Best friends Ben McCollum of Drake, Grant McCasland of Texas Tech square off for spot in Sweet 16

WICHITA, Kan. — The coaching fraternity is much closer than most people realize. Friendships are formed and relationships kept through all the hirings and firings, and paths cross and cross again as coaches climb and fall on the professional ladder.

Every once in a while, they cross on a stage so big that everybody notices.

So it will be, when Grant McCasland leads third-seeded Texas Tech against Ben McCollum and his team full of Division II transfers from No. 11 seed Drake. At stake for the best friends: a spot in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s just like playing pick-up with your teammates,” McCollum said after beating No. 6 seed Missouri in the first round. “When you’re playing pick-up, sometimes you kind of get after each other a little bit, but afterwards it’s all love.”

The 48-year-old McCasland certainly is no stranger to facing familiar faces. The Red Raiders play Big 12 games against his alma mater, Baylor, where he spent five years on the staff of longtime coach Scott Drew. And they regularly play Kansas State, which is coached by Jerome Tang, who was on that staff in Waco, Texas, at the same time.

Yet his friendship with the 43-year-old McCollum goes back even farther, way back to their very origins in coaching.

It was the early 2000s and McCasland had just been hired for his first real job, as an assistant at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado, where the pay was so modest he felt fortunate to live in the dorms. It was there that McCasland came across Jeff Linder, an assistant at Emporia State, a Division II school in Kansas, who was recruiting some of his guys.

Linder, by the way, is now an assistant on McCasland’s staff at Texas Tech.

So fast-forward a couple of years and McCasland gets his first head-coaching job at Midland, a junior college in Texas. One of his first calls was to Linder, who joined his staff, and together they went to the national tournament their first year.

The guy that replaced Linder at Emporia State: Ben McCollum, a young man happy to land a first full-time job of his own.

The three of them grew close — they were all just starting out, after all. They’d spend hours discussing offensive and defensive strategy, and how to build a winning culture. They leaned on each other when times got hard and applauded every success.

“We were young,” McCasland said, “and we didn’t make any money, and we all loved ball. We loved being around each other.”

McCasland eventually got the head job at North Texas, the one he parlayed into his current position at Texas Tech, and McCollum got his shot as a head coach at Northwest Missouri State, which he quickly turned into a Division II juggernaut. But even as their professional paths diverged, their personal relationship only grew closer through the years.

Their families get together in offseasons. They call each other up when they’re in a rut. They go trout fishing together.

McCasland remembers one year at North Texas that he thought his team had a pretty good offense. It was the nation’s No. 1 team when it came to scoring out of timeouts. He had installed some creative movements, and McCasland was proud of it.

“Ben watched film of our team,” he recalled, “and straight-up told me our offense sucked.”

“You know, that’s the kind of relationship we have,” continued McCasland, who on at least one occasion tried to hire McCollum to his staff. “I love him, but you know, when you play him, it’s going to be different.”

McCasland may have missed his chance to hire him, by the way.

In McCollum’s first year leading the Bulldogs, and with a team relying heavily on the four transfers he brought with him from Northwest Missouri State, McCollum has already set a school record with 31 wins. They won Missouri Valley regular- and postseason titles, snapped a four-game losing streak in NCAA Tournament first-round games, and on Saturday, McCollum will be trying to get Drake to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1971.

Not surprisingly, his name has been linked to just about every coaching vacancy in the game. One in particular keeps surfacing: Iowa. He was born in Iowa City, in the shadows of the university, and grew up in the small western Iowa town of Storm Lake. He spent a stint playing ball at North Iowa Area Community College.

McCollum batted back any talk of other jobs this week. He insisted that his only focus is on what Drake is doing right now.

Right now, the Bulldogs are getting ready to play his old friend and his Red Raiders in the NCAA Tournament.

“We’ll always be friends,” McCasland said, “but tomorrow, I guess, it will be on.”

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