Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa football spring practice takeaways plus Keegan Murray and Joe Toussaint leave Iowa basketball

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Iowa football kicked off their spring practices and allowed the media to attend a short snippet of practice so we break down the observations from that and what it means for the Iowa Hawkeyes including Brian Ferentz's quote, Cooper Dejean and Brendan Deasfernandes. The back half of the show we discuss the three recent departures from the Iowa basketball program as Keegan Murray has entered the NBA Draft as a potential lottery pick and Joe Toussaint and Josh Ogundele have entered the transfer portal.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.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.StatHeroStatHero is reshaping the way the way you play fantasy sports. Dozens of house based games to play daily. No sharks, no funky props, just your skill vs the lineups you choose. Sign-up today at StatHero.com/LockedOnAthletic GreensAthletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/COLLEGE.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 another episode episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Lockdown Podcast Network. For the final time as the host of Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, I am signing on today, host Andrew Wade. We have hosts joining us tomorrow and through the rest of the next week. I'll get to that transition plan here in a little bit. But on today's show, we have a very exciting show for you today.

We're going to be talking about the spring practice for the Iowa football team. They allowed some media members to enter the practice. There were some interesting takeaways from that practice. We're going to be breaking all that down today, including Brian Ferentz's quote on Joey Labas, also talking a little bit about Cooper Dejean and where he was lining up at, and Brody Brecht showing out at that ex-receiver spot. And then also on the Iowa basketball front, there has been some movement.

Joshua Gundelay, Joe Toussaint have entered the transfer portal. Keegan Murray is no longer going to be an Iowa Hawkeye as he has entered the NBA draft. We're going to be discussing all those roster moves and what it means for the Iowa basketball team on today's show. Before we get to any of that though, I want to thank you all for making the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast your first

listen every single day. You can find the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast for free wherever you get podcasts at and also on YouTube by searching Locked On Hawkeyes. And today's episode is brought to you by BetOnline. BetOnline has you covered this season with more props, odds, and lines than ever before. BetOnline.net, it's where the game starts. Had a little bit different of an intro there. As most of you know, by this point,

this is my final episode hosting the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. It has been a truly incredible ride. 642 episodes. It's just been phenomenal. We're going to talk about that at the end if you do want to listen into my final, I guess, segment talking about the pleasure of being your host. We do have a transition plan. My nephew, right? Hill Piper is going to be taking over. He does play by play for local colleges in the state of Iowa. I'm a big Iowa Hawkeye fan as well.

Follows the program very closely. He'll be taking over. And then we're also going to have former Iowa football player, LaShawn Daniels joining as well in a bit more of an expanded capacity than what we saw last year when he was on every Monday to break down the game. So that is the transition plan going forward. Wright should be kicking off the show either tomorrow or next week. So be on the lookout for that. The show must go on.

So really excited for the transition there. And you're going to be in good hands, Hawkeye Nation. So let's get into it, though. It wouldn't be a Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast if we didn't talk about excited for the transition there, and you're going to be in good hands, Hawkeye Nation. So let's get into it, though. It wouldn't be a Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast if we didn't talk about football for the final episode. So there was – spring practice did begin for the Iowa football team. Only 30 minutes were allowed for the media members to enter the practice, and obviously that is such a small glimpse of what is actually happening, but some interesting takeaways nonetheless from that.

And since it's the off season, it's time to overanalyze literally everything that happened in that spring practice. Starting with Brian Ferenc and his quotes and also him as a quarterback coach. So the biggest news this off season from a coaching perspective has been the transition for Brian Ferenc

going from tight ends coach to quarterback coach. Now I've gone on record saying I did not think that was the right move. I got on record saying there's several other guys I would have liked to see. I've also tried to explain to you the flip side of it and why it is important for him to be the quarterback coach. And I felt like the way we heard Spencer Petras talk about Brian Ferencz does allude to some of those positives of having him as the quarterback coach. Also the way Iowa was setting up practice, I thought really helped as

well. And we're going to get to that too. And then also Brian made an interesting quote about Joey basically saying, um, every media or every, uh, all fans love the backup quarterback until they see them play. Um, I'm not going to get into it a ton other than I don't think he really meant it in a derogatory, bad way. I think Brian can be pretty honest and a little bit sarcastic. I'm not looking too much into it, and I don't want to spend the show talking about it. So Brian Ferencz as quarterback coach,

that's probably the biggest thing I want to talk about on this segment. The biggest thing that stood out to me about Spencer Petras talking about Brian Ferencz is the fact that he said, instead of spending two times a week with Brian Ferencz, we're now spending two times a day with Brian Ferencz. And Brian goes into a lot more details of what is happening on each and every play. So the kind of the way I would describe it is based off of how Spencer described Ken O'Keefe's coaching style and Brian Ferencz's coaching style is Ken O'Keefe wanted his quarterbacks to be the jack of all trades, master of none. And Brian would rather focus on being great at a few things, really understanding every single nuance of every single play. Spencer alluded to

the fact that they'll spend 20, 30 minutes on one play until he understands every little component of it. I also believe Brian is truly the best one to teach his own offense and giving him now 12 opportunities a week to meet with his quarterbacks as opposed to two is going to be really instrumental to the development of those quarterbacks. Also, you're going to hear my, uh, it's kind of the reason why I'm leaving the show. I have a newborn son and he is sleeping over here. He's going to make a few noises occasionally. So apologies there. I also thought was really good of Iowa. They did hire an offensive analyst, John Budmerry to kind of a quarterback analyst at a quarterback coach at Wisconsin has experienced coaching quarterbacks. And he was

really working heavily with the quarterbacks on fundamentals. So that was really good to see as well. I know there's a lot of concern about the fundamental development with the quarterbacks on fundamentals. So that was really good to see as well. I know there's a lot of concern about the fundamental development of our quarterbacks. And I would argue that Ken O'Keefe didn't do a very good job of that anyways. So Brian Ferencz is not expected to be doing a great job with that just to stick to relative comparisons. But they also have John Budmerry coming in and he can help with that a little bit. On the quarterback competition,

it sounds like Joey Labas looked pretty good. Spencer looks slimmer and faster. I said all of his testing numbers were better. And he also made a very interesting quote about Ken O'Keefe. And he said, Tony Raciopi helped him with a few things that Ken O'Keefe didn't see, his weight balance when throwing. So as we've seen every offseason, the hype is always going to be high, right? There's always going to be positive talk about each and every one of the quarterbacks. So we'll see how that all plays out. Spencer talked about needing to be able to scramble and get out of the pocket, be a little quicker and faster.

I would argue it's not as much about his speed as the fact that he just doesn't even know how to scramble, but not an issue for another day. Some interesting guys not practicing. A lot of guys out for today or for that spring practice, Jack Campbell, Justin Jacobs, Kavon Merriweather, Joe Evans, Jamari Harris, Terry Roberts, Mike Wazlinski, Justin Britt, Nico Regani. The two guys I want to focus on from that is Jamari Harris

and Terry Roberts because that is going to open the door for some of these younger guys to step in and have some opportunities to potentially get some playing time, starting with Brendan Dees-Fernandez. Roberts, because that is going to open the door for some of these younger guys to step in and have some opportunities to potentially get some playing time. Starting with Brendan Dees-Fernandez. This is the guy, a late pickup for Iowa, out of Michigan, a lowly, a low rated recruit, an underrated recruit, you should say, and plucked up by Phil Parker himself. We've heard this story quite a few times for Phil Parker. He loves finding those underrated guys out of Michigan, turning them into some phenomenal defensive backs.

Brendan Dees-Fernandez could be that next guy. Jamari Harris, Terry Roberts, both upperclassmen, both guys who are not going to be at the program more than a couple of years. Terry Roberts potentially one year, Jamari Harris potentially two or three. So Brendan Dees-Fernandez having that opportunity and looking pretty good. It sounds like two other defensive backs that looked good as well. TJ Hall and X,

both those guys, it sounds like looked good in different drills. And that's exciting to hear. Iowa has not had issues with younger guys getting playing time in the secondary. We saw with Riley Moss coming in as a gray shirt and then starting his true freshman year. Right. We see a shirt and then starting his true freshman year. We see it with Julius Brents starting his true freshman year.

We've seen Iowa be willing to go in and get those younger guys and do some really good things from a cornerback perspective. So it's not unlikely that X and TJ Hall could be getting some playing time, especially X. Now, speaking of the defensive backs as well, Cooper Dejean was lining up at cash, as was Sebastian Castro. And cash is the big question mark in this offseason. Who is going to take that cash position? The one formerly held by Imani Hooker, then held by Dane Belton. We've had two fantastic cash players. Who is next?

My money is honestly on Cooper. I know Sebastian has a lot of potential as well, but I think Cooper, it's the guy you can't get off the field. There's a reason why they moved him to cornerback just because they needed him for some depth and he actually got some playing time. He's really showed out well in his limited time on the field. Brody Brecht has not been on the field a lot,

but he finally got the opportunity this spring. He's been busy obviously with baseball and pitching there, but he was on the field running routes with Jackson Ritter, not practicing. This gives Brody a little bit more of an opportunity to step in and possibly get that role. I don't expect Brody to start this year or get a ton of snaps, but look for him to be that big factor in next year,

especially with Iowa kind of losing out on one of their top recruits and Kyler Casper, or so, so far losing out on top recruits in Kyler Casper or so, so far losing out on their top recruit in Kyler Casper. Brody Brecht is a guy who could make an impact next year at the X receiver. And then finally returning kicks. We had Arlen Bruce, Devin Helson,

Charlie Jones, Riley Moss, Gavin Williams, and Cooper to Jean. I would love to see a combo of Arlen and Charlie back there returning kicks. That would be a very dynamic duo that I think could give a lot of kickoff coverage teams a lot of difficulty. So that'll be interesting to see how that all plays out. Obviously needing to figure out who is going to be the replacement for

Charlie Jones long-term. We only have him for this next year. Who's going to be next? My guess and my bet is on Arlen Bruce and probably Cooper Dajin. Coming up, we're going to talk a little bit about basketball because there was a lot of news these last couple of days. Keegan Murray declaring for the NBA draft, Joe Toussaint and Joshua Gundelay entering the transfer portal. We're going to be talking about that all in a few short moments. But first, the next partner that I want to talk about

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We have a fantastic tradition planned for you all. So you are left covered for your Iowa Hawkeye daily content that you deserve and crave. So we talked a little bit about football. Let's get into the topic of basketball. Keegan Murray officially declared for the NBA draft as to be expected. And actually, you know what? I'm going to back up the women's team first. Kaitlyn Clark lost out on national player of the year to Aaliyah Boston. Now this is frustrating on several fronts because I truly feel like this was an award that was given to a Leah

because of the success her team is having. Now, a Leah is a fantastic player, but what she is doing across the country is not the only time we've ever seen it, right? It's not something we haven't seen before. In fact, Megan Gustafson had significantly better numbers than her but what I really want to focus on outside of the fact that Kaitlyn's stats across

the board are better than Aaliyah's Kaitlyn Clark has willed this Iowa team to a number two seed without Kaitlyn Clark this Iowa team is potentially a bubble team for the NCAA tournament South Carolina without Aaliyah is a number two seed. And it's frustrating that the voters still don't see that. And it's even more frustrating that when Iowa fans go on Twitter to voice their support for Kaitlyn, we're getting comments that allude to race, women's rights, that kind of stuff. This is not what it's about, right? It is literally about we feel like Kaitlyn Clark is the better player. We feel like Kaitlyn Clark deserved to win this award. It's frustrating. Let's get into some other thoughts. Keegan Murray officially declares for

the NBA draft. That was to be expected. It sounds like he talked very highly of the fact that Chris Murray is likely returning to the Iowa Hawkeyes, and that will be huge for Iowa. On the flip side, Joe Toussaint and Joshua Gundelay both entered the transfer portal. Now, in Joe's message, he's talked about looking for an expanded role. Now, when Frank McCaffrey meets with his players, he is very brutally honest. That's how he lives, right? He lives by being brutally honest with his players. He tells them exactly what they are supposed to hear, not what they want to hear, right? What they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

And my guess is, based off of that meeting with Joe Toussaint, Fran was not expecting Joe to either be the starter or get a lot of minutes or wasn't at least promising a lot of minutes. And for a guy who has put in solid minutes throughout his career, I understand the want to go get 30 minutes a game somewhere else. What this means though, is that it's probably Aaron Uless as the starting point guard and Desante Bowen spelling him. I know a lot of people are on Twitter talking about, we need to go get a point guard. I think what we actually need is probably a combo guard, a Bakari Evelyn type player that can play both point and shooting guard.

But I feel pretty confident in the ball handling abilities of what we have with Aaron Uless, DeSante Bowen, Tony Perkins. We saw Tony Perkins bring the ball up a lot. Chris Murray, I could see bringing the ball up quite a bit. Patrick McCaffrey, I think, can sometimes dribble a little bit too much, but I think he could even bring the ball up. So Iowa has some opportunities or options available to bring the ball up. I think they'd be better off trying to find some sort of combo guard that could fill a point guard and shooting guard role if needed.

Joshua Gundelay is also gone. This was not a surprise. There's been a lot of rumors out about that. And I love Josh, right? I've talked to Josh several times. He's been on the podcast twice. And I love Josh, right? I've talked to Josh several times. He's been on the podcast twice. He's a great kid. I just don't think it was going to work at Iowa. He's had a lot of unexpected things to deal with. He couldn't get to training because of COVID.

He couldn't come to Iowa for a while. Then he had COVID. He's been battling injuries, battling conditioning. On top of all that, his offensive game needs a lot of refinement. We see some really nice glimpses from him. Defensively, he has what it takes. He did a really good job against Purdue, against Illinois' Kofi Coburn. But offensively, he doesn't have a lot to be desired for his offensive game. He just isn't a great fit with what Iowa wants to do.

Now, the importance here, though, is that Iowa really, really needs a big. Now, I thought they really needed a big anyways, but now they're just losing depth here, where Josh is able to give you good minutes against Purdue. He's one of the reasons why Iowa was able to beat Purdue. But now you really need a big. We talked a lot about yesterday on Monday, Iowa targeting the Utah state big man. Hopefully that comes to fruition. He has narrowed it down to five teams at this

point, Iowa being one of those five teams that Utah, or sorry, not Utah state, Utah Valley center Bardos Amick again, 18.9 points, 13.6 rebounds per game. That would be a huge gift for Iowa at 6'11", 245 pounds. That would give Iowa a legitimate center and allow them to play Phillip Abracha in a more appropriate role for Phillip Abracha and give Riley Mulvey additional time to develop. So Iowa now has three open scholarships. They could hold on to that.

They could put a walk-on on scholarship. We saw that with Austin Ash last year. We saw it with Riley Till two years ago. So we've seen that happen in the past. I could see them going that route. I do think Iowa is going to be exploring the transfer portal though and trying to bring in two guys, a big and a combo guard is kind of my prediction right now for the men's basketball team. Coming up, we're going to talk a little bit about the transition plan and honestly just say thank you. So feel free to tune in to that. Before we get to any of that though, I do want to remind you that Built Bar is here to help you reach all of your health goals. New Year's resolutions are

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And you'll get 15% off your next order. Use that promo code LOCKED15 for 15% off at Bilt.com. All right, y'all. And this is the final segment of my time hosting the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. And you might be sitting there thinking, why is this such a big deal? It's just a podcast. When I started my journey four or five years ago, I had worked at a healthcare software company for five years. It was, and my wife and I just moved up to Colorado. We didn't know a lot of people out here.

I wasn't taking care of myself mentally. I was doing the work I need to do at work. I was, you know, doing some fitness stuff, right? But I wasn't, I wasn't in a bad spot, but I just wasn't, I wasn't happy. I needed to do something that really brought me some happiness. So I decided to really focus on what are the things I love to do outside of work, outside of just spending time with my family, which I absolutely love doing. And one of those things was to write. And I loved writing in high school. I loved writing in college. In fact, I started a food blog in college where I actually made money talking about boneless

wings and traditional wings in the Des Moines area when I was at Drake. And so I decided, well, I love sports and I'm, I'm very, I'm very passionate about the Denver Broncos and the Iowa Hawkeyes. So I created a Denver Broncos website. I started writing about them and realized this is fun, but I want to, I want to get interactions. I want to interact with people. So I applied to predominantly orange, um, at the, uh, at the kind of the advice of Cody

Rourke who hosts lockdown Brondown Broncos, and applied there, got the opportunity, started writing, really enjoyed it. And then the opportunity to be the editor of the Iowa Hawkeye website popped up. So I started doing that. And it was quite an amazing experience. I took that from 2,000 page views a month to 700,000 page views a month. But it was becoming a lot to write every single day, four times, five times a day, writing four or five articles. I was putting out a hundred to 150 articles a month. And I, you know, this is kind of when podcasts are starting

to become pretty popular. I listened to my very first podcast. It was the Locked On NFL Draft Podcast with John Ledger and with Trevor Sycamore. And I just, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I love the delivery. I love the medium. I loved the ability to listen to it when you're driving, when you're walking, when you're running, when you're doing errands.

So I started listening to some of the other podcasts on the network and I found the Locked On Broncos podcast hosted by Cody Rourke again. And I asked him, how can I get in this opportunity? I knew they were looking to expand the college show and he gave me David Locke's email. So I emailed David Locke, um, almost every single week for a couple of months and said, I don't have a ton of experience, but I'm the best one for the job because I'm going to put my heart and soul into it. And I'm going to do everything I can to make this the best show I possibly can. Um, and I, I feel like I've done that. Um, I know some of you kind of get annoyed at times about my quick talking.

I know sometimes you don't agree with my opinions and that's okay. Um, but every single episode I gave it my all. Um, and at this point I'm going to check check. I think we're at 640 episodes. Let me see. 642. This will be the 643rd episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. That's a lot of time. That's 30 minutes every single episode.

That is prep work of 30 to 45 minutes. I'm going to do the math real quick on that. prep work of 30 to 45 minutes. I'm going to do the math real quick on that. That's 643 hours at the minimum. I've gone down to Mobile, Alabama to cover the senior bowl and cover Michael Ojemudia for the Iowa Hawkeyes. I've been to Las Vegas invitational to cover the Iowa Hawkeyes.

I've covered former Iowa Hawkeyes for the basketball tournament with Iowa United. It has been a truly remarkable journey. And I know, again, it's just a podcast, right? But when I started this, I had 10 people listening, and I'm pretty my wife and my friends. And to go from that to three, four, 5,000 listens an episode, to be able to interview my favorite player growing up in Kevin Casper, to be able to interview guys I looked up to in Drew Tate and Ricky Stanzi, to NBA draft picks like Marcus Fizer. I know he played for Iowa State, but still pretty cool. To interview Quinn Early.

To interview Coach David Deani. People that I've listened to, Matt Miller, Mello Miller. people that I've listened to, Matt Miller, Mello Miller. It's been really special guys. It's been an amazing ride. I'm sorry for getting emotional. Shout out to, I mean, i go on and on riley smith uh frank garza hawkeye helvis um shout out to my best friend jared who always supported me throughout this whole thing

um helping me with this and being kind of the person who uh pushed me in the direction of Iowa Hawkeye fandom. It's been, it's been awesome. Sorry. I wasn't, didn't think I was going to cry. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate all of your love and support.

You've all been absolutely amazing. And I hope you continue to listen to lockdown Hawkeyes podcast going forward. It's going to be a great episode. What we built has been phenomenal where it's going. It's going to be even better. Shout out David Locke as well, who gave me even the opportunity. So you just just thank you.

And after you make this show your first listen, please make sure you make the Locked On NFL Draft podcast my first love, your first listen as well, hosted by Ryan Tracy and former NFL quarterback Eric Crocker. They bring the NFL draft to life every single day with insight and analysis on college football prospects and NFL front offices. It's free and available wherever you get your podcast at. And for the final time, y'all, I am signing off as your host in the Lockdown Hawkeyes

podcast. Thank you all. And as always, Hawkeye Nation, let's go Hawks.