Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa basketball is hitting the transfer portal | Luka Garza makes history, again | Iowa football players speak to the media

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

It was a busy day in the Iowa Hawkeye community. Luka Garza won the Wooden Award and announced his first NFT (listen for more!). We also got some interesting news in regards to the transfer portal and who Fran is targeting. We also heard from several Iowa football players at their press conference.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, Hawkeye Nation, to a Wednesday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, and I'm excited to be back for another show today. We were going to do some positional breakdowns, again, getting into some other spots on the Iowa Hawkeye roster. We basically done the whole offense, and we done most of the defense.

We were going to do defensive line and the specialist group today. We'll see if we have time for that at the end of the show, but there is a lot of news and notes around the transfer market, and we also had the Iowa Hawkeye football players speaking to the media. We're going to talk about that. We got some big news from Luka Garza and some other news from a former running mate of his, Tyler Cook, as well. So we're going to cover all that first and then potentially get into the positional previews. So that's all coming up on the show today.

Let's kick it off, though, specifically with Luka Garza winning the Wooden Award. He goes 6-for-6 on major awards and is the first with Luka Garza winning the Wooden Award. He goes six for six on major awards and is the first Iowa Hawkeye to win that Wooden Award. So I just gotta say congratulations to Luka Garza. Just a phenomenal player and truly embodies everything it means to be an Iowa Hawkeye. And it's been so amazing watching him play basketball for the University of Iowa. His family has also been a huge part of the University of Iowa as well. And I've actually gotten closer to Frank Garza. And we had Frank Garza on the show probably about three weeks ago at this point.

And Frank was talking a lot about the Elevate program, which is the program he runs through sportshood.net. It teaches you principles that you can utilize in either your athletic pursuits or just your general professional and personal pursuits. And there's a lot of principles that are really applicable to every walk of life. And it's the same principles that Luka Garza uses as well to be as successful as he is. And that actually gets into my next point about Luka Garza creating his own NFT. And I'm going to get into that in a second. But one of the things, if you buy his initial offering of the NFT, you get an opportunity to have a meditation session with Luca. Meditation is a huge piece of the Elevate program,

but it's not the only piece. There's so many other principles. I've gone through Elevate Level 1. I'm doing Elevate Level 2 at the end of April. If you're interested in this, definitely reach out to Frank. If you have any questions about my experience, reach out to me. But you can go to sportshood.net.

Sign up today for an Elevate Level 1 program, $125. You get three sessions. Start learning those principles that have made Luka Garza the National Player of the Year, the Consensus National Player of the Year. Again, if you have any questions, go to Frank. If you have any feedback or thoughts on, or questions about what my experience is like,

happy to talk about that as well. But going into the NFT, I had to actually do some research on this as well. I'm going to give you the definition of it, and then I'm going to give you my perspective on it. The NFT is a non-fungible token. It's a unit of data on a digital ledger called a black blockchain where each NFT can represent a unique digital item and thus they're not interchangeable. I look at it as basically digital trading cards and you have other opportunities within that. His trading, you know, his NFT, his initial one, pretty freaking cool. If I must say so myself, I'm not going to be able to afford that,

but I highly recommend if you can go for it because along with getting that unique NFT, able to afford that but i highly recommend if you can go for it because along with getting that unique nft and again as the big thing with this is if you buy that you can possibly resell it as well just like a regular trading card as lucas career progresses you could possibly sell that to someone else who wants to have that nft this is the new world version of you know the old trading cards but now it's all electronic a unique card card, no knockoffs, that kind of thing. So it's pretty cool. If you do buy that card, you get a lot of things with it though. You get a game of horse with Luca, you get dinner and a movie with Luca, you get that meditation session that I was talking about with Luca. So lots of, oh, and you also get an autographed pair of sneakers. And what's really cool about this, first and foremost, part of the

proceeds are going to the University of Iowa Children's Hospital. So you can go to the OpenSeaMarket website and you can actually start bidding on this. There's already been bids on this. And then auction will go until Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. Central Time. But this is some pretty groundbreaking stuff from Luca for a couple reasons. A, he's the first college player to have their own NFT. And again, this is a pretty new technology. It's pretty new in general. That's why a lot of people that are following the Iowa Hawkeyes are probably like, what in the hell is an NFT? Well, this is what it is. Again, it's an electronic trading card, essentially. There's other perks to go along with it.

But this kind of falls into that name image likeness stuff. Now that Luca Garza is no longer a student athlete as a part of the NCAA, he can begin making money off his name, image, and likeness. And this is something that other players could do as well. Can you imagine a freshman recruit coming in to the University of Iowa and he wants to create a trading card, right? He wants to create his own NFT, talks to Luca, he figures that out. And let's say I buy it for $5. Let's say Keegan Johnson, for example, or sorry, not Keegan Johnson. I'm going to Keegan Murray, excuse me, created an NFT before he got, or when he got to the university of Iowa, let's say I bought it for five bucks. That NFT might now be worth $5,000 because Keegan Murray is going to be an instrumental part of this program for years to come.

And he showed that in his first season. So similar to a trading card, you can gain value in some of these items and possibly resell as well. So it's a pretty cool market. And again, these cards are pretty freaking sweet. So make sure to go check out the Luka Garza NFT. Again, Luka Garza clearing house on all the Player of the Year awards. Unanimous National Player of the Year. First Hawkeye to win the Wooden Award and announcing a groundbreaking thing to create his first NFT.

So amazing stuff there. If you have the money, definitely go do that. It goes to a good cause. Also an opportunity to hang out with Luka for a little bit. One of Luka's former running mates, Tyler Cook, also signed a deal with the Detroit Pistons. He's been on some 10-day contracts. Played 13 games last year with Cleveland and Denver. This year played four with Brooklyn.

Played some with Detroit. And he's been really having a breakout year with Detroit. Now granted, Detroit's a terrible team. There's a reason why they're allowing so many young guys to get some minutes. But they're allowing guys like Tyler Cook to show what they can possibly do, show their potential in the NBA. And Tyler Cook is showing out in 13.5 minutes of playing time per game. He's shooting almost 60% from the field. He's averaging three rebounds a game, 3.7 points per game and a half an assist per game. So he signs an actual deal to finish out the season. It's a two-year deal or has

an option for next year, I should say, although that is not guaranteed. Still really awesome to see Tyler Cook starting to thrive in the NBA. Love to see former Iowa players be able to make a big difference in the NBA. Speaking of guys who could potentially be Iowa players in the future, we got a lot to talk about with the transfer market. We're going to hit that on segment number two, so stay tuned for that. Before we get into that, though, you know I got to tell you about some of the awesome stuff we have going on right here on the Locked On Podcast Network. We got to tell you about Built Bar. Built Bar is the best tasting protein bar on the market today.

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Follow the Locked On Today podcast on the Odyssey app spelled A-U-D-A-C-Y or wherever you get your podcast at. Now let's get into some transfer portal news. I know we've all been kind of sitting here wondering what the heck is going on with the Iowa Hawkeyes. All we were able to see is that they were rumored to be in the running for Marcus Santos Silva from Texas Tech, but there's some new developments. They've had some zoom calls with another transfer from North Dakota, Philippe

Rebraca, who averaged 16.8 points per game and 7.6 rebounds per game for the North Dakota Fighting Hawks. He shot 52% from the field. And 39% from three. At 6'9". This is a guy that Iowa could utilize as a big man. Again, they have an unbelievable dearth of talent at that big man spot. All they have is Josh Ogundale. Now, you could play small ball. You could have Keegan Murray. You could have Chris Murray down there.

You can play a little bit of Patrick McCaffrey. But those guys are not going to be able to handle a Kofi Coburn. Josh Ogundale, is he ready to play right away? Is he ready to play 25 to 30 minutes this upcoming season? I don't know. We definitely saw some good things from him. We saw him play a solid 50 seconds from Kofi, but is that enough to make you feel comfortable with him playing this year? Before the offseason, we thought Jack Nunji was going to be that guy. In that case, I felt better thought Jack Nunji was going to be that guy. And in that case, I felt better because Jack Nunji would be the starter. Joshua Gundelay was going to be the backup. He was going to get probably 10 to 15 minutes. And that'd be very key development time.

And after Jack left, he'd have a starting role. If Iowa wants to contend this year, they need to probably get, they need definitely to get one big man. I would hope it would be a starting big man, not necessarily just depth. And they need to get another guy who can play some key big man type of minutes. And it sounds like Philippe Rebrocker is a guy who could do that. And Iowa is hot on his tails. Again, spoke with him on Tuesday evening, or tonight, I guess, while I'm recording this. Spoke with him tonight.

So hopefully that goes well. Sounds like Iowa is a team that is high on his list as well. would not be that far of a drive to go from North Dakota down there now that being said he's from Serbia originally so that probably isn't no geographical location isn't going to matter a ton but what Iowa can do in that offense what he can do or sorry what he can do in that Iowa offense is something that he cannot overlook the fact that he does he has the capability to shoot from deep and if he can play in the post a little bit as well, that makes Iowa a very, very dangerous team. What would make Iowa an even more dangerous team is that they can nab this big man from Minnesota, former Drake player, defensive player of the year in the MVC, Liam Robbins. Now let's do a little,

let's give you some context on Liam Robbins. He goes to Drake, he was a little bit overweight, Let's give you some context on Liam Robbins. He goes to Drake. He was a little bit overweight. Played prep school. Originally from Davenport Assumption. And a bit overweight, but lost some weight and really figured it out at Drake. He doesn't have a great offensive game, but is coming along.

But defensively, this guy is a beast down low. And he proved his worth in the Big Ten. He was able to handle his own against the Big Ten. Now, why did he transfer to Minnesota, and why is he transferring away? Well, clearly, anytime you have a coaching change, that's an issue. But why he transferred to Minnesota, I think for two reasons. A, he wanted to play against Big Ten talent. In the MVC, he was dominating defensively. He was a big-time player. Now, I bet he's looking back after Minnesota did not make the, you know, NCAA tournament, and Drake did thinking, wow, I could have really helped Drake. I could have been playing against USC and Evan Mobley, but neither here nor there, Minnesota fires their coach.

And one of the coaches on Minnesota staff was Liam's uncle. Is he staying? We don't know. The Minnesota coaching staff hasn't really gotten sorted out. It hasn't been figured out. And my guess is Liam Robbins is like, well, if you're not going to keep my uncle and we lost the coach that I came to play for and half the team is transferring, why the hell do I don't get it? Get out of Dodge. And if I'm Liam Robbins, I would look hard at Iowa. Now, that being said, there's a lot of guys who are a lot of coaches who are going to

be hot on Liam Robbins tail as well. A lot of teams in the big 10 could use a guy like Liam Robbins to handle some of the big-time guys across the Big Ten. Liam Robbins is a stalwart defensively. Again, offensively, he's not quite there yet. He's still developing a three-point shot, not as consistent shooting in the paint, but he's getting there.

Now, if I'm Liam Robbins and I have the defensive part down pat, why would I not want to go to the University of Iowa that just developed the National Player of the Year in Luka Garza? Now, yes, Luka has his dad. Luka does a great job of working in the offseason, but there is something to be said about the Iowa coaching staff developing Luka into the guy he was and featuring him the way they did. Liam Robbins could elevate his offensive game. I think for me personally, if I'm looking at Liam Robbins as an NBA type of guy, he needs to be able to develop a better offensive game. If he can do that, he has NBA potential. He definitely has the defensive side down. He just needs to figure out that offensive side. He's been improving his three-point shot

steadily over the last three years, and he still has two years of eligibility. So from an Iowa perspective, you got to go at least put your, you know, get a word in there, right? Put your foot in the door and see if you can get Liam Robbins. Even Joe Toussaint made, you know, that kind of like eye face on Twitter, the eye emoji at Liam Robbins and the transfer portal. I think if Iowa manages to nab Liam Robbins, if for some reason Joe Wieskamp returns, this is a team that would be dangerous next year. Now, anytime you lose a guy like Luka Garza, that's tough to replace. But I do like the pieces that Iowa could be putting together. Defensively, Liam Robbins is an upgrade over Luka Garza. Offensively, he's a downgrade. But if Joe Wieskamp returns, Joe's going to be that guy.

And I think you've got to look at the fact that Iowa is not going to be playing at the elite level offensively that they have the last couple years. The offense might take a dip, but defensively they're going to take such a step forward that we're not going to have to worry about times where Iowa can't shoot the ball because they also can't defend. They're going to be able to defend their way out of bad shooting situations. And having a guy like Liam Robbins in the post isn't a fantastic replacement for Luka Garza I would be very upset if Liam Robbins goes to the transfer portal transfers somewhere within the big honestly transfers anywhere actually leaves the University of Minnesota and Iowa didn't even make that call now I've been supporting friend basically saying you know he knows what he wants to do he knows how to build his team and I understand why not he doesn't want to use the transfer portal as a way to build his team but

getting a guy like Liam a Davenport native why wouldn't you want to make that call and see if you can upgrade your roster and it would be an upgrade him and Josh down low that is that is tough Twin Towers now you have Philippe as well that could be a very tough team to deal with from a post perspective. Then you've got the athletic guards you can deal with. If Joe Wieskamp returns, you've got the shooting of Joe and CJ. I mean, this is the team that is dangerous going into next year as well and should have top 15, top 10 expectations if you can get a Liam, if you can get a Philippe. But as we learn more, and I hope we do, I hope we get more information on Liam. I'm very hot. I'm a Drake grad originally, so I watched him at Drake, loved what I saw. I love how he would fit in this offense.

I think it makes sense. I hope Fran makes that call. If he doesn't, you're going to be hearing some pissed off Andrew on the next version of the lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, but that's it for segment number two, coming up on segment number three, we're going to get into the news conferences from the Iowa Hawkeye football squad. I know I talked about doing the positional previews. We'll push that out to Thursday's episode and give you some draft talk on Friday's episode. So, you know, just got to push it out. A lot of news came up today. But again, coming up on segment number three, we're going to get into some of the conversation

about the Iowa Hawkeye football conferences. Before that, though, I got to tell you about betonline.ag, the fastest and the easiest way to bet on all of your sports action. Football might be over, but the NBA and the NHL are in full swing. BetOnline.ag even covers awards, TV shows, and reality television. They have real-time updated odds and props and almost anything you can imagine. BetOnline.ag has you covered for all the news, scores, and odds. It's the best way to place your bets, and it's free to sign up today.

Head over to their website or use your mobile device to sign up today and receive a 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit. When you sign up for a free account, you just got to use the promo code locked on. That's right. L O C K E D O N. Use that promo code. You'll get a 50% welcome bonus when you sign up for your free account at betonline.ag. And you can play betonline.ag anywhere in the country. So if you're in Minnesota or if you're in a state that doesn't have, you know, it doesn't allow you to play the other, the other apps, go to betonline.ag, your online sports book experts. It's April and the Lockdown NFL Network, a podcast is shifting into draft mode, April 19th through the 26th. Tune into the ultimate mock draft 2021

featuring analysis from NFL experts, Michael Irvin, Brian Baldinger, and Michael Lombardi. Stay tuned for more info about where you can find the Ultimate Mock Draft 2021 presented by Odyssey and the Locked On Podcast Network. Now, speaking of football, let's get into some football talk because some Iowa football players did speak to the media. did speak to the media. Specifically, we had Jack Kerner, we had Spencer Petras, we had Riley Moss, we had Matt Hankins, and we had Kayvon Merriweather. Some respected guys in the locker room. A couple things we gleaned from this. Spencer is probably going to be the big piece. And there's some questions about what he learned, what he needed to improve on. And I thought he did a really good job of speaking about that. Basically saying he needed to take the easy completions.

He wanted to get to at least 65% completion rate. And he wanted to focus on basically taking what the defense gives him, continuing to improve his ball placement and getting the ball out quickly. That's a lot of things to improve, but I do like to see him say that, that he does know what he needs to improve on. And the biggest thing is if he can get the ball out quickly. That's a lot of things to improve, but I do like to see him say that, that he does know what he needs to improve on. And the biggest thing is if he can get the ball out quickly, that's huge. Now, Iowa is losing Amir Smith-Marset. It is losing Brandon Smith, but they do return Tyrone Tracy and Nico Regani. I think Charlie Jones is going to be a phenomenal

impact player. And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the younger guys as well here in a few seconds. But Spencer Petras, if he can get the ball out quickly, that'll be huge. I think the other thing, as he said, taking what the defense gives him, there were times where it felt like he locked onto his first read and couldn't get off of it. Understanding what the defense gives him and checking down if he needs to, he doesn't need to make a big play. And I didn't think he, he tried to go deep a lot. I just felt like he tried to force certain balls in there when he didn't need to, where he could have just thrown it away or he could have just dumped it off to Tyler Goodson and let Tyler Goodson do some things. So that'll be interesting to see how exactly he does that.

He did note that he studied a lot of Mac Jones. I think that's kind of an interesting test case because Mac Jones really didn't have to go off his first read a lot. I just went to Devonta Smith, but nevertheless, happy to see him studying. And a lot of the guys had questions about Spencer as well and they spoke glowingly about him Jack Kerner specifically said Spencer Petras is one of the most genuine guys on the team and you couldn't find a harder worker and that he's a big fan of Petras and what he brings to the table so that

gives me some hope going into the season I know there's some of you out there who want to see Deuce Hogan as we talked about on our quarterback positional preview. Deuce has to be Alex Padilla first. Now, I do think, again, given the history of what we've seen at the Iowa quarterback position, that could happen eventually. But Alex Padilla is a solid quarterback as well, and I liked what I saw from him last year, having the ability to scramble. Hopefully, Spencer Petras is able to have a big year, bounce back. He did play better towards the end of the season. Can he continue on that? I think if he can, Iowa's offense could be lethal, and with a strong secondary, that defense can be just as good as well. We could be looking

at a top 10 Iowa team. If Spencer struggles, Iowa's going to struggle. Now, going on to the wide receiver group, Riley Moss was asked about what receivers were really doing well outside of Nico and Tyrone. And he says Keegan Johnson is making a good push as of late. We also heard some good things about Arlen Bruce as well. Both those guys standing out. He also mentioned Charlie Jones is doing a phenomenal job in running good, crisp routes.

As I said in my wide receiver position preview, I think Charlie Jones is going to catch 50 balls. I think we're going to see Keegan Johnson and Arlen Bruce because they bring such an interesting dynamic to that offense. They're going to get some snaps as well. It'd be tough to replace Tyrone and Nico. I think Nico needs to improve on his hands. But Keegan Johnson, big-time guy, four-star recruit. Arlen Bruce, a shifty guy who probably should have been recruited by more people.

These are athletes that Iowa hasn't typically had that wide receiver position. And when you look at what Iowa had when they brought in Brandon Smith and Amir Smith-Marset, those two guys, that wide receiver depth chart was very, very limited on talent. And they were able to get some playing time. Now the wide receiver group now is better, but I do think Keegan Johnson, Arlen Bruce will get some playing time, possibly steal some snaps because they are the future of this program at that wide receiver position in a few years. Obviously we have some other guys as well that we're not mentioning. Deontay Vines, Kayvon Matthews, those kinds of guys, but

Keegan Johnson, Arlen Bruce getting some high praise early on in training. Matt Hankins also spoke to the media, asked about why he stayed. He said, why not stay another year? He had the opportunity to improve. He needed to add more weight, needed to be more physical. And Phil Parker was obviously elated to have him return. Riley Moss was thrilled to have him return. Jack Kerner was thrilled to have him return as well. And I agree, Matt Hankins was probably going to be a UDFA. Why not come back and see if you can improve your draft stock? Why not have another fantastic season where you dominate one side of the ball? That secondary is going to be strong. It's going to make a lot of people look very good because we are returning everyone in that secondary, including Kayvon Merriweather, who thinks this secondary can be dominant. He said, when we were all on the same page, that could be a huge boost for the defense. Kayvon and Jack both got questions about, and Riley, about what can a secondary do to improve or help a young defensive line?

This defensive line is young. We're going to talk about it on tomorrow's show, but this defensive line is very young. The secondary is going to have a tough challenge of keeping guys in front of them, covering those guys a little bit longer, and giving that young defensive line time to grow and get time to get to the quarterback. a tough challenge of keeping guys in front of them covering those guys a little bit longer and giving that young defensive line time to grow and get time to get to the quarterback so that'll be really interesting to see but you know all glowing things from Jack Kerner Riley Moss and Matt Hankins about what the secondary can do in this season a lot of fun stuff again Spencer Petras spoken you

know speaking to the media and being very open and transparent. Love to see that. And obviously love to hear about how strong this team is looking. Kavon Merriweather also got some questions about the social justice within the program. And he said, you know, he's really happy with how things have improved. And it seemed like that was kind of the general mantra from the team as well. They're all pretty happy with how things have improved from a social justice perspective within the Iowa Hawkeye program. So that will do it, though. That's the news and tidbits from that news conference coming up on tomorrow's show.

We'll get into some of the spring positional previews. And if you love the show, make sure to give us that five-star review. Follow us wherever you download this podcast app. And follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As always, Hawkeye Nation, I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate you listening every single day. Have a fantastic Wednesday. And let's go Hawks.