20 Days Until Hawkeye Basketball: Trey Thompson
Basketball may be waiting in the wings while football season rolls on, but Iowa is already counting down to the first tip-off on November 3rd. Next up in the preview is redshirt freshman Trey Thompson.
Thompson arrived at Iowa as a late summer addition after Ben McCollum landed him with an offer that stretched a mile long, including interest from UConn and Purdue, the two teams that had just met in the national title game. The big selling point was simple: McCollum promised him an immediate roster spot after he reclassified. Thompson made the move, and his ranking shifted from a top-40-ish player in the class of 2026 to a top-100 player in the class of 2025.
The timing worked against him from there. He couldn’t practice with Iowa until he enrolled in September, which kept him out of McCollum’s summer program.
Under the NCAA rules in place then, the staff decided a redshirt made the most sense. There was no reason to burn a year of eligibility on a 17-year-old who hadn’t gotten the summer ramp-up.
Even with that delay, Thompson is still in the mix. Plenty of highly rated recruits would have treated that as a stopover, but he remains on campus and clearly has the frame. At media day this week, he drew strong praise for his showing in an open scrimmage.
The role ahead looks straightforward enough: a scoring spark off the bench. With Iowa’s size across the roster, Thompson is likely to log minutes as a backup 3 or 4, filling the kind of spot Cooper Koch would occupy. His shooting has already stood out, going back to the NCAA Tournament, when McCollum said he was around 40% in practice last year and had been running pick & rolls with Tate Sage.
The ceiling comes with the résumé, and the expectations come with it too. Still, the depth at his position gives McCollum room to play whoever’s rolling, so Thompson’s minutes could rise and fall from game to game. If he brings defense and a versatile offensive package, he should find ways to matter once he gets on the floor.
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McCollum did note the ball security improved in the second game, and he also likes what this roster brings compared with last season. Iowa has more depth and more shooting ability, and the scrimmage served as a useful look at different players and combinations while the staff experimented with spots on the floor. [Read more 🡒]
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Alaric Jackson, though, gave the fan base a tougher conversation to have after being suspended for two games in Week 5 following an altercation with Bradley Chubb. It is the sort of off-field storyline that lands differently when it involves one of Iowas pros, especially in a weekend otherwise filled with reminders of how productive the Hawkeye pipeline has become across the NFL. [Read more 🡒]