Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Men's basketball dominates Illinois | Anthony Nelson is going to the Shrine Bowl | Wrestling team crushes another Big Ten foe

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

The men's basketball team took care of business against Illinois on the heels of hot 3-point shooting and fantastic defensive energy. Switching to football, redshirt junior defensive lineman Anthony Nelson will be spending the week in Mobile, Alabama playing in the 2019 Senior Bowl, which is a fantastic opportunity for him to get NFL coaching and make an impression on the hundreds of scouts that will be there. To wrap up the show we update you on all the happenings in Iowa Hawkeye athletics from this past weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, the latest addition to the Locked On Sports Network's growing lineup of college podcasts. I'm your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at dearoldgold.com, where you can find analysis pieces in all things black and yellow. And we have another fun episode for you today, coming off a really big weekend, a lot of exciting victories for Iowa Hawkeye Athletics. We have a lot of stuff to talk about there. For segment number one, we're going to be covering Iowa's big win over Illinois. I say big in the terms of the score was big. Illinois is not a great team, but still a good win to get. On segment number two, we're going to be talking about Anthony Nelson in the senior bowl and what that means for the redshirt junior defensive end. And then finally on segment number three, we're going to

be talking about the other Iowa Hawkeye athletics and what they did this weekend. The wrestling team got a big win. The women's basketball team had a win. Track and field did really well. So I want to be talking about a few of those items on segment number three. Before we jump in, though, just a quick reminder. Make sure you are subscribing to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcast at. And if you have a smart speaker at home, it's really easy to listen to our podcast every single day. All you need to do is tell Siri, Google, or Alexa to play podcast Locked on Hawkeyes. That will give you the most recent episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. All right, jumping into segment number one, Iowa got a big win over Illinois yesterday, beating them 95-71, and to be honest, it really wasn't even close. After about the first 10 minutes or so, Iowa really just started going off.

They had an incredible day shooting the ball from three-point, and they also had a really solid defensive effort, something that I was really impressed by. One the things coming into this game that illinois kind of brought to the table is that they were aggressive they were attacking they were relentless and you saw that towards the end of the game you know they weren't going to give up they weren't going to stop playing but um iowa did a really good job of basically burying this game and ending it before you know there was about 15 minutes left in the second half. Iowa, kudos to them, did a really great job. They shot 15 of 21 from three-pointers,

which is absolutely incredible. I want to say that's the best mark they've had this entire season. So fantastic. It was a fun game. I mean, you had everyone popping threes from wherever they possibly could. Most notably, Joe Weiskamp and Isaiah Moss. I mean, wow. Weiskamp went 6-6.

Isaiah Moss went 5-6. Bohannon put in another two. So pretty impressive all around. There's three Hawks scoring more than 20 points. We had Luka Garza, 9-15 for 20. Joe Weiskamp, 8-8 in 6 of 6 from 3 point for 24. And Isaiah Moss, 7 of 12 and then 5 of 6 from 3 for 21. And then Jordan Mohannon was 4th on the team with 10 points on 3 of 4 shooting.

Tyler Cook noticeably had a pretty quiet game. He had just 2 shot attempts, 4 throws put in seven points then had seven boards so a solid game from him it didn't appear that his ankle was bothering him too much he still brought the ball up a decent amount was able to attack but the Illinois defense is doing a good job of of really making sure that he was not going to be hurting them however they obviously forgot to account for the potential high scoring impact that Weiskamp and Moss can have at any time. And I think that's one of the things we've kind of realized over the season is that Isaiah Moss is a score.

This guy can really pick up the bill when someone else can't, when the team's hurt or when the team's injured or people aren't scoring. Isaiah Moss can make sure that's happening. Then Joe Weiskamp, we knew he was a talented player, but wow, I mean, that is absolutely an impressive performance. 24 points, five boards, three assists, one steal. I mean, this guy had an outstanding game, and I'm really excited to watch him over the next, you know, hopefully two, three years in an Iowa Hawkeye uniform. I don't know when the NBA will be calling, but I think that's pretty

impressive all around. Defensively, I thought Iowa played really outstanding. I mean, until around 10 minutes left in the second half, Iowa kind of got a little loose with their defense and then Fran McCaffrey had to call a timeout and rip into his players. I think he was getting a little frustrated. Iowa had really great defensive energy, and then once they got up by about 25 points, they kind of just let off the gas.

I get it from an offensive standpoint, but from a defensive standpoint, you want to keep that intensity throughout the game. You want to make sure that you're able to, you don't have to worry about turning it off and turning it on. You want to always have it on and keep that intensity, especially as you're getting ready to go into a game against Michigan State, so a really big game that's coming up for them. One of the other things I wanted to quickly point on is

Illinois shot 39.1% from the field goal range. So one of their worst days shooting. So fantastic there. And they also, you know, Iowa didn't get Illinois in as much foul trouble as I originally anticipated. Illinois committed 18 fouls, which is actually a few less than what their season average was. I believe their season average was around 21 or 22.

So I anticipated a little bit more foul trouble for Illinois. And that looked like the case early. I mean, there was four fouls within the first three minutes on Illinois. Tyler Cook and Luka Garza were really driving in hard and getting Illinois' front court to get into that foul trouble. But outside of two guys, Illinois really didn't have that much trouble from there. So either way, it was fun to see Iowa win without having to rely on the free throws.

They only had 16 total, which is one of their lowest of the season. But again, when you're shooting 15 to 21 from three, does it really ultimately matter? And the answer is no. So again, great game from there. Awesome to see some of the defensive energy. They will need that as they go into playing Michigan State this week. Also,

a good thing Tyler Cook was able to play. No injuries came out of this game. So overall, just another fantastic game. Iowa is now sitting at 16-3. And if you remember one of the conversations we had on a podcast a few weeks ago or a few days ago, one of the things we talked about is the magical number for Iowa is 20. And I think you get to 20 wins in the Big Ten and you will be in the NCAA tournament. And the biggest thing is getting those, not those easy wins, but those wins that you need to have at home against teams like Illinois. You need to secure the easy wins and potentially steal a big victory such as the Michigan State game coming up this week.

So another fantastic effort by the men's Iowa basketball team. On segment number two, we're going to be talking about Anthony Nelson in the Senior Bowl. But before we do that, we have a message for you, the listener. 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 Ten 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 are back with segment number two. Just a reminder that on segment number three, we're going to be covering all the Iowa Hawkeye athletics that took place over this past week

and giving you some updates on the wrestling team, the women's basketball team, track and field, et cetera. But before we do that, we have to cover Anthony Nelson and his appearance in the 2019 Senior Bowl that's taking place on this Saturday. And if you're not familiar with the Senior Bowl, it's a really cool event. It's an all-star event for collegiate athletes who have graduated. So that's a really good distinction.

It says Senior Bowl, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not a senior in title in terms of you are actually graduating from college, you've finished your four years. title in terms of you are actually graduating from college, you've finished your four years, redshirt juniors, or even true juniors who have declared for the NFL draft and somehow graduated in three years, those also count. So really it's just people who have graduated, finished their academic pieces to be able to get their diploma, they are eligible for this game. And when Anthony Nelson declared for the NFL draft, he was a big get for the Senior Bowl and Jim Nagy and his staff. So one of the cool things about the Senior Bowl, though, is it

really is probably the premier postseason collegiate event. It has some of the most talented players in the nation coming, playing against each other, seeing how others play against top talent from other divisions, and seeing how these players take NFL coaching. As a Broncos fan last year, it was huge to see the impact that the Senior Bowl had on the Denver Broncos. A lot of the guys they ended up taking were guys they were able to see and coach and work with at the Senior Bowl. So from a standpoint of an Iowa Hawkeye fan, this couldn't be a better situation for Anthony Nelson. I think he's kind of flying under the radar. I mean, for draft scouts, they like what they see from him.

The guy has the ability to rush the passer effectively. He's 6'7". I think the big thing for him is that he's able to rush the passer. He's able to make those big plays. He's able to defend the run. But he has so much more potential with his size that he's just not even using right now. So getting that college or getting the NFL coaching at the senior bowl, getting an opportunity to display his talents against some of the other best players in the nation will be really awesome for Anthony Nelson. He'll be actually playing on

the North squad with John Gruden. Save your laughs. John Gruden is still a good coach despite everything he's doing to literally destroy the Oakland Raiders.. John Gruden is still a good coach despite everything he's doing to literally destroy the Oakland Raiders. But regardless, he's still a good coach. One of the things you'll probably want to watch out for is within the senior bowl is that Kyle Shanahan is coaching the South squad. And one of the things that I think has become pretty apparent from Kyle Shanahan's days in San Francisco and John Lynch in general is that they really love what Iowa Hawkeyes bring to the table. In their first draft together, they brought in C.J. Bethard, they brought in George Kittle, and they also signed Greg Maben off the street.

So, and they've had pretty good performances. I mean, say what you want about C.J. Bethard, I would say he's been a pretty solid backup so far. He did lose his job to Nick Mullins, but Nick Mullins also had a fantastic showing in his first game against Oakland and continue that on. So, Bethard to me is a solid backup. I mean, I would welcome him on the Denver Broncos. I think they've shown

their affinity for the Iowa Hawkeyes and it just so happens that they have a need at the edge position. They need a defensive end. I think while the cream of the crop would obviously be Nick Bosa, there's an opportunity there. If they aren't able to get a Nick Bosa in the first round, you could get an Anthony Nelson in the second or the third round

and have a very solid defender on the edge and maybe capitalize on some of the other athletic positions they could possibly get in the NFL draft in the first or second round. So it'll be interesting to see kind of what comes out of this bowl game. Again, Anthony Nelson is kind of flying under the radar, in my opinion, mostly because the defensive end class is fantastic and outstanding. That's one of the reasons why I thought Nelson may come back this year, because the edge class is so strong at the top that players like Nelson,

who would typically go at the top that players like Nelson who would typically go at the middle of the second round may get pushed back to the third round or even the fourth round but those teams are going to be getting an absolute steal the one thing I think is kind of disappointing about the senior bowl is I thought there would be a few other guys that you know possibly could have saw you know their saw their name called or announced for the senior bowl Ross Reynolds, Keegan Render, Parker Hesse, and Matt Nelson are a few guys that come to mind. Specifically Matt Nelson and Parker Hesse. I think Ross Reynolds and Keegan Render, they're one-year starters.

They had solid seasons with the Iowa Hawkeyes. They got Big Ten honors, all Big Ten honors. But Parker Hesse and Matt Nelson have started for multiple years. And while I don't think they are by any means going to be a high draft pick, they're probably going to be 7th round, undrafted free agent type of picks. But I think they would have a good opportunity to show what they can bring to the table at the Senior Bowl. And I'm surprised that they weren't brought there. And I think some context behind that, with the Senior Bowl,

Jim Nagy, he's the executive director. He's a former NFL draft scout for the Seattle Seahawks. He has a whole team of scouts and they basically scour the nation looking for the players they want to bring in. So essentially they are doing their own scouting. And then towards the end, what they do is they take that scouting and they match it up with NFL scouts opinions as well. So they'll basically say, here's the 100 guys we think we want to bring here. And NFL scouts or NFL teams will look at it and say, we really want to see this other guy. Or we're not really sure about this guy.

We don't really need to see him. So things like that. And they kind of match that up when they make their announcements. And it's apparent that Ross Reynolds, Keegan Render, Parker Hesse, Matt Nelson were probably not on the top of that list. So they weren't able to receive or secure an invite.

But either way, they'll have an opportunity to show at the Iowa Hawkeyes Pro Day what they can do. But just kind of some interesting thoughts there on the seniors that were not invited to the Senior Bowl. All right. We're going to be back in just a few seconds after we get a few messages from our sponsors of the show today. Just a reminder that on segment number three, we're going to be talking about some of the other sports in Iowa Hawkeye Athletics. Alright, we are back with segment number three. And as I've been teasing for the last few minutes, we are going to be talking about Iowa Hawkeye Athletics outside of the football team. We're still going to be covering the men's basketball team a little bit,

but consider this just basically a hodgepodge, a quick rundown of all the sports that have kind of taken place over the last couple of days in Iowa Hawkeye Athletics. And the first one I want to start with is the wrestling team. They destroyed Rutgers. I want to say 32-9. Let me confirm. 30-6, actually.

In Carver-Hawkeye Arena, the attendance was 8,500. So, a fantastic showing by Iowa Hawkeye fans in that big win. Rutgers is a strong Big Ten team. They're ranked within the top 20. And Iowa took care of business there again. So, another fantastic showing. Iowa only lost two matches the entire day. Rutgers beat, so at 149 pounds,

Anthony Aschnalt had a 3-1 decision over 10th-ranked Pat Lugo. And then at 174, Joseph Grello had a 7-3 decision over Mitch Bowman. A big win for the Hawks was actually No. 10 Austin DeSanto defeated No. 3 Nick Siriano. So a huge win there. Again, Iowa won 30-6, taking care of business as expected. They are back in action this upcoming Friday against Illinois. They're actually going to be traveling to Urbana-Champaign to take on the Illinois Fighting Illini.

And then on Sunday, just two days later, they're taking on Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois. So kind of sticking around the Illinois area and hopefully coming back with two big wins for the men's wrestling team. So another outstanding effort. If you have an opportunity to check out this wrestling team, they're the fourth ranked team in the country. Make sure you check them out. They are doing fantastic this season. The track and field team, they went to the Larry Wegzorik Invitational. I undoubtedly butchered that name, but it's kind of tough to find pronunciations on an invitational

like that very quickly. So the Larry Wegzorik Invitational took place this weekend. The men's and women both did pretty well. Lots of PRs. Check out, there's a good release from Iowa Hawkeyes Athletics website about how well they did. I don't want to just regurgitate the information from there. So make sure you check that out. The men's and women's team did fantastic in the Invitational. For the women's basketball team, they took on Michigan, beat them earlier this week. They also smacked around Illinois, beating them 94-75 on Sunday, just as the men were taking care of business at Carver. So big win, big two wins by the women's team.

They're kind of falling there after kind of some tough games. But back in action, they're taking on Rutgers later this week. And this will be a huge game. So getting these two wins against some easier opponents was really good for the women's basketball team beating Michigan and Illinois. But they are taking on Rutgers. And Rutgers is currently undefeated in Big Ten play. They're sitting at 20th overall.

Just two spots above the women's team in the AP poll. So this will be an outstanding game to watch. It'll actually be on, let me check the channel. It'll be on the Big Ten Network Plus. So you'll need to have some special access. Maybe check out Sling TV. You'll get an opportunity to watch that Iowa-Rutgers basketball game. It's going to be a doozy.

If you are, though, in the Iowa City area, you can get to the game for as low as $1. So make sure you're checking that out. There's some real cheap tickets for that game on Wednesday night. Should be a really fun game to watch, and Iowa can hopefully secure a really big win against Rutgers. Then to wrap it up, just wanted to quickly touch on the men's basketball team. I know we talked about the men's basketball team beating Illinois on segment number one, but a couple things I wanted to touch on for segment number three about the men's basketball team.

They are taking on Michigan State this week, and that will be a huge game for the men. So make sure you're checking that out. They are taking them on, I want to say Wednesday. If it is, they're taking them on actually Thursday. Yeah, so Thursday they are playing Michigan State. It will be aired on Fox Sports 1. It is at 6 p.m.

We'll be giving you a full recap or a full preview of that game on Wednesday morning. So you'll be able to go into that game a little bit more prepared. Obviously, we've already seen them once. We kind of know what they did against Iowa the first time. But what can Iowa do now? I think this Iowa team is a lot different than the Iowa team that played Michigan State originally. Iowa's had a renewed focus on defense. We've seen some hot shooting efforts from a few key guys.

And Iowa's learned to win without Tyler cook being the sole emphasis of the offense so i think iowa has an opportunity to take and steal a game against number six michigan state on thursday evening also before they take play before that game takes place i do fully expect the men to move up in the rankings a few teams in the 15 to 25 range lost a few teams in the top 10 actually lost too but i fully expect iowa to move up in the rankings a little bit you know beating beating a Penn State beating Illinois is not a huge win by any means but they're still good wins going on the road in the Big Ten is never easy that dominating performance against Illinois a team that isn't as bad as the record says is it shows Iowa can can play a complete basketball game and I'm really excited to see kind of what comes out in the polls later this morning.

And definitely make sure you're checking our Twitter account, LockedOnIowa, because you'll be able to get the full updates on when that AP poll is released and where Iowa sits in it. That being said, though, that'll do it for our Monday morning episode. We hope you had a fantastic weekend, Hawkeye Nation. Just a reminder that this week is going to be fun. We have a lot of great episodes coming your way. We're looking to do a crossover episode, maybe talk about the Michigan State-Iowa game with the Locked on Spartans podcast.

We also have Nick Kendall coming on. He is an NFL draft analyst, does a fantastic job analyzing some of the draft prospects, particularly for the Denver Broncos, but he has a strong emphasis in Iowa Hawkeyes. He is an Iowa Hawkeye fan, loves the Hawks. So we'll be able to get an opportunity to talk to him, do a two-part episode where we're going to be, or two episodes, we're going to be talking to him about the seniors and the guys who declared early for the NFL draft from the Iowa Hawkeyes. So just like we did with Sarah Bettinger a few weeks ago, we're going to be talking to Nick Kendall about some of the draft prospects. So make sure you're tuning into some of those shows this week.

Should be lots of fun. If you didn't get an opportunity to, check out our Saturday morning episode. We interviewed Troy Hyde, sports reporter for the Newton Daily News, an avid Iowa Hawkeye fan, a guy who gets to a lot of games to cover them for the press. So make sure you check out that conversation. We talked a lot about just general themes and trends of Iowa sports going forward. So it is not a date sensitive topic. Make sure you're checking that episode on Saturday Morning's podcast.

Again, we'll be back tomorrow. Thank you for joining us on the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Wade. You can follow me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew. And you can follow all the exciting happenings of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Wade. You can follow me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew. And you can follow all the exciting happenings of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast on Twitter at LockedOnIowa. Make sure you're also subscribing to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts at. And please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show.

And lastly, you can reach out to me with questions, comments, or suggestions at LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. Thank you for joining us on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and we'll be back tomorrow.