Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Fant, Hooker shine at combine | Gustafson cleans how on B1G awards | Baseball gets big win in Stillwater

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

Four Hawks went to the NFL Combine, and all four can be considered winners from the weekend in Indianapolis. Fant had an explosive showing, Hockenson finished right by him most of the time, Nelson showed incredibly agility for a guy his size, and Hooker put to rest many of the doubters. In basketball, star forward Megan Gustafson took home quite a few awards yesterday for the #10 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team. They begin Big Ten Conference play Friday evening. In our Hawkeye sports roundup, we cover each of the other athletic programs including men's baseball which won 2 of 3 games vs #19 Oklahoma State. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. I'm your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at DearOldGold.com, where you can find analysis pieces on all things black and yellow. And we're coming back at you this Tuesday morning with another episode. Lots of exciting things happening in the Hawkeye sports world with the NFL Combine, women's basketball got a few awards yesterday, and also just doing a general sports roundup of what's kind of happened this past weekend in Hawkeye athletics. The men's baseball team had a fantastic three-game series down in Stillwater, Oklahoma. So I want to cover all that on today's show. On segment number one, we're going to be talking, though, about the NFL Combine

and who improved their draft stock the most, who hurt their draft stock the most, and kind of what was the overall outcome of the NFL Combine for the four Iowa Hawkeyes who were in attendance. On segment number two, we're going to be doing, you know, something we usually do earlier in the week. We didn't get a chance to do it yesterday, simply because we wanted to cover the men's basketball game against Rutgers in full detail, but we're going to be covering all the sports that took place this past weekend and giving you some updates as to what sports are

going to be taking place this upcoming weekend. And then finally on segment number three, it is all about basketball. Talking about women's basketball, the Big Ten tournament is coming up. Who is projected to be the favorite there? What do the women need to do to secure a number two seed? What awards did Megan Gustafson win yesterday in the Big Ten? And could that mean that she's potentially a frontrunner for National Player of the Year? We're going to be talking about all that on segment number three. But before we jump in, though, make sure you are subscribing to our podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcast at.

And if you have a smart device at home, it's really easy to listen to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. All you need to do is tell Siri, Google, or Alexa to play podcast Locked On Hawkeyes. That will give you the latest episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. That being said, though, let's jump right into it. We have a fantastic segment number one, talking about the NFL Combine. As you hopefully know by now, we had four Hawkeyes there. We had Noah Fant, Anthony Nelson, Imani Hooker, and TJ Hawkinson. All right, so not as many people as I was hoping to see there. Obviously, I'd wanted to see Keegan Render, Ross Reynolds, and Nick Easley. I thought they had an opportunity to go as well,

but that's neither here nor there. We still have four guys, which is fantastic, and those four guys turned in some incredible performances. Let's start with Noah Pham, though. So one of the things with Noah Pham is everyone, you know, his stock is basically predicated on his athletic ability you see that athletic ability on tape you see that he is an athletic freak you hear about how good he is in terms of speed strength that kind of thing so the the combine is really important to just solidify those feelings about him and and boy did

he do that he ran a 4.5 second 40 yard dash, tops for tight ends. Would have been a pretty solid time for the running backs too. But ran a 4.5 second 40 yard dash at 6'4", 249 pounds. He also managed to set the bar for almost every other metric for tight ends. That includes the three conecone drill, the 20-yard shuttle. The only one he really didn't was the bench. So pretty outstanding right there for Noah Fant. That was huge, really elevated his draft stock. I think people expect him to be one of the top tight ends in terms of athletic testing, but to really go out there and crush it like he did was absolutely incredible. I think at this point it's safe to say that he is a surefire first round

draft pick. I would be surprised to see him fall past that. Teams just don't give up on or just don't let athletic weapons and mismatches like Noah Fant drop into the second round. So pretty exciting stuff for him. His teammate TJ Hawkinson, his running man at tight end, didn't have quite as impressive of a day, but he didn't hurt himself in fact the only thing he really you know someone could even really complain about is the fact that he ran a 4.7 second 40 yard dash which to be honest isn't even that bad especially for a tight end it was seventh overall for the tight ends and just to give you some context, some background on that time, it was actually faster than all-pro tight end Zach Ertz. So it's not that bad.

It's just when you compare it to Noah Phan's 4.5 or you compare it to just a lot of the standard kind of top-tier first-round draft pick tight ends in the past, they're typically running a little bit faster than that. But Hawkinson's game isn't predicated on speed. It's predicated on the fact that he is incredibly savvy. He's a very intelligent player. He runs great routes, has very, very good hands. And that stuff was on display during a lot of his drills, had a very smooth combine performance. And honestly, outside of, I mean, who's really running 40 straight yards unless you're running a go route, which Hawkinson typically doesn't do?

The other drills were actually a little bit more indicative of what he can do, though. He finished second in every single drill except for the 40-yard dash and the bench press. So keep that in mind. If Noah Fant wasn't there, we'd be talking about Hawkinson being a huge winner as he would have basically placed first in most of the drills but he fell behind Fant obviously because Fant's an athletic freak but Hawkinson's tape really backs up kind of what we saw at the combine I think going into this we knew that you know TJ Hawkinson was going to have a solid performance not a spectacular and that as long as he didn't

completely bomb it like like the Isaiah or Isaiah Nata Isaac Nata. Isaac Nata out of Georgia ran a 4-9 40-yard dash. TJ Hawkinson didn't bomb it like that. So Isaac Nata just saw his draft stock potentially 2-3-4 rounds, potentially even undrafted, just by running a terrible 40-yard dash time.

Hawkinson didn't do that. He had a pretty solid day, kept his draft stock high. He's still projected to probably go in the top 15 picks. One guy who did a fantastic job of improving his draft stock, Anthony Nelson. At 6'7", 271 pounds, there's typically a lot of concern about your agility, your ability to bend low, ability to get around the tackles and whatnot. He ran a 4.82 40 yard dash which was the fifth best time so keep in mind again defensive linemen are typically running straight for 40

yards but it still just kind of says you know kind of says a little bit about his speed but what's more impressive is his vertical which is 35.5 inches which is fifth best a nine foot two inch broad jump which is fourth best a 6.95 second three cone drill which is fifth best, a nine foot two inch broad jump, which is fourth best, a 6.95 second three cone drill, which is second best, and a 4.23 second 20 yard shuttle, which is third best. Those are really, those last two are huge for defensive linemen, especially the three cone drill. It measures a lot of his agility, his stop and go, his stop and starting abilities, ability to move laterally, side to side. And as a defensive lineman, you really need that lateral explosiveness. So having those solid times really puts him down into any evaluators.

I know I'm reading some stuff from Trevor Sikama at the Draft Network. He also is one of the co-hosts of the Locked On NFL Draft. He wasn't a big fan of his tape. But I think some of these times really show that the athletic ability is there for Anthony Nelson. It's just a matter of harnessing it and getting him a little bit better coaching in the NFL, and hopefully he can move around and be pretty effective. But with those times, I think that kind of moves him up to potentially the second or third round. I think in the past he was sort of predicted to be a fourth or fifth-round draft pick.

I mean, he's a tall dude, but is he athletic enough to play defensive line? I think the combine really proved some of those doubters wrong potentially. So very exciting day for Anthony Nelson. Then the final guy to do his testing was Imani Hooker. And unfortunately for Imani Hooker, he's just been battling athleticism concerns. Not because he's unathletic, but because the secondary at Iowa just gets a bad rep. I mean, look at Desmond King, Josh Jackson, Micah Hyde. Not a lot of love coming out of college because there was concerns about their straight line speed, concerns about

their agility. Well, have those concerns no more because Imani Hooker ran a 4.48 40-yard dash at 210 pounds. He also was fifth best at the vertical jump with 37 inches, turned in the second best three-cone drill at 6.81 seconds, and his 20-yard shuttle time of 4.1 seconds was fourth best. So fantastic day all around for Imani Hooker. You know, at 5'11", 210 pounds, he's slightly undersized. I think they would have liked to see him come in at 6'0", 6'1". But his tape was fantastic at Iowa. This athletic testing just helps that even more. I think personally, I would be very excited to get Amani Hooker on my

team. You saw the versatility that he has. He can play that nickel corner spot. He can play safety, single high safety. I think he showed that he's athletic enough to do that. And he also has that dime backer role pretty much on lockdown. I mean, he does a fantastic job with his instincts. He can really be that guy who plays that nickel defense and really helps out your team from a kind of hybrid linebacker position. So fantastic stuff overall from all four guys. My guess is that none of these guys are going to be doing these tests at the Iowa Pro Day just because when you have solid times like that, you want to stand by your times, maybe do some of the other extracurricular performances during Pro Day but not really doing the athletic testing.

That being said, I do expect a couple guys to do pretty well. I mean, they've been training for this for a while. Ross Reynolds, Keegan Render. I mean, Nick Easley is going to have a fantastic day. I think he's going to kind of shock the world, similar to what Riley McCarron did a few years back. So some exciting stuff. We'll keep you posted on sort of how this impacts their draft stock as additional news comes out. I mean, obviously the NFL Combine officially ended yesterday, so not a lot of time to digest this. Draft analysts are still kind of reviewing this information,

and we're looking to get some draft analysts on here, Sarah Bettinger, maybe Nick Kendall back on to talk about the NFL Combine and what this means for the players going forward. So stay tuned for that on some future episodes. But that'll do it for segment number one. Just a reminder that on segment number two, we're going to be giving you a full sports roundup, so stay tuned for that after a few messages from our sponsors.

We are back with segment number two. Just a reminder, segment number three, we're going to be talking all about basketball. It's a conversation you do not want to miss. We're going to be talking about the Big Ten Tournament, the NCAA Tournament for the Women, what they need to do to become a number two seed, and what awards did Megan Gustafson take home yesterday, and could this be indicative of the opportunity for her to take home a National Player of the Year award? Find out more about that on segment number three.

But on segment number two, again, I want to talk about the other Hawkeye Athletics. And I would say they had a so-so weekend. The men's baseball team did fantastic. They won two of three in Stillwater versus number 19 Oklahoma State. Now I play baseball, and literally you can win any game at any point. So it could just be that Oklahoma State was having an off day. I would like to think that the Iowa baseball team did a fantastic job. I mean, they still beat a ranked team.

Oklahoma State's still a very solid team, and they did a good job beating them. They lost 4-5 their first game, but then won 5-4 and 3-2 in their next two. They have a three-game series versus Evansville coming up this weekend in Illinois, and they get a single game versus Illinois-Chicago in Iowa City on Tuesday. The men are currently 6-4. The softball team also had a decent weekend. They went 3-2 in the USF series down in Clearwater. They beat Western Michigan, Binghamton, and Ball State. They fell to Mid-Tennessee State University and USF though in close games. They have the

Saluki Invitational in Illinois this weekend, so that'll stop their run of I believe it was three weekends or four straight weekends down in Florida. They're going to be heading to Illinois this weekend, so a little bit shorter of a road trip for their five games they're going to be playing. Men's gymnastics had a great day. They beat Nebraska 406.5 to 403.550. They take on Michigan in Ann Arbor next week. The women's gymnastics team, though, they lost to Iowa State.

Fortunately, although we never want to see the women's team lose, especially to Iowa State, fortunately we have the CyHawk trophy already. We won that thing. It is not going to Iowa State, so who cares about that piece at least. But the women lost 196.275 to 196.250, so close loss for them. They head to Washington thisiday to take on washington with sacramento state men swimming and diving they finished eighth in the big 10 championships they have the ncaa zone diving championships march 11th this upcoming week in austin texas

men's and women's tennis they also they both dropped their matches this week. Men dropped the match to number 38 Texas Tech in Lubbock this past weekend. They take on Drake and Nebraska this weekend. I don't know how Nebraska's team typically is. Drake's team is pretty solid, so that'll be a tough matchup for the men heading to Des Moines. Actually, I think they're going to be playing Drake at Iowa City, so still a tough matchup for them. The women's tennis team, they also dropped their third straight match. They lost to Kansas State 1-4 in Manhattan. They head to Florida this weekend to get some sunshine, get out of that snow, get out of that crappy Iowa weather. They take on Furman and Florida Gulf Coast down in Fort Myers this weekend.

Men's track and field, they have the NCAA Indoor Championships this weekend. And the men's wrestling team has the Big Ten Championships this week. I'm going to be giving a full breakdown of that tournament and what to expect for the Hawks on Thursday's episode. Have a good buddy who's big into wrestling. I think he finished second at the Iowa State Wrestling Tournament in high school. Loves following the Hawks. He's going to be helping me give you some analysis as to what to expect. So we'll be giving that on Thursday's episode.

Giving you a weight class by weight class breakdown of what to expect for the Hawks. A lot of fun things. I wouldn't expect a NCAA team title, but a lot of guys could be going to the NCAA championships individually. So a bunch of stuff we'll be covering on Thursday's episode. That'll do it, though, for our sports roundup. A little bit shorter today just because not as much to cover. A few sports are kind of in limbo waiting for their kind of postseason to begin, just

like the wrestling team. And we're going to be covering the women's basketball team and the men's basketball team on segment number three. So stay tuned for segment number three after a few more messages from our sponsors. All right, we are back with segment number three. This is arguably the most exciting segment of the day, mostly because the women are just raking in the freaking awards here. Yesterday, Megan Guff's just cleaned house.

She won Big Ten Player of the Year. She was unanimous first team all Big Ten, and she was Big Ten All-Defensive team. I think this is huge for her chances of winning National Player of the Year. She's the first Hawkeye to ever win back-to-back Player of the Year awards in the Big Ten. I think, like I said, she has a chance of becoming National Player of the Year. Think about some of the things she's done. She has school records in points and rebounds with 2,605 points, 1,364 rebounds. She has the most double doubles in Big Ten history.

And also, quietly, she won Big Ten Player of the Week this week as well. That is her 23rd Big Ten Player of the Week award, which is also most all-time. The only reason why she wouldn't get this is because there's some freaking bias towards the Hawks and anyone coming from Iowa. Typically, those awards are going to be given to the Ucons and teams like that, the Louisvilles. So that'd be the reason why I think she would potentially win National Player of the Year. But I think if the Hawks can go to the Elite Eight, that is enough to get Gustafson the National Player of the Year. And she is fully deserving.

She's leading the country in shooting, in terms of points scored, shooting percentage overall. And she's fourth in the country in rebounds, among plenty of other things. She's the reason why the Hawks are here. I mean, there's a lot of great players on the women's basketball team, but she is the main catalyst for that. So she better win National Player of the Year. I think there's going to be some freaking outrage from Hawkeye Nation if she doesn't. Other people to win some awards though, Kathleen Davis, the junior, got first team All-Big Ten. Taniya Davis got honorable mention, and Hannah Stewart received the Iowa Sportsmanship Award. Also, the rankings were released by the NCAA, letting us know kind of where teams will

be sitting at if the basketball season ended today. And Iowa is currently at a number two seed. They are the eighth best team according to the NCAA. That's huge for the Hawks. That basically means if they win the Big Ten tournament, they are for sure going to be a number two seed. That means they don't have a matchup against the number one seed until the elite eight that means they also get a few games at home where they're undefeated so this is huge i mean and granted they're going to get some home games regardless but a number two seed would be fantastic again they would get to the elite eight before they play the number one team in their bracket. And the higher they can get, the easier opponent they're going to get in terms of weakest number one seed.

And we saw them get smoked by Notre Dame earlier in the season. I think this is a different basketball team, though. So excited to see what they can do. And if they can pull it off, here we are. We're in the Final Four. If they can beat a number one team in that Elite Eight round. Again, I think they at least need to get to the Finals to maintain that Elite Eight round. Again, I think they need to, you know, they at least need to get to the finals to maintain that number two seed.

And it also depends on who is at the finals for the Big Ten tournament. You know, Maryland is currently 10th according to the NCAA. So if they were to beat Iowa in the finals, do they jump Iowa and take over that, you know, that number two seed? All stuff we'll be watching as the Big Ten tournament unfolds this week. The women do play on Friday evening. They are going to be playing either Minnesota or Indiana, depending on who wins that game earlier in this week.

So stay tuned for that. We'll be giving you full previews and kind of updates on that as it happens. From the men's basketball side, they did drop out of the rankings. That was sort of expected after dropping two straight games. They do play, you know,

they play on Thursday though, against Wisconsin. And we have fantastic show coming up for you. We're going to be meeting with Tanner Nessel of the locked on badgers podcast. And, uh, you know,

a side expert over at, um, badger nation. I, I can't remember what the specific badger of honor, I believe is the website name for the fan sided networks, you know, website devoted to the Wisconsin Badgers.

So Tanner Nestle is going to be jumping on. We're going to be talking about the Iowa-Wisconsin basketball game on Thursday. A huge game for the Hawks simply because it presents a Quadrant 1 win. It also presents an opportunity for them to build momentum going into the Big Ten tournament against a very solid team and a very tough place to play. It's not easy to go to the Kohl Center, so that's going to be a very tough game for them, but they can win that and go one-on-one during the France suspension and then beat Nebraska, a weakened Nebraska team in Omaha or in Lincoln. My apologies. That'll be

huge for the Hawks. It'll also help them with their current slating in the NCAA bracketology rankings. They are currently an eight seed, according to Joe Linardi. And don't take, you know, Joe Linardi doesn't know everything, right? He's kind of guessing. He's an analyst. He's just kind of giving you his thoughts. That isn't exactly where they're going to be. But at the season end of the day, and we follow Joe Linardi's rankings, Iowa would be an 8 seed. And they would be playing Duke in the second round. an eight seed and they would be playing Duke in the second round.

And what we could, you know, what we've kind of gleaned or taken away from the Rutgers game is that Iowa struggles with size and they struggle with athletic size. And that is exactly what Duke is. They're one of the tallest teams in the country. They have a ton of size, especially when they get Zion Williamson back. Iowa doesn't match up well against those type of teams. They are a tall team and they can beat people up down low if they're bigger than them. But teams that are bigger than Iowa, they manhandle Iowa. Look at Rutgers. They wouldn't let Iowa get anything going offensively. So that would be huge and not very good for the Hawks if they had that matchup.

So winning these last couple games, winning a few games in the Big Ten tournament would be absolutely huge for the Hawks. Hopefully move them up a little bit to a four, five, or six seed potentially. I think a four seed is probably out of the question unless they win the Big Ten tournament, but possibly a five or six seed I think is very realistic, at least getting them past that matchup against a one seed right away. In terms of some of the analytics and stuff like that, they are currently kind of hovering around that 40th ranking. So again, those wins would be huge for them. Move up in those analytics and see if they can potentially get a better seed in the NCAA tournament.

But that'll do it for segment number three. Just a reminder, we have some great shows coming up for you, a lot of postseason activity. So on tomorrow's show, we're going to be talking with Tanner Nessel from Locked On Badgers. Make sure to give with Tanner Nessel from Locked On Badgers. Make sure to give him a follow over at Locked On Badgers on Twitter and whatnot. You know, he's going to be jumping on. We're going to be talking about the Iowa-Wisconsin game.

I'm going to be giving you a full preview of the Big Ten Wrestling Championships on Thursday morning's episode. And then we have a pretty exciting thing we're kind of working on here on the Locked On Podcast Network, hoping to get most of the Big Ten schools on a WebEx together or whatever it may be and give you a full rundown of what to expect for the Big Ten tournament from all these schools that are participating or at least all the schools that have a Locked On Podcast for their Big Ten school. So stay tuned for some of that stuff. We'll be tweeting about that on our LockedOnIowa Twitter account.

Make sure to follow that, LockedOnIowa. You can also follow me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew. And make sure, you know, the easiest way to make sure you're not missing one of our shows is just to subscribe. If you subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast at, it'll download directly to your phone every single time we release a new episode. So make sure to tune into that as well. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions,

I would love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at lockdownhawkeyes at gmail.com. Love to hear from you, the listener. Get feedback or whatever it may be. I try to incorporate that feedback as well into how I run this show. So love to get that from you all as much as possible. Like I said, stay tuned for the next couple episodes this week. So love to get that from you all as much as possible. Like I said,

stay tuned for the next couple episodes this week. They're going to be fantastic. I'm really excited about the content we're delivering you. So tune in every single day of this week for the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast.

But like I said, that'll do it. Thank you for joining us on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast on the Lockdown Sports Network. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and we'll be back tomorrow.