You might see Brian Dolan and his assistant coaches at more and more Mississippi Valley Conference basketball games in the weeks and years to come.

Dolan is the head coach at Upper Iowa University in Fayette and he's looking for more good players from bigger schools.

He began building the program at UIU seven years ago with guys from Class 1A and 2A schools, because that's where he could get players. He still cherishes the smaller schools, but is getting increasingly involved with Class 3A and 4A athletes.

Dolan signed four players this month to letters-of-intent and three of them come from Class 4A schools in the Mississippi Valley Conference. He got Jace Hanna of Prairie, Jimmy Roth of Linn-Mar and Josh Weeber of Dubuque Senior, three of the top players in the MVC. His fourth recruit is Luke Lenhart from Storm Lake St. Mary's.

"As the years have gone by, we've spent more and more time in the bigger schools," he said.

Upper Iowa is the only NCAA Division II college in Iowa, which puts the Peacocks in a good spot to get talented players who weren't quite good enough (or lucky enough) to get a D-I scholarship from Iowa, Iowa State, Northern Iowa or Drake.

Jake Hughes, a point guard from Kennedy, is a senior at Upper Iowa this season and has enjoyed a good career in Fayette. Dolan thinks Hanna, the point guard at Prairie, has a chance to succeed Hughes in the starting lineup next season as a freshman.

"Jace is a great leader," he said.

If you had to pick an all-Metro team right now, Hanna and Roth would make the starting lineup.

"We're very excited to have both of them come into our program next year," Dolan said. "Linn-Mar has a great program. Hopefully Jimmy can help us reach the next level.

"Jimmy and Jace will do very, very well here."

Nick Soyer, a Linn-Mar grad, is currently on the team at Upper Iowa. The Peacocks compete in the Northern Sun Conference.

Upper Iowa was making the transition from NCAA Division III to Division II when Dolan arrived in Fayette. The Peacocks could not offer any basketball scholarships as a D-3 outfit, but Dolan has the equivalent of seven $33,000 scholarships to use now. He can offer full rides or partial grants to get as many good players as he can.

Dolan was born in Texas and moved to Oklahoma with his family when he was 3 years old. "Reluctantly," he joked about the move. "I didn't get a vote."

He enrolled at William Jewell College in Missouri to play basketball, but got hurt as a freshman and was not able to play at the collegiate level again. Undeterred, he became the head coach of the women's junior varsity team at William Jewell as a sophomore and continued to coach the team as a junior and senior.

Dolan worked for Kansas Coach Bill Self at one point in his career and was an assistant at Texas-Pan American before moving to Upper Iowa.

"I really like it here. I really like the kids you get to recruit," he said.