Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa destroys Illinois | Recap of Week 11 in B1G | Analysis of Hawks 2K Empire Classic Win

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

We take a look at Iowa's dominating performance in Champaign as Iowa scores the most points in Kirk Ferentz's time in Iowa City. That segment is followed by a look into the busy slate of Big Ten games this past week and the scores around the conference. The final segment hammers home how great this men's basketball team looked this past week as they traveled to New York City for the 2K Empire Classic. They are now ranked #20 in the nation! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on, Hawkeye Nation? We are back with another episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. We are the latest addition to the Locked on Sports Network's growing lineup of college podcasts. As every day, I am your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at dearoldgold.com, where you can find all of your analysis pieces on all things black and yellow. And we have a great episode for you today, mostly because it was a fantastic weekend in Hawkeye athletics.

All right. The football team came out big with a 63 to nothing win. Women's basketball won. The wrestling team won. The men's basketball team won a tournament for the first time in many years. And personally, I completed my first and last Ironman. So great weekend all around for us Hawkeye fans. And also just kind of the last tidbit, Noah Fant is apparently undecided on whether or not he wants to go to the NFL,

which would be huge if Iowa can return him. Obviously, they need to figure out how to utilize him better, but just lots of good news in the Hawkeye world. It's been kind of a rough couple weeks for us. Not sure what to expect with the men's basketball team and two real kind of disappointing starts to playing some of the mid-level teams they're playing, but they came on strong the last week. The football team kind of jumped out to a three-game losing streak before picking that up this weekend. And it's just been great. It's nice to see some of our teams win again in Hawkeye Nation. On today's episode, on segment one, we're going to be reviewing the Iowa football game. On segment two, we're going to be doing a recap of the Big Ten football games.

And on segment three, we're going to be touching on the men's basketball game and what that means for the program going forward. But before we jump in, make sure you subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast at. And please, please, please leave us a review. You can also find us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa. Please follow us there. We'll be posting updates on when episodes will be posted, what some of the content is,

letting you know when we're going to be having some guest appearances or some former Hawkeye athletes joining us. And definitely leave us a review there. Also, on Twitter, you can find me at Wade underscore Andrew. I love interacting with fans. I love interacting with other Hawkeyes around the nation. So please feel free to follow me on Twitter, and we can converse in any fast that you want.

I'm happy to take content ideas or suggestions. Love, love some of the constructive, you know, constructive feedback as well to making this podcast be the best podcast on the Hawkeyes on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify. For segment one, we're going to be talking about the Iowa football game. And as most of you probably know already, Iowa beat Illinois 63-0. And that margin was the biggest margin in the Kirk Ferentz era. In fact, the 63 points was the most points that an Iowa team has scored in the Kirk Ferentz era.

I didn't get a chance to go back further into the details to see some of the other scores historically, but that's pretty solid in 20 years for Iowa to put up 63 points and they're able to pitch a shutout against an Illinois team that, although maybe not the best on defense, has kind of figured out what they need to do offensively to get the game going in their favor. And obviously based on the score, you can tell there are probably a lot of pretty good people in that game. So we had on the defensive side, A.J. Epineza had himself a day. And this guy is fantastic, and I am so excited to watch him play over the next couple years. Obviously, next year at the end of the season, he'll be eligible for the NFL draft. It'll be interesting to see where he begins getting ranked at because he is a incredible prospect.

But if Iowa somehow manages to keep him around for four years, I feel really bad for starting left tackles and right tackles in the Big Ten because he is already making some of the strong tackles in the nation look pretty bad. Against Illinois, he had eight tackles, three and a half tackles for loss, one and a half sacks, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, a punt block, and a touchdown. Let's just let that sink in a little bit. Do you understand how incredible that stat line is? I wish there was some ways to kind of pull if there's ever been a stat line specifically like that, but needless to say,

there's ever been a stat line specifically like that. But needless to say, Epineza was the star on defense, basically making Illinois regret not being able to land him considering he is from the state of Illinois. Lucky for us, his dad, Epi Epineza, went to Iowa, played on the football team, and that definitely gave us a good in. And thank God, because Epineza is incredible. The defense did pitch a shutout. A few other players had some pretty good games. There were Imani Hooker, Christian Welch, and Michael Ojemudia all had interceptions. Continued kind of a good trend. Imani Hooker is actually, I believe, third in the Big Ten in interceptions now with four.

Maybe I think he's actually tied for second. So he's continuing his outstanding play. On the offensive side of the ball. Iowa had its first 100 yard rusher in almost a year as McKee Sargent went for 121 yards on 17 carries for two touchdowns. And that actually earned him the ability to start against Nebraska. So the two deeps came out and McKee Sargent is number one on the depth chart for the first time this season fantastic for him you know the juco product out of iowa western has worked his way up the depth chart relatively unknown coming into the season to myself to other iowa football fans and analysts

but sergeant has been a breath of fresh air in the running game he's kind of a mix of both ivory kelly martin and torren young ivory Ivory Kelly Martin's really that speed back. Torin Young's that power back. And McKee Sargent's kind of an all-around solid player who can do really all of it. And I've been really impressed with some of his footwork, his ability to navigate holes and lanes in the running game. And he's been really the most consistent back we've had so far this season. In addition to Sargent, Torin Young also added 67 yards on the ground

with another two touchdowns. And Nate Stanley had a quietly solid day, nothing spectacular by any means, but on a day like this, you didn't need Nate Stanley to carry the team. And he threw for 178 yards and three touchdowns as Iowa tried to get the tight ends involved early and often. I don't know if all the news and press around the Noah Fant situation really got to Kirk Ferentz and Brian Ferentz, but they did a good job of setting up plays specifically designed to go to the tight ends. Hawkinson and Fant combined for five catches for 102 yards

and three touchdowns. And honestly, if this game had been any sort of close and Iowa really needed to throw the ball, I bet those stats would have been a little bit higher. Those two guys had double the amount of receiving yards for the entire team. Pretty impressive stat line there. Like I said, I think it would have been a lot more had Iowa needed to throw the ball, but they did not have to. The lone bright spot for Illinois, they had Ravon Bonner went for 100 yards and 21 carries

in replacing Reggie Corbin, who's one of the top rushers in the Big Ten. He went down with an injury after the first game, and he's kind of been struggling and battling some injuries, but it didn't really impact Illinois in any way, shape, or form. Iowa's defense was able to hold them throughout the day. On the special team side of the ball, pretty exciting. Kyle Gronowig was able to finally take a punt to the house. That was the first punt return for a touchdown in nearly two years. The last person to do that was Riley McCarron, who is now on the Patriots.

So Gronowig, the senior transfer from, I want to say, South Dakota State or it might be University of Sioux Falls, finally able to get one, take it to the house. He did have a fun ball of the day, but no real issues there. I'm happy with his ability to be explosive. We did not get to see Amir Smith-Marset return any kickoffs because Illinois only kicked the ball off once. So nothing spectacular to write home there.

And then Miguel Racino's went eight for eight for extra points. So way to stay consistent. And then finally, to wrap it up on the special team side, we had Colton Rassetter, who had a very Colton Rassetter-like day, averaging under 40 yards. In fact, Nate Stanley had a nice little pooch punt that went 36 yards. So who knows? Maybe our starting quarterback can maybe kick the ball a little bit more effectively

for our special teams and pin teams back a little bit deeper. So hopefully that'll – I don't expect that to get fixed this year, but hopefully next year the Iowa coaching staff can work on that. So Iowa is now sitting at 7-4, and they are heading into Nebraska – or heading into the Nebraska game this Friday, hoping to, you know, turn that season in eight and four, you know, potentially get into a solid bowl, maybe the red box bowl that, you know, still kind of outskirts of the tax layer holiday bowl, something like that. You know, it'd be nice to get into a warm weather game for the Hawks to

go into and, and, and the season nine and four on a strong note. That way they can, you know, kind of jumpstart the 2019 season, which would be huge for a program that has suffered quite a bit of disappointment in this season so far. So coming up next, that's kind of it for our Iowa recap. Not a lot to talk about when the Hawks kick so much butt over the weekend. We do have on tomorrow's episode, it is fully devoted to the Iowa-Nebraska football game.

We have a guest appearance from a good friend of mine, a very loyal Nebraska Cornhusker fan who can shed a lot of light on what Nebraska brings to the table. And spoiler alert, they bring a lot. It should be an interesting game. I do think Iowa will win, but check out the podcast coming out tomorrow

for all the information on the Iowa-Nebraska team. Before we jump into segment two, I wanted to give you a message because if you're like me, you hate to miss your favorite team play, regardless of who they are playing. And that's where Sling TV comes in. Now I never have to miss a football or a basketball game. And the best part is I no longer have to pay for a bunch of channels. I don't even watch with a typical cable package for just $30 a month. You get access to ESPN, the big 10 network and more without the hassle of a long-term contract.

What's even more exciting is that we have a fantastic offer for you. Locked on listeners can get a free seven-day trial by going to sling.com slash locked on. That's S-L-I-N-G dot com slash locked on. Never miss a game again with Sling TV. All right, we're going to get started with segment two, but before we jump into segment two, reminder that on segment three, we're going to be talking about the Iowa basketball game,

how well the Hawkeyes, you know, the men's basketball team did this weekend in winning the 2K Empire Classic, what that means for the program going forward, and do some quick takes on that game in general. And for segment two, we're going to be talking on the big 10 matchups this week, how each team did this season or sorry, this, this past weekend and the big 10 slate of games. And we're going to start with Nebraska at Michigan or sorry, Michigan state at Nebraska, where Nebraska won nine to six over Michigan state a huge game for Nebraska for a couple of reasons. You know, Michigan state is a solid football team. Nebraska has been kind of on the rise the last couple weeks.

Obviously, they started out 0-6, not really the ideal way to start a season. But over the last five games, they've won four games, and they've really been picking it up offensively, and not necessarily defensively, but offensively enough to hold them into games consistently to the point where they almost beat Ohio State. So this was definitely an interesting game to watch. Pretty boring, a very Big Ten-esque game. And the big thing that set out for me was Nebraska actually managed to hold a Michigan

State team to six points. And Michigan State's offense is not going to blow the lights off anyone. They're kind of in the middle of a quarterback controversy with Brian Lewerke, their incumbent really struggling, and Rocky Lombardi doing some good things here and there. So either way, Nebraska managed to pull out the victory that only had five field goals combined between the two teams, and they really pulled it out together in the end. So interesting stuff to see from Nebraska. It definitely worries me as we go into facing them in just a few days. And definitely make sure to check out tomorrow's episode where we'll be touching on that matchup more.

Number 22, Northwestern beat Minnesota 24-14. Nothing too crazy here. Northwestern, they were coming into somewhat of a trap game. Minnesota's pretty solid at home. They perform well for some reason while they're playing at TCF Bank Stadium this could be you know like I said trap game simply because Northwestern already won the Big Ten West so it's easy to kind of let your guard down after you've accomplished a big goal at this point but Northwestern pulled it out they won 24 to 14 and one thing I just wanted to bring light to is the fact that Isaiah Bowser ran for

just 85 yards on 29 carries for two touchdowns again I don't understand what Northwestern is doing against Iowa and why Iowa can't stop them but it's like it's like they took MJ's special drink from Space Jam before every single Iowa game because they just play outstanding against us but that's neither here nor there we can get them next year I think the next game I wanted to touch on is number 14 Penn State they beat Rutgers 20 to 7 and really Penn State just kind of coasted in the ugly game it didn't feel like they really needed to turn the jets on at any point and they didn't want to because they wanted to kind of save themselves as they gear up for um you know an

exciting postseason uh hopefully a good bowl game for them and obviously Trace McSorley's been dealing with some what I perceive to be some nagging injuries and so good to see him get a few more rushing yards on the ground and and not take any crazy hits one stat line I wanted to point out was that Rutgers quarterbacks were combined five for 16 for 46 yards and two interceptions. I feel like at this point, anyone could be back there and they're going to be just as good as Rutgers. You can get lucky five times in a game for 46 yards, but maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm a little harsh on Rutgers, but interesting score there. Ohio State actually had a very close game against Maryland. They beat Maryland 52 to 51, and Maryland lost on a last second two-point conversion.

That was no good. Dwayne Haskins was actually named the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week for his performance, and Maryland's back Anthony McFarland was named Freshman Player of the Week for his performance. So offensive explosion either way. I think the big takeaway here

is that Ohio State's defense just hasn't been that great this year. They feature a lot of top tier talent. Obviously it hurt that Nick Bosa is not returning to the team and was out with an injury, but that team still features a ton of NFL talent and they are getting exploited game in and game out. It'll be fun to watch them play Michigan this upcoming weekend and see exactly how those two teams match up because the Big Ten has really been beating up on itself throughout the season. And just quickly to touch on that Michigan, you know, the Michigan team, they did take care of business against Indiana winning 31 to 20. And they are one game away from, you know, securing that Big Ten East title and then playing in the Big Ten Championship

and really trying to represent the Big Ten in the college football playoff, which is a huge endeavor. And one of the things that I'm not a big fan of the Michigan program, I'm not a big fan of the Ohio State program, but I am a big fan of Big Ten teams doing well in the college football playoff and in postseason in general. It looks good for the conference. It helps out Iowa indirectly.

And unfortunately, I think this year is going to be a little bit tough considering Alabama is pretty strong, but it'll be good to see a Big Ten team make it. So it's important that Michigan kind of takes care of business next weekend, so Ohio State. And then finally, to wrap it up for the Big Ten slate of games, we had Wisconsin winning in triple overtime against Purdue. They beat Purdue 47 to 44. And Wisconsin had quite the comeback.

They were down by about 14 points at one point, came back to obviously win the game. Jonathan Taylor had a huge, monstrous game offensively. He accounted for 321 yards on the ground on 33 carries and three touchdowns. And the one, the one takeaway I want to take from this is that, you know, Purdue is a really good team.

Again, they have just, they can't win the close game. And there's also some, some weird things going on within the program. There were some rumors coming out earlier this week that head coach, Jeff Brom would be leaving for Louisville. He tried to squash those rumors as much as possible, but that is obviously something that could be impacting those Purdue players. They've done a really good

job of rallying around Jeff Brom and taking a team with not as much talent and really relying on three players offensively to carry that team to a lot of big victories this year. But it will remain to be seen whether Jeff Brom leaves. Louisville is his alma mater. He's from that area. It makes a lot of sense. And it also speaks to what programs around the nation think of Purdue's head coach for what he's done at Purdue, which in recent history hasn't been one of the strongest

programs in the Big Ten. And to be honest, it's been a great program for Iowa to beat up on, obviously, until the last two seasons. So that'll do it for our Big Ten slate of games, kind of a recap of what happened this weekend. It was an exciting weekend in Big Ten football, and next weekend will be even better with Rivalry Reek coming up. I'm excited to cover that a little bit more in depth.

We may not get a chance to give a preview of those games just because of the holiday week. I am on vacation technically, also recovering from the big race this weekend. So you're likely just going to be getting two episodes. We'll see if I can squeeze another one in before the games this weekend, but you'll definitely be getting

four to five episodes next week, including a special guest appearance from a former Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver who had a fantastic career under Kirk Ferentz. And we'll give a little bit more details when we start figuring out and hammering out what that specific date is, but I'm sure that episode will be a doozy

and you do not want to miss it. And coming up in segment three, we're going to be touching on the men's basketball team, them winning the 2K Empire Classic Tournament and what that means for the program. All right, so it was an exciting weekend in Iowa men's basketball. The women's basketball team is obviously on fire.

They're doing great. And we're definitely going to be covering that as the season progresses as well, the women's basketball team is obviously on fire. They're doing great. And we're definitely going to be covering that as the season progresses as well because the women's basketball team has a very good shot of making a deep run into the NCAA tournament. And the men's basketball team is coming on hot right now. So they started off the season a little slow. They didn't perform very well against University of Missouri, Kansas City. And they didn't perform very well against University of Missouri, Kansas City, and they

didn't perform very well against the Green Bay Phoenix. And it left a lot of fans sitting there thinking, did this basketball team really improve? Because when you play a team, teams like that, you're expected to win, but you're also expected to win by a decent amount of points. And Iowa didn't really put the games away in either of those games until the end of the second half or the middle of the second half, which is not what you're expecting from a Big Ten team coming off of 14 wins, but coming in with such high expectations about themselves. This is a relatively veteran-loaded team. They brought in a top 100 recruit in Joe Weiskamp, and they're returning Connor McCaffrey, a former four-star recruit who really missed most of the last season due to injuries and illnesses and was actually granted a medical red shirt.

So he is really just a freshman. Didn't get a lot of playing time last year because of all the things happening, but Iowa does have a pretty solid team and it showed when they took on Oregon, number 13 Oregon, mind you, and beat them handedly, which we covered on last Friday's

episode. And then they entered the, you know, the, the final game of the 2k empire classic tournament playing a university Connecticut Huskies team. And this isn't, you're saying Yukon Huskies team that's won national titles over the last decade, but Yukon's always a strong program. They're a basketball program. They're a basketball school. That's one of their strengths. Iowa just went to town on UConn. They only were down to UConn for the first four minutes of the game

before just pulling away consistently. At one point, being up by, I want to say, 24 points at one point. They did come away victorious. They won 91-72. That's Iowa's first early season tournament title since 1997. So over 20 years has passed since the Hawkeyes have won an early season tournament. A great way to start the season.

Obviously, there's a ton of work left to do for this program. But Fran McCaffrey appears to have this team on the right track, considering that they're not really doing so well from a shooting standpoint, but they're playing solid defense. They're breaking down the other team's offense well, and they're really exploiting some of the mismatches that they have on the offensive side of the ball with their versatile big men, their ability to play multiple lineup combinations

and still have three or four scorers on the floor at all times, and a lot of guys who can get hot from three point, especially considering, you know, Isaiah Moss was kind of the big guy and this, you know, the early part of this game, he really helped Iowa begin to build that lead. He was hot from, from downtown going two for three, the forward Tyler Cook and Luke Garza though, really paved the way in this game. They have been performing like madmen in the last couple games, and I'm excited to see what they do when they enter into the Big Ten slate of games. They combined for 48 points. Okay, 48 points against UConn.

So over half of Iowa's points came from two of their forwards, Tyler Cook and Luke Garza. or sorry, over half of Iowa's points came from two of their forwards, Tyler Cook and Luke Garza. Cook was 10 for 14, and Garza was 7 for 14 and 2 for 5 from the three-point range. So that is some incredible production. And I don't believe when you're looking at this Iowa basketball program, you're not expecting all the production to come from just those two, considering you have Joe Weiskamp, you have Jordan Bohannon, Isaiah Moss, you have those kinds of guys who can score lots of points in a hurry, Ryan Crean or Nick Bayer.

But to get that kind of production when some of the other guys were struggling is great news. That's what, for a team that wants to make an impact on the season this year, they want to make the NCAA tournament. They want to make a run regardless of what outsiders think of the team. That's the kind of things that need to happen. They need players who can turn it on when everyone else is struggling and make a game of themselves. Speaking of people who are struggling, Joe Weiskamp was held to just one point and two assists. So after his really, really strong start against UMKC. He's kind of been held relatively, you know, relatively ineffective the last couple of games. Hasn't put up a ton of points. Obviously, you know, he's not completely ineffective. He's been doing a good job and keep in mind, it's just his fourth

collegiate basketball game. He's still starting for the Hawks. It's not going to, that's not going to change anytime soon. He's doing a lot of great things. It's just not showing up on the stat board. So that'll, that'll likely change as we, you likely change as the Hawks continue to get him involved. And then in general, Iowa wasn't effective from three late. They went just four for 13 and they shot 30%. So not exactly ideal. This is the team that was one of the best scoring teams in the nation last year. And they put up over 80 points in all their games, but they're still struggling to connect from deep. And especially for a team that has many capable three-point shooters, that's something that when they start getting hot from their teams need to watch out because also on the defensive side of the ball, the team has began to look good.

They've held UConn or they held UConn of 27 points in the first half and UConn only shot 15% from three-point range. So great defensive numbers. It's something that I like to see, you know, defense is something that you can teach and it's a lot of effort based type of things. And for a team that has such good production on the offensive side of the ball and such a deep bench, there's no reason why they can't be somewhat more effective defensively. You know, last year they were one of the worst teams in the nation. I believe they are 304th out of 350 teams in the defensive rankings, which is absolutely pathetic, unacceptable, and I'm glad to see that change a little bit.

One person I wanted to also call out is Connor McCaffrey. He had 19 points and five assists in 29 minutes. We talked about this last week, but he's just making a case for himself. This guy is just continuing to perform very well. And he's starting to get a lot of those starter minutes. It'll be interesting to see when Fran McCaffrey makes that switch eventually to put him in the starting lineup. And especially in this game, Jordan Bohannon got in foul trouble early. It forced Connor McCaffrey into that spot a little bit sooner than I think Fran would have liked, but just another indication of how deep this bench is and how many opportunities and lineup options that,

you know, Fran has at his disposal. So it'll be great as they get into the big 10 slate. And they have a, an easy game coming up on Wednesday. They play Alabama state. So tomorrow night they take on Alabama state at Carver Hawkeye arena should be a relatively easy win.

I would like to see them come out and make quick work of this team, get into the bench a little bit more, see some of our depth, perform a little better, and take the starters out and not have them working as hard against Alabama State right before the Thanksgiving games. And finally, I just want to wrap it up with, because of this 4-0 start, because of the big wins over Oregon, and then also oregon

went to town on a number 15 syracuse team and they you know the the consolation game of the 2k empire classic iowa is now ranked 20th in the nation so a lot sooner than i think any of us expected we you know myself included i would have been happy if iowa just kept it close against oregon but their performance was great and definitely not something to be taken lightly. This team is ranked 20th. There's a lot of work to do, but exciting things ahead for a program that has some good veteran leadership and some solid young players who are coming on strong as of late.

And we'll be covering that in a lot more detail as we go on. Obviously, the football season is beginning to wrap up. There's going to be some great segments we have covering that next week and the week after. Obviously getting into what bowl games can the football team be making and so on and so forth. And then we're going to start covering the basketball season in more details, covering the women's team and the men's team both

because both those teams are playing very well this season. Neither team has a loss. And the wrestling team, per usual, is doing fantastic. So I want to get to more of those types of topics. Again, this is going to be a short week. We're only going to have likely two episodes, but next week we'll be back with at least four,

possibly five and a guest appearance. And like I said earlier in the episode tomorrow, we will be covering the Iowa Nebraska game and, and very, very detailed oriented fashion. I'll bring on a expert of the Nebraska Cornhuskers to talk on what we can expect from a Nebraska Cornhusker team

that has won four of their last five games. So it's going to be a great episode. You do not want to miss it. It's with one of my best friends, one of the strongest Nebraska fans I know who can give a lot of, and show a lot of insight to what us Iowa football fans can expect

from Friday's game. And that'll do it, though, for our Tuesday episode. Like I said earlier, I'm your host, Andrew Wade, and you can find me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew, and you can follow all of the exciting happenings of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast on Twitter at Locked On Iowa. Also, make sure you subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts at.

And please leave us a review. We'd love to hear from our listeners about what you think of the show, what you would like to see, and so on and so forth. And feel free to interact with us on Twitter. We are very responsive, love talking and communicating with our fans of the show. Love to get some of your ideas and feedback because ultimately, without you, this show would not be possible. So again, Hawkeye Nation,

thank you for joining us on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Have a great day, Hawkeye Nation, and we'll be back tomorrow.