University of Iowa senior Bennett Stirtz has been named to the 2025-26 John R. Wooden Award Top 20 Late Midseason Watch List, according to an announcement from the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
The list, determined by a midseason poll of national college basketball experts, includes 20 student-athletes who are considered frontrunners for the Wooden Award All-American Team and the Wooden Award Most Outstanding Player.
Stirtz has also received recognition as a Bob Cousy Midseason Top 10 selection and as a Sporting News third-team Midseason All-American. This season, he is averaging 19.9 points, 4.8 assists, 2.3 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game while leading Iowa to an 18-5 record—the program’s best start through 23 games since the 2018-19 season.
A native of Liberty, Missouri, Stirtz has scored at least 20 points in six consecutive games and in thirteen games overall this season. The six-game streak is the longest by a Hawkeye since Keegan Murray in the 2021-22 season and marks the most consecutive such performances by an Iowa guard since Freddy Brown during the 1970-71 campaign.
Stirtz set career highs in two of Iowa’s last three contests. He scored 32 points during a road win at Oregon on February 1 and then recorded a personal-best with 36 points against Northwestern on February 8. In that game, he shot twelve-for-twenty from the field, four-for-six from three-point range and made all eight free throw attempts.
His total of thirty-six points was the highest for an Iowa player since Luka Garza in 2021 and ties for fourth-most by any player in Carver-Hawkeye Arena history. Over his last three games, Stirtz has scored ninety points—the most by any Hawkeye since Murray’s ninety-one point stretch in February of 2022.
Stirtz currently ranks among the top six players in the Big Ten Conference for scoring, assists and steals. He is also noted as being the only player nationally with more than four hundred fifty points, one hundred ten assists, fifty-five three-pointers made, fifty rebounds and thirty-five steals so far this season. If he continues at this pace, he could become Iowa’s first player in twenty-six years to lead his team in points, assists and steals.
He is one of five Big Ten players included on this year’s watch list alongside Jeremy Fears Jr., Yaxel Lendeborg (Michigan), Braden Smith (Purdue) and Keaton Wagler (Illinois).
The National Ballot will feature fifteen top players who have demonstrated they meet or exceed all qualifications for consideration for these awards. Winners will be honored at a ceremony at the Los Angeles Athletic Club on April 10, 2026.
Iowa will play its next game Wednesday against Maryland at XFINITY Center beginning at five p.m Central Time; coverage will air on FS1.
