Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - 20 players sign with Iowa | 2019 breakout candidates | Megan Gustafson the GOAT?

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

For segment one we are giving you an inside look to three players that could have breakout seasons in the Iowa football program in 2019 before switching sports and discussing why Megan Gustafson will go down as the greatest of all time at the conclusion of her basketball career in Iowa City. Segment three has us discussing an exciting day for Hawkeye nation. Twenty high schoolers signed their letters of intent to play for the Hawkeyes. We review some of the major signings and what they mean for specific position groups. This is an episode you do not want to miss.Twitter: @lockedoniowaHost: @wade_andrewGmail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to our Thursday edition of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. The Locked On Hawkeyes podcast is the latest edition to the Locked On Sports Network, and we are the most recent addition to their growing lineup of college podcasts. I am your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at DearOldGold.com, where you can find analysis pieces on all things black and yellow, and we have another great episode coming at you on this fine Thursday morning. As we've been talking about the last few days, we do plan on having plenty of content for you to devour during your holiday season, so do not fret about next week. We'll have episodes

coming at you at least for the five days of the week. And for today, though, we have a great episode ahead of us. We are going to be talking about the breakout candidates for the Hawkeye football team next year. We're also going to be talking about Megan Gustafson and why we think she could ultimately go down as the greatest of all time in Iowa women's basketball history. And then finally on segment three we're going to be touching on the Iowa Hawkeye recruits who signed their letter of intent yesterday and are committed to playing with the best university in the nation. Before we jump into that, though, before we jump into our exciting episode that we have for you today, make sure you're telling Siri, Google, or Alexa to play podcast Locked on Hawkeyes. And also, subscribe to our podcast on those, you know, at Apple, on Google, Spotify, etc.

Make sure you're subscribing so you get the most latest edition of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast and you have it downloaded directly to your phone for your listening pleasure. So let's jump right into it. I want to talk to you about the breakout candidates for the Iowa football team. And when I mean breakout, I mean a guy who either hasn't played or maybe struggled or maybe just, you know, kind of been sitting behind someone for a few years and just kind of been waiting and buying their time. And I want to talk to you about the three guys who I really feel like could make a big impact next year. The first one is Chauncey Golston, and he's a redshirt sophomore. He's going to be a redshirt junior next year, and he's just been

sitting behind Iowa's insanely good defensive line, right? So, I mean, the good thing I will say about Phil Parker is he does a great job of rotating defensive linemen in and out. Obviously, it's how, you know, A.J. Epinesa managed to get 10 sacks despite playing, you know, as a reserve defensive end. Chauncey Golsan's in a similar spot, right? So he got those, you know, got similar snaps to AJ Epinesa, but didn't get the notoriety. Obviously he didn't have the 10 sacks, but he had a pretty good performance, all things considered. In limited time, he had 35 tackles, nine of which were for a loss and three and a half sacks. Pretty impressive for, you know, being a reserve defensive end. So I hope Anthony Nelson comes back next year.

But if he doesn't, Golsan should be able to step right up and fill that spot as a starting defensive end next to AJ Ipaneza. The next one, and this one's kind of easy. Honestly, it's just whoever the heck wins the starting job at tight end. As we've seen, Brian Ferenc loves to run the offense through the tight ends. With Noah Fant and TJ Hawkinson, they put up two of the best seasons in the history of the Iowa football program. And if you listen to our episode on Monday, or sorry, Tuesday, and if you listen to our episode yesterday, we've talked a lot about tight ends. First, we touched on who could possibly replace Noah Fant and TJ Hawkinson.

Who could actually do it? And then the next thing was, wow, I was really good at creating and recruiting tight ends. They've churned out tight ends into the NFL. It's their job. And that's why we've been calling them tight end university. I want to get that kind of going. So with that being said, though, there's three guys who really have a good opportunity of picking up where Noah Fant and TJ Hawkinson left off. And that's Nate Whiting, Drew Cook, and Sean Beyer. And honestly, I think each of them brings a certain element that's needed in the Hawkeye offense. I don't

think they all bring the same thing and they're all not, you know, they're not a Hawkinson or a Fant. Otherwise they would have been starting over them. You know, Hawkinson is just a redshirt sophomore. Drew Cook's been in the program longer. Sean Beyer has been in the program, I believe, the same amount of time. And Nate Whiting's been in the program longer. So, you know, they obviously couldn't beat them out, but that doesn't mean they're not quality players and able to, you know, fulfill that spot and obviously have a good season. And that's why I put them as breakout players. You know, the offense is going to run through the tight end. They're going to have catches that need to be made by tight ends. So.

the tight end, they're going to have catches that need to be made by tight ends. And the final one, and this one's kind of a sleeper pick, but Justin Jacobs. And we're going to be touching on him at segment three as well, but he is a four-star linebacker from Ohio. He just committed, signed his letter of intent today. He will be joining the Iowa football program, and he's their second highest rated commit of the class 2009. Coincidentally, he's joining second highest rated commit of the class 2009. Coincidentally, he's joining a position group that needs a little help. You know, if you've joined dearoldgold.com, read our articles, listen to some of the stuff

we're talking about on the podcast, you know that the linebacker situation is still in flux. The Hawks played so many different variations of a linebacker trio, including putting a Monty Hooker down into that weak side linebacker spot and moving Geno Stone into a safety role. So they've tinkered with a lot of things. And the reason why they were tinkering is because they haven't found that right person for that spot. Well, that brings in Justin Jacobs.

He's a top 200 recruit according to 247 Sports. And it's not very typical for the Hawks to play a freshman right out of the gate, but with his athleticism and his ability to play that linebacker role, there's a chance that he comes in and wins that starting job. It's honestly a wide-open competition, and that's why I put him as one of my three breakout candidates next year, just because he really has the opportunity to step right in and play out of the gate. Similar to what Julius Brent and Riley Moss did this past season. And that'll do it for our three breakout candidates.

So we have Chauncey Golston, whoever starts a tight end and Justin Jacobs, let us know who you think your breakout candidates are. Feel free to tweet us at lockdown, Iowa. Feel free to tweet me at Wade underscore Andrew, what you think, you know,

the breakout candidates for next season are. In segment two, we're going to talk about Megan Gustafson and what she has done in her career at Iowa and why she may go down as the greatest of all time. But before I jump into that, I have a message for you, the listener. Because if you're like me, you hate to miss your favorite team play, regardless of who they are playing. That's where Sling TV comes in. Now I never have to miss a football or a basketball game, and the best part is, I no longer have to pay for a bunch of channels I don't even watch with a typical cable package. For just $30 a month, you get access to ESPN, the Big Ten Network, and more,

without the hassle of a long-term contract. What's even more exciting is that we have a fantastic offer for you. Locked On listeners can get a free 7-day trial by going to sling.com. That's S-L-I-N-G.com. Never miss a game again with Sling TV. All right, before we touch on what Megan Gustafson has done for the Iowa women's basketball program and why she may go down as the greatest of all time, I wanted to remind you that on segment three,

we are going to be covering the Iowa recruiting period and what took place yesterday in a very exciting day for the Iowa football program. So going into the Megan Gustafson stuff, if you haven't had a chance to watch the women's basketball team play, you need to because not only are they a very strong team, they're 16th in the nation, they have a chance of making a deep run into the NCAA tournament,

but they have one of the best players in the nation. They have a chance of making a deep run into the NCAA tournament. But they have one of the best players in the nation. A player who arguably could win the nation's player of the year award, the Naismith. So Megan Gustafson, the senior from Wisconsin, has been outstanding in her career. And she's playing even more impressively this year. She's shooting 75% from the field. Let me just let that sit at 75%. Some people are lucky to shoot that from the free throw line. But don't worry, Gustafson is doing that from the field.

So that's impressive enough. In her name, she already has all Big Ten freshman team. She's made first team all Big Ten twice. She won the Big Ten Player of the Year last year. She already holds the single season school record in points, rebounds, field goals made, field goal percentage, free throws made, free throws attempted, and double-doubles. And she currently holds the career record in double-doubles with 55. To add on to all that, she also just recently set the record for the most career rebounds.

Alright, this is impressive. also just recently set the record for the most career rebounds. All right, this is impressive. And to top it off, she's closing in on the school record for points set by Allie Distroff. I definitely butchered that name. Allie Distroff, who set the record just, you know, a year ago. So Megan Gustafson has the opportunity to basically etch her name into every single major record in the Iowa Hawkeye women's basketball record book. And that's impressive. But like I said, it's not just those stats, right? I mean, not saying anyone, but look at Kamalo Anthony, for example. You know, he can put up 30 points a game, but he takes 30 shots. Gustafson isn't taking a ton of shots. She's so efficient and

putting up those numbers. All right. She is currently in her career shooting 64.8% from the field. And like I said, this year she's shooting 75%. If she holds this up, she's going to rank the eighth all time in the history of the NCAA and field goal percentage with at least 400 attempts. That's pretty impressive company. She's also already in the top 25 and career double doubles. All right. So like so when you think about that, how could you not call her the greatest of all time? All right, she has most of the career records, or most of the season records, most of the career records

for the Iowa women's basketball team. She's on a lot of those national record books, at least in the top 20s. And this year, it's been even more impressive what she's been able to do, shooting that 75%. She's fifth, I think it's fourth in the nation in points per game. She's second in the nation in field goal percentage.

She's 10th in rebounds. And she's even 47th in blocks. So she's literally doing it all. And I think in order to really go down, she would need to win the Naismith College Player of the Year and bring Iowa to their first Final Four appearance since 1993, which is absolutely possible. So if she can do those things, I have no doubt in my mind,

Gustafson will be the clear-cut GOAT when it comes to women's basketball. Regardless, though, even if she doesn't, right, you need to watch her games. You need to watch this piece of history because she is such an incredibly elite player, and we're lucky to have her on the team. It's something you're going to miss once she leaves the program. So if you have an opportunity to, make sure you're checking out the women's basketball team. They're very good. They're 16th in the nation, led by arguably the nation's best player.

So make sure you are watching those games. And that'll do it for segment two. Like I said, I'm just very passionate about the fact that I think Megan Gustafson is the best player in the nation and will go down as the greatest of all time in Iowa Hawkeye women's basketball history. So make sure you're checking out her games. Let me know what your thoughts are on that. Let me know if you think anyone else deserves consideration or would theoretically be above her in that category. All right. Before we jump into segment three, I want to remind you we're going to be touching on who committed to the Iowa Hawkeye football program.

But before we do that, we are back. Thank you to our sponsors. We want to touch on one of the biggest things in the football season in December is recruiting, right? So yesterday was the early enrollment period, the early signing period. Before it used to take place in February, it's moved up a couple months. And this definitely impacts the way teams do recruiting. It also impacts, obviously, the amount of time and whatnot. But it gives you a good idea earlier on in the season as to what type of players you're going to have coming in next year.

And per usual, Iowa had a very solid class. I mean, they're ranked 39th in the nation, I believe, 38th in the nation for their class. Last year, they were 39th. In the Big Ten, they're actually ranked 9th. But let's be honest here. Let's not focus on where they're ranked overall. As we've known, the Iowa football program is not known to get five-star recruits and a ton of four-star recruits. They really get those two and three-star recruits and build them into the players they want to have in the Hawkeye football program. So let's not focus too much on that. But with that being said, it's easy to kind of rank some of the recruits they were to

get. So a couple highlights I wanted to point out is the fact that they signed a pair of four-star recruits. Justin Jacobs, who we talked about earlier, the linebacker out of Ohio, he's the 315th best prospect in the nation. And Ezra Miller, who is the 291st best prospect in the nation at offensive tackle straight out of Iowa. This guy is an absolute beast. He's 6'6", 305 pounds, and rumor has it he actually got quite a few penalties this year simply because he was destroying people. So he wasn't actually doing anything wrong. It just looked so bad because how bad he was destroying people, he was getting

penalties for that. So awesome additions to the class. In addition to Miller, we also have Tyler Endres, a Norwalk, Iowa native who also signed a letter of intent today. He is a four-star, 6'6", 285-pound offensive tackle, the 378th best player in the nation. And when I look at this, I really see Iowa's bookends. They're tackles of the future. Right now, we have Tristan Wirfs and we have Aleric Jackson who are kind of manning the left and the right tackle position. Those guys could very well be high-round draft picks next year or the year after.

So I could see Miller and Endress, if they have an opportunity to, if they can redshirt, they can come in as either redshirt freshman or redshirt sophomore, sophomores and play three season in the Hawkeye football program. Give them some time with Chris Doyle, build up even more muscle on those frames and learn the ins and outs. I don't foresee them taking the starting rules anytime soon. Maybe, I guess they're a little tall to play the guard position, but they could always swing inside as for a one year type thing to see how that works out. But either way,

great recruits, great opportunities to get some solid tackles onto the program. A couple other guys I wanted to touch on. Deron McKinney, we were able to flip him from Northern Illinois University to Iowa. He's a cornerback, and he's been compared to Desmond King. King also was kind of a late flip to Iowa, coming's a cornerback, and he's been compared to Desmond King. King also was kind of a late flip to Iowa, coming from a small school. Awesome to get Deron McKinney. He'll be a great addition to the program. And as you can see, you know, corners

can play pretty early. With that being said, though, he's kind of entering a tough position group. You have Matt Hankins. You have Michael Ojemudia. So you have a soon-to-be junior and a soon-to-be senior. Plus you have Riley Moss and Julius Brents, both true freshmen who are going to be playing next year as sophomores. So that's four guys that you need to compete with.

With that being said, as you saw from this year, Kirk is not afraid to play the best player or whoever is playing the best at that time. So an opportunity for him to maybe come in, sit for a year or two, and make a big impact a la Desmond King, a la Josh Jackson. Another big flip was, and I'm going to absolutely butcher this name, but Yahweh Judy. He is a linebacker from Florida. He was originally committed to K-State. Some issues there, obviously coaching changes and whatnot. Iowa was able to come in and sweep him up. He is going to be a good depth player initially, but could make an impact in year two or year three in the Iowa football program. He is a three-star prospect and the top, or sorry,

the 228th best player in the state of Florida, which is a hotbed for recruitment. A couple other players I wanted to highlight. The Hawks did bring in three tight ends, so that'll be a good, you know, they need some depth. A lot of their players right now, TJ Hawkinson and Noah Fantleaf, a lot of their players are either walk-ons or very young, so it'll be good to have some additional youth and talent in that locker room,

have an opportunity to carry on that Hawkeye tight end tradition that has been building the last 20 years with Kirk Ferentz and the program. At quarterback, the Hawks brought in Alex Padilla. I live in Colorado, haven't had a chance to check him out, but I've only heard fantastic things. This guy committed to Iowa in June, and he's been committed ever since. Signed his letter of intent today alongside six of his teammates who also received D1 scholarships.

Pretty impressive coming from Cherry Creek High School in the Denver suburbs. Alex Padilla is an interesting signing, and the reason why is he has a lot of people that he's going to be competing with, right? So Nate Stanley's coming back for his senior year. That means in 2020, we have Peyton Mansell, a three-star, I believe, from Texas. Spencer Petras, I believe from Texas. I'll check that out in a second. And then we have Alex Padilla. So that is going to be quite the quarterback battle, and it's really anyone's game at this point. All the guys have really performed well. Obviously, the Hawks love what Alex Padilla brings to the table,

and I feel like he's absolutely a better quarterback than what his ranking says. Just watching some of his highlights and tapes, pretty impressive. Yeah, so actually Spencer Petras is a four-star, former four-star recruit from California. 6'5", 225 pounds. He held 15 offers, including DeKalb, Fresno State, Nebraska.

So this guy is going to be pretty impressive. Let's look up Peyton Mansell's too. I want to quickly be able to compare those guys. Let me just pull it up right here. Yeah, so Mansell is a three-star recruit from texas so this is going to get really interesting the battle between these three guys who's going to win out and obviously you know depending on which guy wins that we could see some transfers so i absolutely do not expect all three of these guys to stay in the program for their entire time with iowa i do expect you know one of these guys to stay in the program for their entire time with Iowa.

I do expect one of those guys to leave, which is unfortunate. But those guys can play, and when you have that much talent, it comes to bad. The last thing I wanted to bring up on this discussion about the scholarships and signing letter of intent is the fact that I love the way Iowa does things. They do recruiting the right way. They treat these kids with respect. They come and they sit down with those kids and they tell them exactly what they think. They don't give them a bunch of fluff, tell them we're going to start right away. They tell them how it is.

And that's, you know, they want to recruit a certain type of player and that's how you do it. You tell them what they're going to be told when they join the Iowa football team. I also love the fact that compared to the rest of the NCAA, Iowa is significantly below the standard amount of scholarship offerings. I believe it was Tennessee who actually had 440 scholarships offered, which is insane considering you can only bring on usually about 25 people. Iowa, meanwhile, only offered 120 players. So I love the integrity that Iowa brings to recruiting in the college football landscape.

It's not every single day that you get something like that. And actually, one more thing I really want to touch on is Tyler Goodson, running back from Georgia. He's been compared to Akron Wadley. And I think when you look at the Iowa football program from this year, they had three running backs who kind of rotated in and out. You had Ivory Kelly-Martin, you had Torin Young, and you had McKee Sargent. You also have Henry Guile, who kind of came in a couple times. That's a lot of running backs in one room, but what I think really stands out is the fact that none of them actually stood out. So McKee Sargent had some good games. I think he has to be the frontrunner

going into next year's, you know, running back battle, but don't sleep on Tyler Goodson. This guy, a lot of, you know, when he signed with Iowa, a lot of people on Twitter were talking about this guy should have been a four-star as opposed to a three-star. A lot of talent there. A lot of people were trying to seal him with the last second. Huge gift for Iowa. Good chance we could be seeing him even playing next year as a true freshman, especially if he's able to obviously

beat out Sargent and Young and Kelly Martin and Giles. Overall, just an awesome day. Love to see some people's futures being made. They're signing letters of intent to take that next step in their football careers. Obviously, hopefully they took the right step. We'll obviously see how that shakes out over the next couple of years, though. But that'll do it for our Thursday episode.

We'll be back again tomorrow for another awesome episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Like I said, we have some fantastic content coming to you next week as you get ready for the holiday season. You're going to see family. You can listen to our podcast during that time. Make sure you are subscribing to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast at. And when you're looking for the Locked On Hawkeyes,

all you have to do is speak to your Siri, Google, or Alexa smartphone or speaker and say, play podcast, Locked On Hawkeyes, all you have to do is speak to your Siri, Google, or Alexa smartphone or speaker and say, play podcast, Locked On Hawkeyes. And it should pull up our most recent episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes for your listening pleasure. I'm your host, Andrew Wade.

You can find me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew. You can also interact with us and follow all the exciting happenings of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast on Twitter at Locked On Iowa. And lastly, you can reach us by email

at LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. Thank you again for joining us on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and we'll be back tomorrow.