Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Another bad call goes against Iowa, Hawkeye Report's Tom Kakert, Iowa football is tier 1

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

What a crappy way to have your season come to an end. Iowa baseball loses in controversy. Plus, Hawkeye Reports' Tom Caker joins us all today. Locked on Hawkeyes. You are locked on Hawkeyes. Your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team every day.

Hey, welcome in. I'm Trent Condon, and this is the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Thanks for making Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every day. We're available wherever you find podcasts, and you can also find us on YouTube. You can watch me over there.

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Well, what a way to end what has been one of the more frustrating seasons, and not just Iowa baseball history, but Iowa sports history. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say a team coming into the season with the expectations that Iowa baseball had this season to flame out the way that they did at 0-2. After an incredibly difficult non-conference schedule, they went out, they challenged themselves, blown leads early in the season.

You think back to that tournament, Virginia, Auburn, Wichita State, all three of those losses, blown leads in all of them. An opportunity against teams like Georgia and some of the other big matchups that they had in the bullpen was the problem. The bats never quite came around. They couldn't come up with the clutch hit. And really yesterday in a way was a microcosm of this whole season for Iowa baseball. So Iowa goes into the Big Ten tournament knowing that they were going to have to be perfect, that they were going to have to win the Big Ten tournament in order to be an NCAA tournament team. Now, the chances were not real high, though the odds makers out there did give them at least at minimum a fighting chance.

They were the fourth betting choice at a couple of the betting shops that are out there did give them at least at minimum a fighting chance. They were the fourth betting choice at a couple of the betting shops that are out there. And so people thought after your top tier, after the Illinois of the world and the like that maybe Iowa was a team Nebraska that would have an opportunity to do just that when the big 10 tournament and make their way in after losing an extra innings against Michigan in game one, the path became even more difficult. Never before in this eight team structure of the big 10 tournament has a team ever lost their first game and then come back and win the big 10 tournament. So they made it more difficult. And now it is over. They get matched up against Illinois, a loser in their own right. As they

fell in game one of the tournament to Penn state, the number eight seed. So Illinois has played for their lives. It's a tight ball game. I thought Cade Obermuller was once again outstanding and certainly a building block for next season. If he decides to come back, he is draft eligible himself. So he has certainly a thought process of what he's going to do next season and showed some

good things. If that's the case, Iowa, boy, they got a lot of work to do because the likelihood is, well, we know Brody Breck's going to be gone. Likely Marcus Morgan is going to be gone, even with the struggles that he had with his command this season. And you're looking at completely having to take over a new rotation going into next season, but we're not here about that. We're here to talk about what exactly went down in extra innings. If you missed it, it's all over Twitter. It is one of the more baffling calls that I have seen, and I've watched a lot of baseball in my day.

Now, admittedly, not a lot of college baseball in comparison to the MLB product and even the high school product, but yes, I have watched a whole lot of baseball. They call interference on a forced play at second base. I understand the thought process behind wanting to clean up the play. You hear for years and years that shortstop, yes, in terms of what you have to do, versatility,

be able to get to the ball, range, speed, arm, all those things, that shortstop is the most difficult position to play in the infield. But the most physically demanding is second base. And it's because of the hits that you take at second base, guys sliding into you, cleats up all those different things and they work to relegate and to clean that up which is all well and good but to make a call like they did to call the batter out for interference when a there wasn't interference and i understand that interference can be called even if contact isn't made. That's all well and good.

But the other part about this that just absolutely befuddles me is they go back and look at this again, and they come back with the exact same thing, that the call is confirmed. And Rick Heller, he got his money worth afterward, as he should, because it was a brutal call. It's one thing to lose a midweek game in April in that fashion. That would sting. It's one thing like the White Sox lost last night in a same thing.

Infield fly. They call interference and a guy just retreating back to second base. But to come back with the explanation that we heard from the head of umpires from the Big Ten and to double down on your awfulness, this is worse than Cooper to Jean. It's not even close. Cooper to double down on your awfulness, this is worse than Cooper to Gene. It's not even close. Cooper to Gene, at least that play, there was some ambiguity about what his arm was

doing, the angle that you saw it at. You can at least formulate an argument. You can't formulate an argument here. You just can't. The way that it was relayed to Kyle Huseman, who became the pool reporter for this

and had the opportunity to talk to the head of umpires for the Big Ten. And the way it was relayed is that you have to make a straight line from first base to second base. How much are we veering off here? When you run, you are not running an absolute straight line down the base path. As your legs are moving, your body is shifting and changing. It has to be completely down the line.

I mean, if you're an inch off, a millimeter off, I mean, how much do you have there? Contact wasn't made. It didn't change the way that the relay throw from second base to first base was going. It's so difficult to wrap your mind around how you can come up with it but i thought the most bothersome part as you're watching the play well they're going to come back and they're overturning it as we also find out that this is not like the nfl this isn't even like college football where you make the call in and then it goes to the group that takes a look at it, right? Instead, it's the umpires all getting together,

the people that made the call, and then they get to confirm it themselves. No, no, no, no, no. If we're going to have replay, if we are going to do this right, and if you're going to invest the money in doing that, then you also have to have a fresh set of eyes. You have to have somebody that's not on the field,

somebody that actually didn't make the call themselves. If you really want to get to the letter of the law and not have a guy just be able to come back and say, no, we confirmed it, you have to have another set of eyes on there. It's not the case in Big Ten baseball. Iowa goes home a loser. Now, Iowa still had work to do.

It would have been 4-3, runners at the corners with one out. Here's another crazy part. You could really look at that play at second base, and I think an even closer play was not the interference that was called. Was the thrower actually on second base? But that's not what they came back with. Instead, they held it up.

It's frustrating. It's disappointing. It's been a disappointing baseball season, and you're just left shaking your head. Lockdown Hawkeyes continues as we talk with Tom Caker, Hawkeye report.com mentioned Kyle Huseman. He was there for Hawkeye report. He is on their baseball beat along with women's basketball does a really

good job. Tom Caker had an opportunity to talk with him a little bit. We'll relay exactly with the way the story went in that one. Lots of other storylines as well. We'll talk about what we're going to see next. Excuse me as we talked about Iowa hosting, Iowa going on the road to UCLA on a Friday night. When are we going to see some more of that schedule coming up

for the TV for football? And we'll also hear his thoughts on Peyton Sanford. He had an opportunity to talk to Peyton Sanford as he was going through his workouts with the Golden State Warriors. A lot going on. Tom Kickert, he has us covered. We continue.

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And how about you, Kyle? Kyle Huseman being on the scene yesterday and uh i've been uh being the go-to guy uh very fortunate it was unfortunate that it happened obviously but fortunate somebody there from on three to you know talk to the supervisor of umpiring etc etc what a terrible call uh it was just you can't make it up. Awful. Yeah, just still can't believe it. But it sort of typifies this whole season for Iowa baseball. They lose two games in extra innings. And, you know, that's just how this season has gone for them,

that anything that can go wrong has gone wrong for them. And a season with so many high expectations and back-to-back losses in the Big Ten tournament. 0-2, preseason top 20. Mentioned this, I think, a week or two ago to you, Tom, and it ends this way. This has got to go down as one of the more disappointing Iowa sports seasons in a really long time, and it's going to be up there amongst the ones with that kind of pub expectations, maybe to get a place that they haven't been since the 1970s

and to go into just over 500 on the year. What a disappointing year. What are you equated to? What is, I know there's a lot of reasons, but what was the main reason it went so awry this year for a preseason top 20 team? Great question. I think it starts with pitching.

And I think it starts with the bullpen early in the year. It just got off to such a bad start. The bullpen just could not get people out, even when the starters were going fairly decent. And Brody pitched really well down the stretch. Last month plus, five weeks, I would say, he pitched really to the level that I think all of us pretty much thought he would.

Obermuller was pretty solid most of the year, I thought. But just, I think the bullpen and then just too many free bases, guys, just too many walks, too many hit by pitches from bullpen and starters. And I, you know, we were talking about this on the pod last night. I mean, Kyle and I were that Marcus Morgan had like 20 more walks and hit by pitches than any, I think, because what he had told. And it's just you can't have that. It's just they've got a lot of power arms. But with power arms, sometimes comes control issues.

And that's what they have this year. Is there any concern that based on the way the season went, the fact that they thought they were going to get all these upgrades to the stadium and had those visions, that Heller just gets, you know what, fed up. I've done this for a long time because he's been in coaching, what, a long time, right? When you consider where he started, Upper Iowa, then on to Northern Iowa, and of course now here at Iowa, he has to stop somewhere between there. Indiana State.

Indiana State. Thank you, Trent. Any concern that, you know what, just enough's enough. I don't need this anymore. I thought about that yesterday, actually. Just, you know, but then I think Rick's in his early 60s. He's a native Iowan. I just kind of think he would just kind of ride it out and finish out his career at the University of Iowa. But he's had opportunities.

You know, there have been some SEC Southern Big 12 schools that have inquired. So, you know, I never discount the possibility that that could happen. But I could totally understand why Rick would be frustrated. I mean, I go back to, you know, we were talking about this. I said maybe the indication that the season was going to be bad for them was back in November when that guy who was supposed to give $10 million ended up running from the law for not having any money to give and kind of just pulling the wool over everybody's eyes,

including the Iowa Athletic Department. And, yeah, I'd start there. But it would have to be something pretty special for Rick to leave, I think, at this point. Over to Little Basketball as we await the decision of Peyton Sanford about a week away from him officially having to make a lean one way or the other or let it be known what he's going to do one way or the other. You had an opportunity, though, to talk to Peyton a little bit.

He's working out with an NBA team, and they made him available with Zoom. Is that right? Yeah. Golden State had him in for a workout and we got an email and we're like, hey, we're going to have him available to our local media and you guys can hop on Zoom and ask him some questions. I'm like, I'm all over that. That's great.

We talked to him about a week before he has to make a huge decision. He went through, talked about the different teams that he's went to visit and work out for, like Atlanta and Boston and the Clippers and Warriors. He's got to work out with Utah, I think, Monday or Tuesday of this coming week. So he's got, you know, one more left, and then he's got to make a decision with his family. Basically, he said the combine,

most of the teams don't really take it as serious as maybe those of us on the outside do. Because he did not, he didn't fully admit it. He goes, I didn't play my best there. I didn't have my best performance there. And I think that's accurate. But, yeah, I kind of, you know,

I've been kind of 50-50 on what he was going to do, but I do kind of get the sense maybe he's leaning towards coming back for one more year at this point,

but it's a slight lean, but we'll see what happens. But he wants to huddle with his family and obviously talk to his agents to find out

what they're hearing from NBA teams and then make his decision. Obviously, if he was a first-rounder, that's a no-brainer, and there were some mocks before the combine that he worked his way into the first round. Now he's back in that second round again. Would he almost have to have a guarantee from a team, Tom, that, you know,

we're 41 and we're going to take you, stay in the draft, you're our guy. I mean, it seems at least early in what would be his professional career, it's either the G League or go back to school for your final year. It seems like those are the more likely options at this point. Yeah, I would think if I'm in his shoes i'm gonna want a guarantee i'm gonna want a team to tell me yeah second round we're gonna take you otherwise i'm going back you know because otherwise then you're just like looking at like uh go jump in the g league and uh maybe find a

two-way uh contract as a free agent. Who knows? But I don't know that I want to roll the dice that way when I could come back and potentially do it. Here's the thing, and I've said this quite a bit, so I don't know if I'm repeating this with you guys, but one of the things that I know about Peyton is it burns him that they did not make the NCAA tournament last year. And I think he wants that on his resume,

that he helps lead a team to an NCAA tournament game. And, you know, from there, you just let the chips fall where they may. But I think that's one thing that's really pushing him towards coming back is the fact that they did not make the NCAA tournament this past year. Do you know if he and Wieskamp are close, Joe? Wieskamp are close. And would those two have – I'm guessing if they are, he would reach out to Wieskamp, who just recently went through it and is one of those G League guys at this point in his career.

Yeah, I don't know if he's talked to Weezy. I'm not sure. I don't know. He'd be a goodeezy. I'm not sure. I don't know. Um, he'd be a good guy for him to talk to for sure. Um, because he's kind of ridden that he's running that race that Peyton might be running. So, and it's not an easy race. No, not at all. Well, we get some more news for the football schedule and it sounds like next week

we'll get even more. Oh, is that right? I didn't know that. How many, Trent? Well, Fox, a lot of their announcements are going to come after they have their upfronts, and it sounds like some announcements coming next week. Cyhawk being one of them? Potentially, if it's a Fox one, and there'll be more. I think it's the first three games I think we're going to get. Ding, ding, ding. So we'll know that one on top of it. Let's start though with the Friday night game. Iowa has said outside of Labor Day weekend we cannot host one, but the UCLA matchup going out there.

I know there'll be a whole lot of Hawkeye fans traveling out to L.A. for that one. Your thoughts on getting the Friday night assignment on Big Fox? Yeah, I think that's pretty cool. I mean, you know, we'll get the – I don't know what the sunset will be like. I have to probably get there early to get the sunset, but, um, you know, cause it'll be early November by that point. But yeah, I, I like it. Um, you know, uh, some of us may, may, uh,

wander over to the desert on Saturday for the weekend. I'm guessing you'll find my partner wandering over there, too, if you look in the right place. Well, Trent and I may have to talk. Come up with some travel assignments, I think, for this one. Oh, my gosh. That's a great point that you might miss. You have to get there early because it would kick off at, what,

7? Do we have a time? We do. It's 8 o'clock Central, so 6 o'clock Pacific. Okay. So, yeah, it's plenty. You know, not terrible and, you know, get an early flight over to a certain place in the desert. And they're cheap.

They're cheap, cheap, cheap. You can be there for those first kickoffs. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, boy. Tom Kakert, HawkeyeReport.com is joining us. Yeah, absolutely. Oh boy. Tom Caker at Hawkeye report.com is joining us. Tom, football wise, anything else brewing and any,

any additions, any subtractions? Are they getting close to any, you know, joining the team, I guess. No, it's pretty,

I think they're pretty set with where, where they are at this point. And they'll just go with what they've got. They're over the limit, so they're going to have to swarm scholarships. Some guys, some of those sixth-year guys, I think, are going to get swarmed scholarships. And so they can be under that number. And, yeah, it's weird. It's pretty quiet.

It's weird. It's pretty quiet. It's been, other than the bombshell Lisa Bluter, I mean, boy, we have been in a real desert of big news. It's not really happening, but I think June's going to pick up with football when you've got camps, you get some new offers out of those camps, and then you've got the big visit weekend at the end of June. Tom Caker at HawkeyeReport.com of on three media tom good stuff uh appreciate you coming on what can we look forward to this week obviously when those camps and everything do start you'll be all over them

but what else you're putting out yeah yeah that'll we'll just be waiting to see what happens with uh with peyton stanford and uhford and see what's going on there. We're also catching up with a bunch of incoming guys and doing our Ready to Report series because they'll be arriving, I think, June 9th is report day for everybody. Good stuff. Tom, enjoy the weekend.

We'll talk to you next Friday. Thank you, Tom Kickert. All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. All right, Tom Kickert, HawkeyeReport.com, part of On3 Media. Always appreciate it, Tom, and a big thank you for him joining us

as he does during my radio program, Miller & Condon. You can catch it on 106.3 KXNO and on the iHeartMedia app on from 11 to 1 Central Time here across Central Iowa and across the great state of Iowa. A little football to wrap things up. EA Sports, the new college football game is finally out after a decade away. And we get some news.

Iowa, a Tier 1 program. Are the Hawkeyes a blue blood? Looks like maybe EA Sports thinks so. We'll talk about that and give you a quick glimpse inside as we continue Locked on Hawkeyes. Today's episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast is brought to you by GameTime. Last minute deals. They are incredible.

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Trent, kind of back with you one final time on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Click that subscribe button while you're here. Help us out on YouTube. You're on the podcast side of things listening audio only uh hit us up with a five-star review greatly appreciate that gets more people getting their ears and their eyeballs on the podcast and a big thank you to all them as we continue to push those numbers forward and trying to grow this thing out even bigger going into next football season well the spring sports season has basically come to a close baseball disappointment.

And now it is time to look forward. We await the decision of Peyton Sanford. We're going to have a lot of recruiting news coming up, and that's going to be a big part of the show in the next couple of weeks. When we get into June, that's always a huge component to that. But one other thing we're waiting for this summer is a release of EA Sports college football game. It has been a decade away. Though I'm not what you would consider a gamer, this is something that gets me fired up. Now I'm going to have to upgrade my system because I do not have a PS5.

It's been a while. So we're going to have to upgrade the system if we're going to want to get this game. But I do. I think I'm going to bite the bullet, make it happen. It's not going to lead to me getting a bunch of new games, things like that. Look, busy life, don't have a lot of time to make those things happen anymore with kids and a wife and just life in general. We, I think a lot of you out there understand that part of it, but this was a huge part of growing up and it goes all the way back for me taking the Bill Walsh college football game uh the first iteration when bill walsh's name was off of it college football usa 95 i want to say it was so one of my best friends growing up was matt grandquist and you might think to yourself

hey i know that name yes because his older brother aaron grandquist was a fullback with the iowa football team during the 90s and what did did I do? Now, they didn't make Aaron Granquist nearly the speed that he was in real life. They made him slow as hell. And what did I do? Well, I took this plotting fullback, and I made him a Heisman Trophy winner. Now, we had to do it three, four, five yards at a time. There weren't a whole lot of big plays out of it, but that's what I was able to do. And it continued through high school and into college.

big plays out of it, but that's what it was able to do. And it continued through high school and into college. And even after college, played a lot of seasons of the college football game with EA Sports. I'm excited for it. We'll see exactly what the gameplay is going to be like, and we'll probably have some reviews, and we'll take some guesses, you know, who are going to be some of the higher-ranked guys before the rosters officially come out. Now the players will be paid $600 per player that has opted into the game. They also get a free copy of the game.

That's pretty good too. Hey, you might say 600 bucks. Think of the amount of money that these guys are bringing in. Well, we're also talking about rosters of what? 85 players, at least that'll be paid with this one. 85 scholarship players for each of these programs. You're talking about 130 plus FBS programs.

Yeah, that money starts to add up very, very quickly in order to make that happen. But here's the news item. So today, EA Sports, a news report comes out talking about exactly how much each of the programs were paid for their likeness in this game. All the teams decided to opt in, which was great to see. You want to make it obviously as good as possible. So they came up with this tier system and each tier got a certain amount of money for the top tier, nearly a hundred thousand dollars for each program. That's what the colleges are paid. $99,000 for tier one, tier two, 59,039 for tier three, tier four, just shy of $10,000.

And your Tier 4 are Tulsa, the Mac schools for the most part, UConn, Colorado State, Maryland down there, Duke. That's Tier 4. Your Tier 3 includes Iowa State, Ball State, South Carolina, Minnesota. Tier 2, all right, now we're talking. SC, Florida State, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida, Washington, TCU. Those two teams that I just mentioned just played for a national championship over the last two seasons. And then you get to the top tier, and that's where the Iowa Hawkeyes reside.

They used a system, including AP finishes in the last 10 years and Iowa is in the top tier. No surprise, Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Oregon, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Utah, and there's the Iowa Hawkeyes. 13-tier teams make the top tier. The Iowa Hawkeyes among them-tier teams make the top tier. The Iowa Hawkeyes among them. Now, are we considered a blue blood? No. We still have to do a lot more.

There's still a lot more that needs to be done in order for the Hawkeyes to be considered a blue blood. But certainly a pretty cool story there and cool to see that Iowa is considered that. Now, let's finish it off. Let's make appearance in the college football playoff. The schedule is there. I believe the team is there. Hopeful for this football season.

Thanks for being with us here. Locked on Hawkeyes, your team every day. That's what we do on the Locked On Network. Hey, you might be sitting around watching FS1, ESPN all day on your TV, sitting in your office. Maybe you work from home. It's on. It's there.

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Today brings you can't miss analysis, opinions and news streaming 24-7 on YouTube, or you can also find it on the free Amazon fire TV channels app, part of lockdown podcast network, your team every day. Hey, everybody out there.

Enjoy the long weekend. Hope you make it a good one. Enjoy the time away. If you do have that three day weekend, if you're out there working tip of the ball cap to you and thank you for everything out there and Memorial day, certainly a special one on the calendar every single year. We'll talk to you again next week.

Go Hawks.