have gone undefeated in the first month since the 2015-16 season. They have a home win over Arkansas and neutral-court wins over Kentucky and North Carolina already on their resumé.

The Spartans will provide the Hawkeyes with their first serious interior challenge of the season. Among the starters are 6-foot-10 senior forward Jaxon Kohler and 6-11 senior center Carson Cooper. Kohler is averaging 14.7 points and 9.6 rebounds, while Cooper is averaging 10.6 points and six rebounds.

Michigan State is 15th in the nation with a plus-12.7 rebounds. The Hawkeyes, whose tallest starter is 6-9 Cam Manyawu, are 92nd at +5.9.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily that we monitor it, but it’s something that you prepare for consistently,” McCollum said. “I think that’s the Big Ten, though, as a whole. Probably your top five teams are top 10-15 in the country in rebounding most years, particularly offensive rebounding.

“(The Spartans are) the ones that probably started it all. I think Illinois was the No. 1 team last year, maybe, offensive rebounding-wise. Obviously Purdue’s a monster on the offensive glass, and now you got Maryland in here, jMichigan. I mean, everybody’s good with defense or offensive rebounding. So it’s not even just Michigan State, it’s everyone, but specifically them, because that’s who we’re playing next.”

The Spartans also average 20.3 assists per game, with guard Jeremy Fears Jr., leading the nation at 9.9 per game. Fears will test Iowa’s Bennett Stirtz, but McCollum knows his senior guard will be ready for the matchup.

“He’s faced plenty of good guards throughout his career,” McCollum said of Stirtz. “Obviously this summer too, just going to all those NBA things and the Chris Paul camp and whatnot. So he’s faced quite a few guards.

:It’s not really a head to head deal. A lot of times, I don’t know who will guard him. I don’t know who he’ll guard. Obviously, I’m sure at some point they’ll be matched up together, but they’re just so opposites in their style of play. Fears is very transition heavy, and their team is very transition heavy. And then the opposite is us. We don’t necessarily shy away from transition, but we just don’t get as many opportunities.”

The reality of Big Ten play is here, and the Hawkeyes go into one of the league’s toughest venues.

“You can’t really overthink it,” McCollum said. “You’re going to win or you’re going to lose, and hopefully you can compete and fight and do those things that that we’ve done throughout the years, and it’ll be a good, good chance to challenge ourselves, and a good learning experience.”

Photo: Michigan State guard Jeremy Fears Jr. (left) celebrates with teammate Carson Cooper during a game against Detroit Mercy last month. (Adam Ruff/Icon Sportswire)