IOWA CITY, Ia. ? For a hardcore Hawkeye, nothing helps ease the pain of a loss to Minnesota. But if it did, the pain-killer would be a victory over Michigan.
When you look at the Iowa schedule before the season starts, you don?t scribble an ?L? after Minnesota and a ?W? after Michigan, but sometimes that?s how it turns out.
That?s how it turned out Saturday in the Hawkeyes? down-to-the-wire, 24-16 victory over the 13th-ranked Wolverines.
Nobody knows why. Lose to the chronically rebuilding Gophers for the second year in a row. Win a third straight game against Michigan for the first time ever.
Sometimes when?or where a team plays is more important than whom. How else do you explain it??
How could the Hawkeyes lose to the Gophers? The same way Michigan State nearly lost to them a week later.
When Wolverines coach Brady Hoke was asked why he thought the Iowa defense played so much better against his team than it had the week before, he shrugged.
?I think everybody plays well when they play Michigan,? he said.
Not always. Minnesota lost to Michigan 58-0.
College football teams aren?t automatons. They aren?t data spit out of a BCS computer. If that were the case, the game wouldn?t have ended with the Hawkeyes jumping all over one another after the Wolverines failed to send the game into overtime.
Sixteen seconds to go. First-and-goal on the 3.
Surely, a team led by a game-breaker like Denard Robinson would find a way. Surely, he?d use his magic?feet instead of his inconsistent right arm to get the Wolverines into the end zone.
Nope.?With Iowa blitzing every down,?unlike the week before, Robinson couldn?t connect. It took a video review to make sure?one of those misconnections wasn?t?a completion.
On the last play of the game, B.J. Lowery and the cast on his wrist kept the ball away from Roy Roundtree. The Hawkeyes might have benefited from an interference n0-call there?? Hoke seemed to think so?afterward ??but his vote didn?t count.?
Game over. Hawkeyes?swarm the field. Senior cornerback Shaun Prater gets bonked on the head?while chest-bumping a happy?Hawkeye fan.
The difference, Prater said afterward, was the way Iowa got down to business in practice.
?No one was talking,? he said. ?Everyone was flying to the ball, paying attention, doing things right.?
Linebacker James Morris liked the blitz calls.
?It?s a great idea against a quarterback like Denard,? he said. ?He was getting a little too comfortable out there. The coaches thought we should try to ruffle his feathers a little bit.?
The game was the photographic negative of the week before, without the chest-bumping fan, and in some ways more impressive than Iowa?s crazy, eight-play goal-line stand against Syracuse five years ago. Hawkeye fans remembers that double-overtime win almost as well as this year?s triple-overtime loss in Ames.
Saturday?s defensive stand, however, was more important than that one. This one was Michigan.
It was a wild, wind-blown game, overflowing with quirky twists and turns, including an ?illegal snap? that killed a first down that could have wrapped it up for the Hawkeyes and a long Michigan touchdown run that was overturned.
In the days leading up to the game, all anyone could talk about was Iowa?s predictable offense, its porous defense?and the disappointing season.?And now here come the Wolverines and their 400-yard attack.
Tough week, eh?
?Tough week-END,? Vandenberg corrected. ?On Sunday, we saw there were a lot of things we could have cleaned up to pull out that victory. But then we did a really nice job of putting it behind us and taking the next step on Monday. We had a really good week of practice in all phases and that accumulated to a really good day on the field today.?
Players heard the?grumbling, of?course,?but shrugged it off.
?We understand that,? Vandenberg said. ?That comes with it. You can?t listen to it. You have to play your game and move forward and correct your mistakes.?
Hawkeye center James Ferentz is the coach?s kid. He has reason to be particularly sensitive to the criticism.
?As a son, it?s kind of hard to take,? he said. ?But as a player, that?s our coach. That?s who we play for. He?s a big reason a lot of us came here, including me.?
The coach?s kid?was smiling when he said it. One week the Hawkeyes become the fourth team in a three-team battle for first place in the first?Legends Division round-robin. Seven days later, they?re back in the hunt.
So how important is Michigan State coming up? A lot more important than anyone figured a week ago.
Category: Iowa Hawkeyes Football
Source: http://hawkcentral.com/2011/11/05/hansen-commentary-hawkeyes-get-down-to-business/
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