Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - EXPOSED: Big Ten Coaches REVEAL Brutal Truth About Iowa's Offense | Will Gronowski SAVE the Day?

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Can the Iowa Hawkeyes football team maintain their offensive momentum? With Big Ten coaches weighing in, the spotlight is on Iowa's strategic moves and the impact of quarterback Mark Gronowski. Meanwhile, the Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team faces challenges after missing the NCAA tournament, despite Coach Rick Heller's commendable efforts. The discussion also turns to Caitlin Clark's quad strain and her significant influence on the WNBA, raising questions about the league's officiating and its effect on fan engagement.Trent Condon provides an in-depth analysis of these developments, highlighting key figures like Caitlin Clark and Mark Gronowski. The episode explores the evolving dynamics within Iowa sports, offering insights into the future of these teams.Tune in for a comprehensive breakdown of Iowa Hawkeyes' sports strategies and the potential implications for their upcoming seasons.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

Candid coaches, what Big Ten football coaches are saying about this year's Iowa Hawkeyes today. Locked on Hawkeye. 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. I've been

covering the Iowa Hawkeyes for over 20 years on the radio here in the state of Iowa including currently, you can hear me on the Iowa Sports Radio Network. Our stations include in Des Moines, 106.3 KXNO, KXIC in Iowa City, 95.7 in Cedar Rapids, also over in the Quad Cities in Sioux City. We got you covered border to border, talking the world of sports each weekday from noon until 2

with Ken Miller. Today's episode of Lockdown Hawkeyes is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use the code LOCKDOWNCOLLege at MonarchMoney.com for 50% off your first year. Well, we got plenty to get into today. The Iowa baseball season comes to an end as we anticipated. No selection in the NCAA tournament after theended in the championship against Nebraska. We'll talk a little Iowa baseball as it comes to a close and a pretty question about this year's team and just how disappointing obviously the end of the season was for Iowa baseball. Plus big news coming from the WNBA, Caitlin Clark has been injured. She is out a minimum of two weeks and we go

back to Caitlin's appearance at Carver Hawkeye Arena. Is that something to do with it or does it go deeper than that? We will talk about that here today. But we begin today's program with some Iowa football talk and always a good time to talk Iowa football as we make our way through now the offseason period. We got through spring practice. We have gone through position by position and taken a post spring look back at all those position groups but this is one of my favorite kind of rights of summer and each and every year there's these different checkpoints that we get off and after. The spring football another one is the magazine season that is becoming a part of it Athlon Street and Smith back of the day, Phil Steel, my favorite. Those magazines though, talking about your particular team, you pop them up, maybe go to the beach, summer vacation, little reading on the airplane, whatever it may be. These college football magazines, I understand

they're not what they once were. All the information that we have now readily available on the internet. It's not the same world, but I still think there's a place for it in today's environment. And one of the best parts that we get each and every year is Athlon goes out and they get quotes from Big Ten coaches. Now, it's funny throughout the years. For the first couple of years that this became kind of a big talking point during the off season, I think a lot of people assumed that it was head coaches and that's not always the case. In fact, I would guess pretty rarely are you getting head coaching quotes that go here. But for a while we take these quotes and we try

to figure out well who said that or what program would be saying these types of things. And again, it's an off season topic. It's something to get us through before we get to the real pad popping. We really get back to the football field and talking about that. So this is what a Big Ten coach said about the Iowa Hawkeyes in 2025. And we'll kind of take these couple sentence by couple sentence and break them down a little bit more. Quote, you can look at them two different ways. The first is, this is kind of roster

where Ferent surprises opponents and they come out more cohesive and physical than you expect because that's Iowa football, especially on defense. So let's start right there. And let's go to the top of the topic here. Kind of roster where you surprise. Come up more cohesive and physical.

That has to happen. The defense that took a step back a year ago, if Iowa is going to get back to the level that I think they have a chance to, if they're going to be a team that is up there on the cusp of winning nine, 10 games, doing something special this season, that defense has to take a step forward. Because though it was good last year, it wasn't elite. And without elite defense, we saw some of the problem marks that started to come up for this program,

some of the issues that were certainly there. It has to be that, it has to be cohesive, it has to be physical. And you look at some of these individual pieces, I think it has a chance. The concern about that is you're gonna be talking about a new linebacker crew. And you're gonna be talking about guys

that don't have experience, that have not been out there on a collegiate football field. The guys that are either veterans and have been around for a long time and obviously not able to unseat Nick Janssen and Jackson and Jay Higgins and that's no knock against them it's just the reality or you're going young and we've seen that in the past where going young at linebacker can lead to some problems. We continue we see rosters like this where you look

up and I was winning 10 games and that didn't seem possible. The second is that they they're still really struggling on offense to the point where Lester and that staff had everything riding on an FCS transfer quarterback. Alright, so start back to the top. Look up Iowa's winning 10 games. Doesn't seem possible. Again, that's going to be the case. This is where I got a problem. And this is where maybe we're too close to it or They're not understanding what we saw a year ago with decrepit quarterback play with wide receivers that were incredibly pedestrian with a tight end that was coming back off an injury and Offensive line that still was a work in progress the season ago with all that

They basically doubled their output in terms of points per game. They went from the absolute laughing stock of 2023 and they were averaging 27 points per game a year ago. Now, I know averages don't paint the whole picture because you can have high and low water marks and you can have a couple of big games that are going to skew those numbers. And I get that if that's what you want to look But this is still a team that was able to put up 40 points against Washington put up 40 points against Northwestern 42 against Wisconsin 29 with the quarterback starting for the first time

against Maryland Yeah, it's not elite even 24 against Missouri in the loss. But still, to look at this and not understand that there were big improvements made a year ago. I think it's short-sighted. I think it's incredibly, it's the easy way out. And I think that's what we're seeing on this front. We continue. The second is that they're really struggling on offense. We talked about that, disagree. To the point where Lester and that staff

have everything riding on an FCS transfer quarterback, Mark Gradowski, who didn't play in the spring at all. That's true, he didn't. And everything riding on an FCS transfer quarterback, it's true. You know who else did that as Washington State a couple of years ago? And a guy that turned out to be the number one pick in the NFL draft. That's not to say that Mark Grunowski's gonna do

that. That's not where I'm going here. Slow down. That's not where we're hitting. However, to be dismissive because he comes from the FCS, it's laughable. It absolutely is comical that that's where your mind goes. We've seen this work before at a lot of different schools, yes, but it could also fall apart. Well, of course. Look, if we knew what this is going to be, I'll tell you what. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you guys.

I wouldn't. If I knew how this was going to be played out, I'd put money on the over-under in Vegas and I'd walk away in the free and clear. But we don't know how it's going to turn out. So that's just silly. Mark Kronowski is the perfect quarterback for Iowa. And I'll put it this way. Now, every time that we bring up quarterback

and we bring up offense, and, ah, it's just the same old Kirk, it's not, pay a little attention, use some reasoning, use some logic, and just watch the games, and you'll see that it was different this past season. That what they're working on is different than Ferent's ball of the past. This is different.

It doesn't mean that it's going to be great, but it is different. There is a willingness to adapt and to change. Maybe not as quickly as we want, but it does happen with Kirk Ferent's. More as we finish up. They have questions all over the offense, too, especially at receiver. Questions, sure. But another component is this wide receiver room still

has questions. That is fair. The part about it, though, that you dive deeper, I will always ask questions of wide receiver. When is the last time that you went into a season feeling really good about wide receiver? When they had Brandon Smith and Amir Smith-Marcet? A year, maybe two. Outside of that, DJ K and McNutt, CJ Jones and Mo Brown?

That's who we're going back to. Well, that's like three seasons over 26 of Kirk parents that we're talking about that you don't have major questions at wide receiver like you do now. But Iowa has options and that is a difference that there are options out there for this Iowa football team that give them an opportunity to be different. If Krodowski is good though, they'll be fine. And he will be good. He will be good. I am going to talk it into existence. He will be good. One thing's not good gets Caitlin

Clark injury for her and the Iowa baseball team the end to the season. That's what we got coming up here. Iowa baseball season comes to an end and the injury to Caitlin Clark. We continue on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast Ever check your bank account wonder where'd all my money go between dining out online shopping and entertainment It's easy to lose track. That's where Monarch money comes in It's your personal CFO giving you full visibility and control over your finances. Monarch Money isn't just a budgeting app, it's a complete financial command center.

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your first year. That's MonarchMoney.com with the code LOCKDOWNCOLLege for half off your first year. MonarchMoney.com. Trent Konda back with you once again on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Thanks for being with us in making Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every day. Thanks to you every dayers with us each and every day. Happy Memorial Day and a big thank you and a salute to the veterans and the ones that made the ultimate sacrifice for us. A big thank you to all of them. All right, let's get back into it and go back to Saturday. So last time I talked to you over the weekend and after that one went final. Just the finality of it, how it came screeching to a halt. Now we got

a lot of fun out of this Iowa baseball team this year. We had a lot of positives that came out of Iowa baseball and what they were. But I saw this posed out on social media. And it's a question that just completely gobstopped me. I couldn't believe that it was used. I shouldn't, because social media is a cesspool. And you see so many idiotic things but the question was posed if Rick Heller if he was frame of cat free if he was a guy that pulled the program out but this is. The two situations are so opposite, so different.

I think people that listen every day and you every dayers know that I believe that Framacaffrey deserved more credit than he got from the fan base. And I get it. People checked out and he had to make a move. This was not to say that that was a wrong choice by Beth Getz because it wasn't. It had to happen. But I think we also need to realize what he did. Iowa baseball, though, is in a completely different spot. Yes, they were in contention

to win a regular season title, something they haven't done since 1990, by the way. He was the guy that brought him there. But not only that, Iowa, until the final two, three weeks of the season, was on pace to make the NCAA tournament for the fourth time under him. As a program, it's only been there three times previous in the hundred-some years that Iowa baseball was a thing. So that's what we're talking about here. This guy is responsible for half their NCAA tournament appearances.

That's what you have with Rick Heller. You couple it with what he is doing in terms of financing, in terms of budgeting compared to his Big Ten peers. Take away the SEC or the ACC and even the Big 12 and what they do in baseball, and just look at what happens in the Big Ten. Iowa falls well behind everybody else. It looked like for a while a big chunk of the renovation

for Dwayne Banks Field was gonna be covered. And then apparently that guy turned out to not have the money that they thought that they had allocated to that. It's been a mess. Last year was disappointing. 2024 was a disappointing baseball season. This is what it is. Now there's

also a new reality. And the new reality is Iowa more times than not was going to be in the upper half of the league and was going to be competing for a regular season championship, going to compete for an NCAA tournament bid if a couple of things went their way. That was the reality that Rick Hellers built this program into. But as we saw, starting with the series against Washington, who was middle of the road, yeah, they finished in the top third of the Big Ten. But in comparison, talking about upper level teams,

we saw that team was a good baseball team. Didn't even make the NCAA tournament. Iowa loses two out of three out there. And then we saw that gap with Oregon and Oregon State and even UCLA on Saturday that gap that continues to grow Because those programs aren't going anywhere And if you think that USC and UCLA and Oregon and Washington are not gonna invest in baseball, you're crazy. It's going to happen They can recruit California to better love

You're crazy. It's going to happen. They can recruit California to better love. They can recruit out west and they can recruit guys that are playing baseball all year long. That doesn't happen in Iowa. Certainly not outdoors. Yeah, you can go to sticks. You go to perfect game. You can go do your program and do your thing. However, it is different what they're able to do. The Big 10 is better with these additions. The Big Ten certainly is better as it pertains in baseball with the additions of those programs. But that means everybody else is going to have to step up. And I just don't know financially if I was going to be at a place that it could get better than this.

This is what it is. You can be frustrated, you can be mad, but looking forward. What needs to happen? The investment needs to continue to be there. And that's where we are with Iowa baseball. Me personally, I love it. You know, with Iowa State not having a baseball program, UNI's program was cut now, what, 20 years ago. Drake without a program. To be the only D1 team in the state that's playing baseball, it's huge. Because I see it, broadcasting high school sports, calling games in the CIML, week in and week out during the summertime,

I see the amount of talent. And then when I get to see a Ben Wilmes, when I get to see a Miles Risley, when I get to see a Jack Dreyer, when I get to see a Peyton Williams, when I see these players go to Iowa and then succeed. Bendittay and what he was able to do with this baseball team and the list goes on and on and on and that's just in central Iowa and then when I go to the state tournament and all the stars that I see and then those guys end up in Iowa City. It is a great thing.

Support, it was there. Building that thing up can be there. This can be a solid year-in, year-out sport. Just needs to continue to be the investment. You have the right coach. The coach is the right guy. When Rick Heller goes though, oh boy, those are gonna be some big, big shoes to fill whoever takes over When Rick Heller goes though, oh boy, those are going to be some big big shoes to fill whoever takes over for Rick Heller. We continue Locked On Hawkeyes. Well, big shoes out there for Caitlin Clark. What's going to happen with the Indiana Fever? Talk a little Caitlin when we come back on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Back with you one final time on a Memorial Day edition of Locked On Hawkeyes. Thanks for being with us and making Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every day. So it was announced on Monday

that Caitlin Clark is shutting it down for a couple of weeks with a quad strain. Now if you remember dating back to the pre season when Caitlin showed up in Iowa City with her Indiana Fever team, she didn't play in the game previous as she was out in the matchup in the first game of the exhibition season. She was out there playing against the Brazilian national team, put out a show as we all know in Iowa City at Carver Hawkeye Arena. However, for Caitlin Clark, she's banged up again. And on the heels of the report that came out last week from an economist that equated her impact

accounting for 26.5% of all the revenue generated from the WNBA. And yet, even after that, I was left like, I'm sure a lot of people saying, that's it? Shouldn't that number be even higher than it was? We know Caitlin is a completely different type of athlete. The way that she transcends the game, the way that she has built this to a completely different

level than anybody could have anticipated. She did it in college sports with the women's final four and the numbers that we saw and now it's continued in the WNBA. She's incredibly special. She is one of one. She is doing something in this sport in the modern era we have not seen before. This isn't Tiger Woods in golf. Golf was fine before Tiger Woods. He took it to another level. That was great, but it was still generating money, it was still generating eyeballs. That was not the case with the WNBA.

It was a project put together by NBA owners and they were keeping afloat with their money. Not because of what was happening in the league, it was because of the backing that they had financially. And now, Kaitlin Clark has lifted this thing up where it can be a viable organization. But they're gonna be without her for a couple weeks. And coming full circle, they're going to be without her.

Okay, she had a quad strain. Got hit up against Liberty. But that's what I go to. Watching that game, watching what she did in the third quarter, getting them back in the game and giving them the lead, and getting ranked on the last play of the game, and not getting a call.

One thing I learned right away, because I was not a big WNBA fan before Caitlin Clark showed up, one thing that I learned right away last season is the physical nature of the WNBA. It is a different level. For me, aesthetically, watching the game, it's a bad brain of basketball, but it's the way the game is played in the WNBA. It's about physicality. There's a reason that you saw Kaitlyn show up this year looking different, physically stronger in the upper body. You see the arms, you see how strong she is.

She's doing that because the way that the game is played. However, when you have a once in a lifetime player, and that's Caitlin Clark, a generational star like this, don't you want to make things better for her? Don't you want to have your officials play to the strength of your best player? Not just your best player, because that is short-sighted. A generational player. Yeah, you do. The WNBA is missing. And the WNBA, with their awful officiating, is turning this into a problem. Because for the casual fans flipping these games on and watching the hideous nature of the way the game is called and the way the game is played, they're going to tune away.

They're going to turn it off eventually. You only come back for more when the product is bad. And this brand of basketball is not entertaining to watch. Clean it up. That's what you have to do. If you're the WNBA and you truly believe that you can take this and turn this into a viable entity, you have to clean things up. The physical play needs to slow down. It's not to say they need to be playing patty cake out there, they can't touch, and that every foul is going to be whistled. That's not what it is. But it's gone too far. There has to be freedom movement. It's like Tom Izzo is out there

coaching the WNBA. Conversation for another day. And thanks for being with us and making Lockdown Hawkeyes your first listen every day. Make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're watching us on YouTube. Just takes a moment. If you're listening on the podcast side five star reviews helps us get in front of more Hawkeye fans. For your second listen check out the Portal Show. Brian Smith has the latest rumors, portal entries and signings. Be the most informed fan on the rapid changes to the college football landscape. Find the Portal on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. More happening in the world of college

football. Are we going to get that 16-team playoff? We'll talk about that and some Hawkeye topics tomorrow with Scott Dockerman from the Athletic. A lot going on on that front as we get ready for the offseason time. We'll get some topics. We're going to be kicking around here with you. A lot of Iowa football as we start to get ready for the 2025 season. Thanks for being with us and making Lockdown Hawkeyes your first listen every day. Again, hit subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube or give us a five star review on the audio side helps us get in front of more Hawkeye fans. Until tomorrow, we'll talk to you then.

Go Hawks!