By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Ben McCollum’s players didn’t buy into the satisfaction of being “close.”

Sunday’s 91-51 win over Western Michigan was a good rebound for Iowa’s men’s basketball team, which is what McCollum, in his first year as Iowa’s coach, wanted to see.

The Hawkeyes (9-2) were coming off Thursday’s 66-62 loss at fourth-ranked Iowa State, and the last thing McCollum wanted to see was his players buying into the fact that they had a chance to take down the Cyclones.

“I think again, the big thing that you have to be careful of is in those situations, there’s a level of, like, OK, we’re a good team,” McCollum said. “And from the outside looking in, for the external, it’s like, ‘You stuck with Iowa State, one of the top teams in the country.’ Which is great. Maybe that helps confidence from the outside. Maybe that helps confidence even from an internal perspective.

“From my perspective, I kind of said it the other day, it’s you still don’t win the game, so you kind of have to be careful not to drink that poison where it’s like, ‘Hey, man, if you win those extra two or three possessions, you win that game.’ That was the message — hey, I get we’re processing and still in the process, but the objective is (to win).”

The Hawkeyes listened.

“We hear a lot of things like, ‘Oh, we played well,’ but at the end of the day, we lost,” forward Cam Manyawu said. “So we came back to practice and treated it as kind of just a new day, and just tried to figure out all the things we can work on and try and get better at those things in these games.”

McCollum brought up when he was coaching at Northwest Missouri State, when his team reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Division II tournament from 2014-16. The Bearcats’ three elimination losses in those tournaments were by a combined total of eight points.

“Alll of them were either overtime or really close games, maybe one or two points, and you started to think that you were close,” he said. “And in reality, it’s like, ‘We’re close,’ and you kind of settle on that stuff. And then finally, going into 2017 I’m like, ‘We’re not going to be really good, we’ve got to be great. And so you got to be careful not to fall in love with ‘close.’”

This game wasn’t close, which McCollum found to be a good sign.

Iowa dominated from the start. The Hawkeyes, who made their first 11 two-point field goals of the game, had a 22-3 first-half run and led 52-16 at halftime.

“Offensively, pretty good,” McCollum said in his post-game analysis. “Defensively, solid, not elite energy, but we executed. Probably better concentration than there was energy. Second half was good outside of the last 10-12 minutes, when I pulled (out) a little bit of hair left that I have in my head.”

Iowa, which shot 55.9% for the game, had five players score in double figures. Bennett Stirtz, Alvaro Folgueiras and Brendan Hausen each had 13 points, and Manyawu and Tate Sage each had 11.

The Hawkeyes have two nonconference games remaining — Saturday against Bucknell in Des Moines, and a home game against UMass-Lowell on December 29.

“So anyway, it’s a good game,” McCollum said of this win. “Good to bounce back. Now on to the next.”

Photo: Iowa’s Kael Combs runs the offense in Sunday’s 91-51 win over Western Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Iowa Athletic Communications)