Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Fran gets 3 verbal commits | Hawks likely missing two starters Saturday | What does Iowa need to do to win the Big Ten West

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

The Hawks have landed three verbal commits in the last 72 hours, what does that mean for the program and for the class of 2020? Segment two has us transitioning back to football where we break down the new depth chart and the injuries that could force two starters out against Northwestern, and we wrap up with a breakdown of the Big Ten West title situation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of the U.S. It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted! It's picked off right away! Intercepted by Marty Hooker! Pick six! Eight seconds into the game! Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith!

Oh! He's got it! Smith! Touchdown. 85 yards. High on. Touchdown, 10. Taking a shot in the end zone.

It is caught. No offense. Touchdown. That's either one or you have it. Go ahead and three. Yes. Two-point lead for the Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network.

I am your host, Andrew Wade. I am not joined here today by Zach Cohen. Obviously, we weren't able to make these schedules match up for today's episode. But we do have some great stuff we wanted to cover, get you some content out on a Tuesday morning. I know we've been kind of switching it off and on between Tuesdays and Wednesdays, taking our break. But we're going to try to pump out five episodes this week every single day of the week, Monday through Friday. So on today's episode, though, we're going to be talking about recruiting. Kind of a big couple days in basketball recruiting. Iowa has picked up three commitments in the last

48 to 72 hours. Still a lot to go, a lot to happen in the basketball recruiting world for Iowa. So we'll talk about that on the show today. We're also going to talk about the depth chart that was released and kind of how some injuries are playing an important, you know, kind of being an important factor in the upcoming game against Northwestern. Two starters are going to be out most likely. How are we going to replace them? You know, for example, Brandon Smith is likely out. Are we going to see Oliver Martin? We're going to be talking all about that on today's episode as well. And then finally, we're going to wrap up by just talking a little bit about Iowa's path to a Big Ten West title. I know Zach and I touched on it yesterday a bit, but I've been seeing a lot of comments on Facebook and Twitter saying,

oh, thank God Wisconsin lost. That makes our path much easier. And no, it doesn't. It doesn't make Iowa's chances of winning the West necessarily any better. Iowa still needs to go through Madison to get to the Big Ten West title and win that title and make it to the Big Ten championship game. But I'm going to talk about that as well. And then finally kind of wrap up talking about the Minnesota Golden Gophers, basically doing a little bit of a Big Ten West breakdown right now. We're seven games into the season.

We kind of have a good feeling about what these teams are, and I can give you a little bit better of an idea about what we can expect going forward. So that's all coming up on today's episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Please make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and then also make sure to like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at. We would greatly appreciate that love and that support. Let's jump into the reason why you all are here now.

We're going to be talking about basketball. We haven't talked about basketball a lot on the show. We've been talking about football pretty much the entire time. Want to start getting into the coverage of basketball, especially with the season starting pretty soon. But with the recruiting news, it's huge, and I wanted to make sure we're covering that on today's episode. The big thing, like I said, we have three commitments in the last 72 hours.

The first one to kind of jump start us was Tony Perkins, a 6'4", 185-pound shooting guard out of Indianapolis, Indiana, a three-star recruit, a top 400 player. He made a commitment Sunday, which is fantastic. Iowa does need some more depth in that backcourt. So I'm excited to get him. Watching some of his tape, looks like he's a real streaky shooter, a guy who can kind of go in waves and spurts,

kind of like an Isaiah Moss-esque player when it comes to shooting. He didn't have any D1 offers, any Power 5, excuse me, offers. So Iowa was his first. He did commit. I thought that was a really good grab. That basically eliminates, in my opinion,

Iowa from getting like a Tyler Beard from Chicago, which that could have also been kind of gone when they recruited Aaron Uless. So that kind of fills the front court for, or the back court, excuse me, for Iowa. They got two guys coming in the front court though, and this one's really interesting. These guys are legacies. We have Chris and Keegan Murray,

both former Iowa type players, played at Cedar Rapids Prairie. Their dad, Kenyon Murray, played for the Iowa Hawkeyes in the early 90s, played with the late Chris Street as well. And he actually named the first time Chris after Chris Street, which is pretty cool. Saw that when I was reading an article from Mark Morehouse in the Cedar Rapids Gazette earlier today. Thought that was really cool in general. But these guys are going to be interesting players, guys who weren't really heavily recruited. They only got one scholarship offer coming out of high school last year from Prairie. They're going down to DME Academy in the prep school to get some more time under their belt. Basically, it sounds like Iowa saw them in some summer camps this year and really liked

what they saw. These are guys who can shoot the lights out from being 6'8", each of them being 6'8". The fact they can shoot will be awesome. They can stretch the floor a little bit. Sounds like they can guard multiple positions. So really giving Iowa a lot of versatility. And as you can kind of expect when you're the son of a former Iowa Hawkeye

basketball player or the sons of an Iowa Hawkeye basketball player, they do have really strong basketball intelligence. That's one of the things that Fran kind of, you know, a lot of them for is they have that IQ. They have that versatility. So good. I would say under the radar additions, probably not something people kind of expected to see, especially when everyone's kind of focused on a couple of the other big name guys.

And that's what I'm really going to be talking about now is the fact that this is awesome. We're starting to fill out that recruiting class, recruiting class national signing day the early day is coming up pretty soon but I'm still interested in seeing do we get Xavier Foster and I think you know these guys look great I'm watching their tape obviously I think they're going to be good players you've got to trust in Fran McCaffrey he's going to have a good recruiting class here he kind of needs one to keep this program going and to keep I think Iowa fans kind of off his back because he has had some struggles with certain recruiting classes bombing out.

He's had some struggles winning big games. So something like a good class here could really help solidify his structure at Iowa. The guy I'm really curious about though is Xavier Foster, a top 100 player center out of Oskaloosa, Iowa. He's going to be committing soon and hopefully he's going to be committing to Iowa.

Iowa's favored right now to land his services. He would be the kind of guy who would really change the momentum of this program and of this recruiting class. And I think if Iowa isn't able to get him, that's going to be a huge, huge blow to the Hawks. Right now, 24-7 Sports actually predicts that he is going to sign with Iowa. Again, I hope he does. Seven-foot tall, 225-pound forward center, a guy who can really stretch the floor, and he would be a great fit in Iowa's offense.

A guy, like I said, he can stretch the floor. He can get down low and actually get the rebounds. Kind of like a more refined Tyler Cook, in a sense, from a size-wise than also from a game plan perspective, able to shoot that ball like I talked about. There's also a couple other guys I think we should at least have on our radar. I don't know if Iowa's going to be in the running for them anymore. Jamari Sibley, an Oak Hill Academy player,

looks like he's kind of rumored now to go to Georgetown. Iowa was heavily recruiting him. My guess is with the signings of these two Murray kids, good chance we aren't going to be bringing in Jamari Sibley, or he's already let kind of Iowa know that he's probably not going to be signing with them anytime soon. And then there's also the other center that Iowa offered not too long ago, Josh Ogundeli, center out of Worcester Academy, a former Great Britain kid. He is a guy who Iowa started coming on a little bit later in the process,

and he's picked up a few other offers since then. Right now, it kind of looks like he's interested in Cincinnati, Rhode Island. He's been getting recruited by Rutgers and Virginia Tech as well. It'll be interesting to see if Iowa does sign him. From my understanding, he can really stretch the floor as well, which would give Iowa just a ton of versatility and a ton of size down low in this class. Four guys over 6'8". It would make that frontcourt very crowded. So lots of stuff coming up on the recruiting front here

for the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team, and we're going to make sure we're going to cover all that right here on the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. Coming up, though, we're going to be covering the depth chart and some of the injuries that took place and kind of what that means for the football team when they take on Northwestern later this week. All right, we're going to be covering the depth chart stuff. Like I said, lots of stuff kind of happened this week. One of the things I wrote

an article on dear old gold.com I thought was really interesting was the punt return game. We no longer saw Nico Reganey back there. We saw Gino Stone took a couple kicks or punts, excuse me. We saw Max Cooper take a couple punts and it looks like Max Cooper has supplanted Reganey as the punt return man. So that was kind of an interesting thing to see. Saw it on the depth chart as well. Cooper, a reserve wide receiver, a guy out of Wisconsin, I believe, has just not really been able to get on the field a ton. Had a late season injury last year that kept him out of the rest of the year and just is getting kind of buried on the wide receiver depth chart having him in as a return man though it'd be interesting to see how well he's doing I thought Reganey played pretty

well there's a couple you know snafus a couple weeks ago against Penn State but you'll have that sometimes the the big ones though I want to cover let's start the easy one first and that's the cornerback position as you probably noticed and as we talked about on yesterday's episode, Matt Hankins was getting absolutely torched by David Bell, a freshman from Purdue, a guy who Iowa recruited. And then he got benched for Riley Moss, who proceeded to have one interception and actually almost had another interception. I think he probably should have had it, but obviously wasn't able to come down with it. On the depth chart, Riley Moss is listed number one. There's a big or next to it, but obviously wasn't able to come down with it. On the depth chart, Riley Moss is listed number one. There's a big or next to it, so keep that in mind. But one of the things I've noticed about

Phil Parker and Kirk Ferentz and that defense is, especially at the cornerback spot, if someone's playing well or someone's playing poorly, they're not getting on the field until the other person messes something up. So in this case, Hankins was the starter. He didn't play well. He played so poorly that they actually put Riley Moss in and Moss actually played a little bit better thought he did a better job on David Bell not a great job but a better job and we'll see how it all plays out after this week of practice to see whether Hankins does take back or claim back his starting position I did hear that there was some you know kind of interesting when you when you have a competition like that it can be

kind of tough to be supportive of the other guy at least that's kind of what my experience has been and it sounded like when Moss got that interception Hankins was right up there you know congratulating him giving a high five that kind of stuff so you'd love to see that kind of leadership and that kind of character that Hankins was showing despite being benched outside of him though the big news I want to talk about is at the middle linebacker position and the wide receiver position Brandon Smith went down with an ankle injury late in the game against Purdue he was our leading receiver and he's been really coming on as of late not just as a jump ball guy but a guy who can actually you know run refined routes and do a really good job of creating separation and then using his six foot two frame to you know get the ball and make sure the corners aren't going to get

to it as well he is probably going to be out. And I think this is twofold. It sounds like he's relatively injured. They want to get him healthy for Wisconsin, is my guess, especially with that bye week before the Wisconsin game. But also the depth that wide receiver is just so good for Iowa right now. And it's something we haven't seen in the past. But when you have that good a depth,

you can rely on some of those younger guys to make some plays and allow a guy like Brandon Smith to get healthy for the last couple games stretch that they have with Wisconsin and Illinois and Nebraska and Minnesota. So kind of an interesting decision there. Obviously, if he gets healthier throughout the week, we might see him play, but I really doubt it. The one thing that really caused some controversy for some Iowa football fans is that taking his spot was Tyrone Tracy, and behind them was Calvin Lockett,

not Oliver Martin, but Calvin Lockett. I think one of the things I want to, if nothing else articulate to you all is that a Kirk Ferentz is depth chart. Isn't always abided by, right? We see different things every single time. You just,

yes, there's some, you know, obviously, obviously ones like Nate Stanley and Tristan works are not going to be moved around and no one's going to be playing in front of them, but's some, you know, obviously ones like Nate Stanley and Tristan Wirth are not going to be moved around and no one's going to be playing in front of them. But he kind of keeps those cards close to his chest when he's revealing his depth chart. And especially on Monday when you have a full week of practice left to go.

And if some guys get healthy, they can come in. That being said, Oliver Martin has had a couple plays. I do expect to see him a little bit more in the game. Just because when you start moving some more guys around, you know, people get bumped up. But keep in mind that it's not like Madden, right, where you play wide receiver and you can put them anywhere you want. This is actual football and some guys aren't suited for other positions. I know Oliver Martin was trying to learn every single wide receiver position in Iowa's offense. Sounded like, I mean,

that's kind of a tough curve to battle, especially coming in, you know, in the middle of the summer after playing at Michigan in a different, you know, different kind of offense. Still trying to learn those positions. You know, he's more suited as a slot guy, though. And with Tyrone Tracy and Nico Bergani playing so well, it's tough to get out of that and to get in front of them. And I think that's something that Iowa football fans,

instead of being upset that Oliver Martin isn't playing, be happy that we have a four-star wide receiver who isn't able to get on the field because we have that much talent at wide receiver. He's going to get his time. He's going to be on the field, and we're going to see some great things from Martin. But for now, it's okay.

This guy's not falling. Kirk Ferentz is not senile. This is just what's going to happen. And now finally, the middle linebacker position. Christian Welch talked about he might be able to go against Purdue. He didn't. Interestingly enough, I saw Jack Campbell on the field a lot. True freshman out of Cedar Falls, I believe.

On the depth chart this week was Dylan Doyle, though. Chris Doyle's son, the middle linebacker out of Iowa City. He is a sophomore, I believe. I think he might have burnt his red shirt last year. I'll need to check on that. But either way, his second year in the program, he is likely going to be getting his first start. Against a team like Northwestern, I do think that's going to be a big deal.

They like to run the read option a lot. It's going to be important that the linebackers can read the ball a little better, attack if they need to, and drop back and pass coverage if they have to. Also, just as we've seen with some of the younger guys in Iowa's zone defense, if you are not communicating, if you are not in the right spot at the right time, that can expose a lot of weaknesses and a lot of gaps in Iowa's defense that teams can exploit. If there's any team in the Big Ten that's been able to exploit Iowa,

it's been Northwestern. Even though their offense is absolutely terrible, it wouldn't surprise me to see Northwestern come out and play one of their best games against the Hawks on Saturday morning. Coming up, though, I do want to cover some of the Big Ten West stuff, talk about Minnesota, and talk about Wisconsin as well. Before I do that, though, erectile dysfunction used to be tough to tackle, but now there's Roman.

Complete an online visit today to connect with a doctor and take care of it. Just get to GetRoman.com to get a free online visit and a free two-day shipping. That's GetRoman.com to get a free online visit and a free two-day shipping. All right. We are back for our final segment of today's episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. I appreciate you all tuning in to today's episode. I want to talk about the Big Ten West, though, because I've been seeing a lot of comments online about, oh, thank God Wisconsin lost.

This makes Iowa's path a lot easier. Minnesota sucks. You know, why are they ranked higher than Iowa? So I want to cover all that. I'm going to start with Minnesota, though. That's the one I really feel pretty confidently about. They're 7-0, but they have not played anyone. The combined records of their opponents they played are 22 and 25.

Six of those wins came from South Dakota State, who is an FCS program. Illinois has three wins. Two of their wins are against Akron and Connecticut. And those two teams have combined for just one win. We have Nebraska in there. We have Purdue. I think Purdue is not as bad of a team as their record implies. But regardless, this is not like they've beaten any talented teams yet.

They've beaten garbage teams that haven't done anything and are not going to do anything. There's a good chance every single win they have this year has not come against a team who's going to have a bowl game besides South Dakota State. Okay, so let's just sit on that for a second. Now, let's jump into what the rest of their schedule beholds. I think their offense does look really good with Tanner Morgan back there, quarterback. Obviously, a fantastic group of wide receivers. They're running the ball well with Rodney Smith. But regardless, I still don't think this team is very talented. When I watched them again, they're beating up on bad teams. Earlier in the season, they could even beat the bad teams. They had to go two overtimes to beat Fresno State, I believe,

or maybe it was Georgia Southern. But two overtimes earlier in the season against a non-Power 5 opponent, not exactly a quality win there. We'll start seeing what Minnesota can bring to the table, though, here in the coming weeks. They've got Penn State, they've got Iowa, and they got Wisconsin. I think they're going to finish the season 8-4 or 9-3. If they prove me wrong, you know what, I'll be willing to fall on that sword and say, my bad, I didn't think you were that good. But I just feel like this is more of an 8-4 or 9-3 team, which means they are not going to be a competitor for the Big Ten West title as long as everything else holds true, which we know in college football,

that is easier said than done. Now on to the Wisconsin game. So Wisconsin lost to Illinois. And as everyone knows, whoever has the most conference wins or the best conference record, excuse me, will win. Or sorry, the division record. Whoever has the best division wins or the best conference record, excuse me, will win. Or sorry, the division record. Whoever has the best division record will win that division and get an opportunity to play in Indianapolis for the Big Ten championship game. So what that means is now Iowa has two losses.

And, you know, excuse me, I'm not going to really include Minnesota on this because I really feel like they're going to lose to both Wisconsin and Iowa. But Iowa has two losses. Wisconsin has one. Now everyone's thinking, yes, Wisconsin has a loss. This is fantastic. This means that Iowa has a much better chance of getting to Indianapolis. All they got to do is beat Wisconsin.

Well, let me be very clear here. They always needed to beat Wisconsin. Yes, if Wisconsin finds a way to beat Ohio State next weekend, then you can come at me and say that loss against Illinois was fantastic because that would mean that Iowa and Wisconsin would both have, or Wisconsin would have one loss, Iowa would have two losses,

and if they beat Wisconsin, would have that tiebreaker of the win over Wisconsin. Now, the only way Wisconsin losing to Illinois is actually going to be a big deal is if Wisconsin loses to Ohio State and then drops another game, and state and then drops another game. And then I think drops another game. So they'd have to drop three more games and be Iowa for Iowa to try to get

into the, you know, get into the big 10 West title, you know, go into the big 10 championship game. So kind of an interesting situation there. Again, they just, it doesn't really matter that Wisconsin lost. Iowa still needs to go and beat them. They still need to win out the rest of their schedule. They need to beat Minnesota. They need to beat Illinois, Northwestern, and Wisconsin, and Nebraska as well.

They still need to win out. They still need to beat Wisconsin and Madison. Yes, the loss is great if everyone else loses a couple games. Wisconsin loses a couple games. And we're looking at a situation like last year where we have a 9-3 or 8-4 Northwestern team go to the Big Ten Championship game. That's the only way this loss matters. Personally, I think it actually hurts, though, because we want Wisconsin to look good.

So when Iowa beats them, it looks good. Iowa's not going to make it to the national title game. They're not going to make it to the college ball playoffs. But they do have an opportunity to play in a January bowl or one of the big six bowls. And to do that, though, they need to win out. They need to have great quality wins, such as a win over Wisconsin and Madison. And every loss Wisconsin has before that makes it look worse and worse. So we want Wisconsin to do well until Iowa plays them.

We want them to lose against Ohio State as well at this point. I mean, it doesn't matter. If they beat Ohio State, that actually hurts the Big Ten even more because we want Ohio State to be undefeated, giving the impression that the Big Ten is even stronger than we initially thought. So that'll do it, though, for today's episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast.

I appreciate you all tuning in, listening to me talk to you on a beautiful Tuesday morning. We're going to start getting into more coverage of the Northwestern game later in this week on tomorrow's episode, Thursday's episode. And then finally, on Friday's episode, Zach is going to start getting into more coverage of the Northwestern game later in this week on tomorrow's episode, Thursday's episode, and then finally on Friday's episode, Zach is going to be dropping some of his Big Ten knowledge on you

all when he does his picks and previews of each game. Again, appreciate you all tuning in. Make sure to like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at, and make sure to go follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation. Go Hawks!