Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - SHOCK? Iowa Football's 2025 Season GRADE Revealed with Kirk Ferentz, Mark Gronowski & Company

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's time to grade the 2025 Iowa football season. We got Todd Bromelcamp with us today. How good was this Iowa team? You are Locked on Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome in. I'm Trent Condon. He's Todd Bromelcamp, and this is Locked on Hawkeyes.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network. Todd and I have been covering the Hawkeyes for a combined almost 50 years. Glad to have you aboard with us here today. Some stories we're going to get into a little bit later on as well. Today's episode of Lockdown Hawkeyes is brought to you by Fandul. Well, right now with Fandual, if you are in the middle of it and we are with the NFL, you can jump on. Visit Fandual.com and place your NFL live bets all season.

Starting point is 00:00:59 Todd, today we're going to take a look at the Iowa football season, concluding at 8 and 4 and try to find a grade for this squad and what it looked like. We're going to talk about Tampa, the likely destination for Iowa at the bowl. And I know there's always some stories that seem to pop out from Tampa, you guys on the beat. And I want to dig into that a little bit and a little story time with Todd today. And we'll talk to basketball, Iowa back at home on Saturday as a welcome in Maryland. Did not go very well in East Lansing. And I know you've seen plenty of those in the past.

Starting point is 00:01:29 as well. Todd, good to see it once again. How are things? I'm good. How was Thanksgiving? It was all right. I was under the weather. Was sick last week. Not exactly the best. Now, the great news is probably the best that I felt all week long was on Thursday. So I was able to eat a ton of mashed potatoes. That is my all-time favorite. Have some turkey stuffing pumpkin pie. I was able to do all the standard stuff. But yeah, we've been battling here over the last week and a half. But it feels like we're on the backside of things. So we are improving. How about you? It was great. We had a little family time.

Starting point is 00:02:00 And then on Friday, spent the day at work watching Iowa just completely dismantled Nebraska. So talk about a good holiday, it's a pretty good one. Definitely was. Black Friday, it has become obviously something very special for Hawkeye fans. And Nebraska with the history, starting with the Oklahoma game on Black Friday, morphed into the Colorado game that they played yearly. And now Iowa, and yet this has been so weird because now we've seen Iowa has not lost a game, seven consecutive wins over in Lincoln.

Starting point is 00:02:29 It went from, well, can I will really compete with Nebraska when they joined the Big Ten? Is this really going to be into a rivalry? And now it's completely flipped. And maybe it's not a rivalry because Nebraska doesn't win this game very often. In order to have a rivalry, don't both teams have to win? Yeah, you know, and I think you say something like that, it's ultimately maybe eventually going to come back to bite you.

Starting point is 00:02:50 But yeah, if this really is going to be a rivalry, Nebraska needs to win something. football games here, whether it's in Iowa City or Lincoln. And right now, the only thing that's really holding that rivalry back is the fact that Nebraska hasn't been able to win the close games. And last Friday, that game wasn't even close. They were not in that game at all. So Iowa has the upper hand. I'm sure you've seen that stat and talked about that stat that Kirk Ferrens has more Big Ten wins in Memorial Stadium than the last three Nebraska coaches have. I mean, it's just, it's amazing to think about, but I was expecting a low-scoring Iowa win on Black Friday and to see them hang 40 points on Nebraska was, was pretty surprising given the circumstances.

Starting point is 00:03:36 And for Mark Nowski, maybe his most complete game, the Rutgers was the only game that I think he had more passing yards on the season in a particular game, but in the first half, he had some struggles in that one, and then the offense really revved up in the second half of that one. I look overall and just it felt like finally maybe it's just all came together for Grinowski, both the running ability that we definitely have seen throughout the course of the year. And as a passer and making some good plays, Bonamy again showed up in a big time way and excited about his future, but maybe about his complete performance that they got out of

Starting point is 00:04:07 the quarterback spot when you throw in the throwing component for Mark Grinowski. Yeah, and you know, it all goes about we've talked about this all season long about Mark Grinowski and what he can do with his legs and how he adds a, another element to Iowa's offense, but to see him do what he was able to do, putting the ball in the air as successful as he was last Friday, kind of thinks to me, and it makes me think, you know, the guy realizes he's got at that point in time two college football games left in him, assuming I don't have any reason to believe that he wouldn't play in the ball game, but you never know in this day and age. But I got two games left. I might as well go out and empty the tank. I doubt it was that simple. Maybe it was just a confluence of Nebraska's defense not being as great as they would like it to be in Lincoln.

Starting point is 00:04:56 But it was certainly nice to see him in his final regular season college football game go out and play the way that he did against the Huskers. You know, Todd, you are a degenerate like myself. And I say that, obviously, with all due respect, because we like to gamble. I think we missed a huge opportunity. Once again, Kamari Moulton finished just under 100 yards. And I hadn't looked at the game log, but he has finished what it feels like between 75 and 99 yards and seemingly every single game throughout the course of the season. You know those those wagers that you can make where you have an opportunity to put together, is a guy going to finish between X and X amount of yards? I think we left a lot of money on the table this year because we would have made a lot of here on Moulton.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Well, we would have had to travel out of state. I want to clarify in order to do that. But he was remarkably consistent. And I feel like we've talked all season long about waiting for him to have a breakout game. And now you look back in hindsight, and he didn't really have to have 100 plus yards in every game for Iowa to be successful. Now, you compare last season with Caleb Johnson and what the Hawkeyes had. It feels a little bit underwhelming. But Kamari Moulton was absolutely fantastic.

Starting point is 00:06:08 There's something to be said, look, you're talking to a guy who now sells used cars. There's something to be said about reliability, right? And Camarie Moulton proved to be very reliable for the Hawkeyes this year. He may not have been high performance, but he went out and performed and did exactly what Iowa needed him to do. We're able to stop the run early, big run out of Johnson, the 70-yarder that set up the one-yard touchdown plunge. But after that, defense settled in. And this kind of morph into this season. You know, when we go through and we look at this year and what it turned into, we're going to get into our grading a little bit later on.

Starting point is 00:06:45 they had those moments. You go back to the Oregon game and just not being able to get off the field and the defensive line with as many returns as they had. It was another surprise. Yeah, we know that Johnson's a good running back. We know that Oregon's got some absolute dudes and you go week in a week out. That was maybe one of the more surprising things, though, about this season is just Iowa, for their standards, wasn't very good against the run.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Yeah, and, you know, this season ultimately to me goes down to ifs and butts. and candy and nuts. But we'll get into that maybe during the grading process. But if they would have been able to do just a couple things different, including what you just said there in stopping the run on the defensive side of the football, maybe we're talking about a team that wound up reaching a little bit higher ceiling than the team ultimately did. So Todd, let's get into that.

Starting point is 00:07:38 We're going to make our letter grades for this season. We're going to go through talk about some of the offense, some of the defense, and how you would rate this year. eight and four. A lot of people that feels very ho-hum. For others, it was outstanding and certainly with the schedule that they face. The Big Ten West is no more. We'll get into our grades of this Iowa season and story time from Tampa with Todd. We'll do that as we continue. This is Locked on Hawkeyes. The holidays are officially here, which means gift hunting season is on. And if you want something meaningful, personal and guaranteed to get a reaction or a frames is the

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Starting point is 00:10:09 on the radio, I said that this team is not going bowling, that things were going to come to a thud. I looked at the roster, I looked what they had, and most importantly, I looked at the schedule that was in front of them in 2025, and I believed that Iowa was going to fall short of bull eligibility, something that has happened only twice in the last quarter century, which is ridiculous. It wasn't a hot take. It was really what I thought, though, when I looked at this squad, they got Grinowski, they finish eight and four, and you mentioned the what ifs that are certainly going to be there. I can't put this as an unsuccessful year, even though it does feel in many ways. ways, whole hum, eight and four, here we go again. Yeah, you know, I think in hindsight, I had the team at eight and four, and I think maybe without Mark Grinowski, I probably would have looked at six or seven wins as being the ceiling.

Starting point is 00:10:59 I can't sit here and criticize anybody like, I don't, I don't think anybody else made that prediction. You were probably alone in saying that, but I also, I also, I had him eight four, though, before the season began. This was back in January before they had Garnas. Yeah. And that's not being a shock jock or anything. That's just given your very true feeling on that, Grinowski was supposed to be the game changer. And in the end, it does feel like sort of a ho-hum season because of – look, the losses were not blowout losses, right? The Indiana game fell apart in the last closing minutes. They played Oregon about as tight and as close as anybody has so far this year other than Indiana. The losses were close, and I think that's really what people will look back on this team and ask what could have been. Because if you

Starting point is 00:11:58 win one of those games, maybe you're in the conversation, you know, going into the Nebraska game about the playoff still. You win two of those. You're certainly in the playoff conversation. and in this day and age, I feel like I get tired of saying this, but the playoffs are really the only thing that matters. There's 12 teams at the end of the year that sort of accomplish the goal, and everybody else falls short in one way or another. And it just, it feels weird sitting here saying this, because as somebody who said 8 and 4 at the beginning of the season,

Starting point is 00:12:32 yeah, 8 and 4 feels like it could have been a whole lot more. And that's, I think, why it is kind of difficult to grade this. I want to go a couple of position groups. I want to start with Mark Garnowski. And I think this might be the most difficult. We talked about this a little bit. You know, if you had to put a letter grade on his season, and maybe my expectations were too high of him as a passer,

Starting point is 00:12:52 but I certainly anticipated a whole lot more. Now, could the injury had something to do with it, possibly? But remember how much he struggled against Albany, how much he struggled against Iowa State, even before that injury he sustained against Indiana. He was not exactly the smoothest passer that we saw. And I thought we were going to see better. Of course, he also had surgery before the season began, didn't get to go through spring practice.

Starting point is 00:13:13 You know, what I put it all together, and maybe where my expectations were, he far exceeded as a runner what I thought he was going to be. I'd probably say it's a solid B because I thought there was just going to be a whole lot more passing. And with that, I think all of us just wanted to see even more take that next step in the passing game. And we just didn't see that this year. Yeah, I think if we're grading on performance, it's certainly in that, that, that, B area. If you want to grade him against the expectations at the beginning of the year, it's probably a notch or two lower than that because you're talking about a guy that was preseason, a lot of preseason magazines had him. Preseason all Big Ten, there was a very faint.

Starting point is 00:13:55 You know, is he a Heisman candidate given his background as the winningest quarterback in college football? If you compare it to all of the preseason accolades, he comes up short. But I agree with what he brought from a running standpoint and doing the things that he did on the ground helped to make up for some of the deficiencies maybe that he showed at times through the passing game. And you're right, it goes back, he struggled early on. It wasn't just in a game here or there. So I would say a B to a B minus would be a solid grade.

Starting point is 00:14:33 And keeping in mind that C is average. So B, B is above average. It's not great, but above average. And I think that's probably a fitting grade for him in his only years of Hawkeye. Offensive line was tremendous. I think Trevor Lauk was a huge surprise, one of the big question marks of what he put together this season.

Starting point is 00:14:52 They dealt with some injuries. The guys were banged up at different points. I mean, we would go back to that Iowa State game. Remember, Jennings Dunker wasn't in there late. How many times he had to leave both Stevens a lot, yet they gutted and were able to do a really nice job. Wide receiver, if you had to put a letter grade on it this season, I guess it's not enough, but it's not a whole lot higher than that.

Starting point is 00:15:13 I would, there's still schools out there that give you an incomplete. I think maybe that's what, and a lot of that has to go back to, you know, your, your group partner in the project, the quarterback, maybe didn't do his job and you get, you get pulled under for it. So I would give the receiver group an incomplete. It just, it felt like there could have been more, especially. going back to Media Day, and I remember, you know, one of the last things that I did before I lost my radio gig was talking with Tim Lester, and he was so adamant that this wide receiver group was going to be so much better this year than last years. And I just don't

Starting point is 00:15:56 think that that turned out to be the case. And again, a lot of it goes back to the preseason expectations with Mark Grinowski, but it's hard to sit here and feel like that group accomplished what a lot of people thought they could during the preseason. So I'll give them an incomplete because I can't completely fault them. It's no fault of their own that they get an incomplete grade. Now, this is going to be incredibly unfair. Maybe I'm doing this on a curve because of what we've seen historically. I would probably go like C minus for the defensive line.

Starting point is 00:16:27 I, they didn't get to the quarterback often. And I know, teams get it out quick. There's not as many sacks available, if you will, those kind of things. But when you return to senior defensive ends in Hercut-Lewan, you got Aaron Graves in the middle, who I thought was tremendous this year. Some of those young guys that we saw at moments, Brian Allen,

Starting point is 00:16:46 this is a Brian Allen podcast, by the way, just so you know, love that dude. And I can't wait to see what he does in a full-time role. And hopefully a fully healthy spring for him as he missed last spring. Still, when you go through, we talked about the inability at big moments to stop the run, the lack of sacks.

Starting point is 00:17:03 It's because of what we've seen historically, probably defensive line, but I think I'd go C-minus. Am I being unfair? No, I don't think so, and to keep the educational tie-ins here. To me, it kind of reminds you of a teacher that maybe had multiple children in the same family where maybe the oldest was the best student, and every kid who comes through with that same last name is going to be compared to them. You know, you're comparing this year's Iowa defense to a lot of defenses that got A's and B-pluses over the years with Phil Parker. And this defense, in particular, the defensive line just didn't quite

Starting point is 00:17:40 live up the previous standard. So to say C average, I think is probably pretty accurate here. There were moments where that defensive line looked great, but they don't quite stack up with some of the defenses we've seen over the last decade or so. And when you go with the linebacker, I'm definitely below average, what we're used to. I mean, it probably wouldn't be a stretch to say D plus yet. I loved what we saw for Carver. Carson Shire this year and how good he was, which is probably unfair when you're talking about the linebacker group, even in the defensive backfield, which was tremendous and far exceeded my expectations coming into the year. T.J. Hall, he took the leap this year. Xavier Wampa

Starting point is 00:18:18 definitely played his best football of his career. Zach Lutmer turned into a star, what you have there, but they didn't have a ton of interceptions. And because of that, I can't give them like an A or an A plus, maybe an A minus. I guess B plus. I think you can make a conversation for that. In the defensive backfield, which is crazy. And you put this all together and I'm saying a C minus for the defensive line. And I'm saying a D plus for the linebackers. And I'm saying it maybe a B plus for the defensive backfield. This is still a top 10 defense in the country. Again, when you measure it against the standard that Phil Parker has set, yeah, they fall short. But when you look at them nationally, if you're a fan of another program, you'd probably kill to have the defense that Iowa had

Starting point is 00:19:03 this season, and yet it just feels like they weren't very good. And I don't know, I'm not saying that, but the perception was that they were not as good because they're getting judged against some really great defenses over the last couple years. And we talked about this going back to the very beginning of the year about all of the talent that they had lost, and not just talent, but experienced talent. And it showed at times this year. One final, it is a special teams, and this is another one, because

Starting point is 00:19:33 of the past. So you have the returner of the year. Weijan, tremendous once again. Yet Weigin had a couple of rough moments, including the Iowa State game when he certainly had his worst game of the year and definitely can pin a lot of that loss, I think, on him. Drew Stevens, really good, but not excellent. You know, not the A plus and some misses important ones, including the Indiana game and a couple other moments that he missed big kicks. Reese Dakin took a step back, I thought, in his sophomore campaign. The snaps were not very good as they brought in the BC transfer. And that, didn't work out, certainly at an A plus level.

Starting point is 00:20:05 You go back to the Oregon game. You lose by a couple, and there's a safety in that game. It's another one of those where individually, you look at some of this components, very good, but I would struggle to go anything higher than a B moment. And that's B minus. And that's only because of C and Weegean in the return game, because the other elements just were not at the elite level that we're used to. Yeah, I would say C, an average at best, but Weechan's performance elevates them up to that

Starting point is 00:20:32 B minus. give them a little bit of a bump, because where would this team have been without him? Even though, as you mentioned, he did have a game or two here where there were some warts, his performance, the rest of the group benefits. You know, Stevens had the yips early on. I believe, I agree with you, Dakin took a step back, which is unfortunate. And overall, again, not something that you're used to talking about, but an Iowa special teams unit that was just seemingly average.

Starting point is 00:21:03 this year. Not used to that, no doubt. Well, no, pretty tough graders here on an eight and four year. And when you go through it, you kind of grade it that way, maybe it does lean a little bit of credence that eaten even at eight and four. So it's a little bit more disappointing. I'm kind of a different way of doing things, Todd, and we're having a little fun here as we get ready for the offseason. Before that, though, we got a bowl game. Tampa likely going to be the destination. You've been there. I've been there. Why? Story time. We'll do that when we come back. Plus a little basketball talk.

Starting point is 00:21:34 We'll see how tough we grade that difficult loss to Michigan State. Some hopes and some stories in Tampa when we come back. It's locked on Hawkeyes. NFL Sundays move fast, one big play, and suddenly everything feels different. That what makes live betting with Fanduil so exciting. You're not just watching the game. You're reacting to it in real time. With Fandual, you can place bets as the action unfolds.

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Starting point is 00:22:53 Tampa appears to be the destination. Now selfishly for myself, I wanted to go to Vegas. I wanted to make that happen in Iowa to head out there. Doesn't look like that's going to be the case. Nebraska likely is going to be the one that gets to the Las Vegas Bowl bid. Vanderbilt, Texas, two likely opponents in that game. And there'll be some quarterback intrigue, certainly in that one, if it is the old Outback Bull now called the ReliQuest Bowl.

Starting point is 00:23:16 But Todd, I want to get your perspective because I've always heard these inside murmurs from you guys, you guys on the beat, some of those stories of Tampa. Now, I always just goes as a fan. I have sat, I think, in the press box for one bowl game, 2004. Capital One Bowl, well, 2005, Capital One Bowl, after the 0-4 season. That was the only time. I normally just go as a fan. So I don't get these stories.

Starting point is 00:23:41 Fill us in. You got your best Tampa story or something that, something at least that you can pass along to our fine listeners and viewers out there. Well, you know, some of them aren't still fit for air. I don't think the statute of limitations have run out on them. But, you know, it's a bowl game that Iowa has been to in so much, many times during the Kirk Ferrence era, but the interesting thing is from the perspective of the whole setup, nothing changes. So if you were there in 2003, the plan is pretty much the same.

Starting point is 00:24:16 They've got a beach day in Clearwater, which I'm going to warn you right now if you're watching and you've never been planned some extra time because it's difficult to get there. Traffic is just absolutely miserable going from Tampa to Clearwater for the beach day, but you've got to do it. If you're a Hawkeye fan that hasn't been to Tampa, you've got to do it. I don't think they've ever had bad weather during any of the trips to Tampa. There's the beach day. There's Ebor City. There's just so much to do in Tampa.

Starting point is 00:24:44 And the media hospitality room is staffed by a guy by the name of John James. He and his wife, Donna, run the hospitality room every year. They come down from the Jacksonville area. He was a roadie at one point in time for the all-nobiles. brothers and some other he's got some stories he pours some stiff drinks uh yeah there's a lot of great stories there's a steak how so the hotel's always been the same hotel uh every time like i said nothing changes and so there's a seafood and steak place that's a couple blocks away that one year a member of the beat ordered something at market price and was surprised the uh when he ultimately got the

Starting point is 00:25:29 bill. And I think he successfully was able to expense that one away. There's a Waffle House up the street that I have been known to frequent. I ran into former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Dwight Smith in there. Probably should have been a Super Bowl MVP the year that Tampa Bay was in that game. But he was coming in to get something to eat on the way to the hospital. His wife was giving birth. And somebody may or may not have lost a pair of shoes one night in Tampa as well. But that doesn't even touch the dollhouse, the dollhouse, which is two houses down from the media hotel. So, yeah, there's plenty of stories, but too many of them aren't very family friendly. But I will tell you this, it is a fun bowl game.

Starting point is 00:26:17 I know there's going to be some Hawkeye fans that are, quote, unquote, tired of going to Tampa. But it really, from a perspective of how they treat the fans and the teams and the players, it really is a great bowl destination. And what it boils down to me, Trent, is it's always an SEC opponent. And sometimes the motivation of the SEC opponent is lacking in that game. Iowa's motivation usually is not lacking. Now, it doesn't mean that they win all the time. We've seen them get schallacked.

Starting point is 00:26:47 There was that 30 to 3 game against Florida. I've got a giant banner in my garage that I was gifted from the media hospitality room from that game. But South Carolina, the year that I will beat South Carolina in the Outback Hole, one of the things that they do every year is a game night in Ebor City where it's kind of like a Dave and Busters thing. And I was with Tom Kakert, and we were covering that. We were there. And the South Carolina guys just, they didn't want to be there. They weren't having fun.

Starting point is 00:27:20 How can you not have fun playing video games and eating pizza? And then you see them the next day, there's always a Bush Gardens trip. And the Hawkeyes are riding the roller coasters and they're having fun. And South Carolina was just, you would have thought they were at a funeral. And so that was, if sports betting had been legal at that point, I would have told everybody and their brother, yeah, they're going to hang one on the old ball coach here because that South Carolina team did not want to be there. Now, what it's going to come down to is how many opt-outs does that opponent have? And quite frankly, how many opt-outs does Iowa have? We saw that with Caleb Johnson last year.

Starting point is 00:27:59 You know, Iowa is not immune in this era to having players opt-out of the bowl game. But it's a great destination. Like I said, the weather is usually fantastic. It's relatively affordable to get to. And you've got to do it at least once. And I felt that they wanted to get Kirk Ference back at least one more time before he ultimately retired and this year just feels like a great year to get him to Tampa. They love him and he loves Tampa, so we'll see what the hog.

Starting point is 00:28:26 I'm intrigued by Vanderbilt. I think that'd be a fun matchup if everybody were to play in it. And the last time Iowa ran into Texas in a bowl game, the Alamo Bowl, I think Andy Brodell probably still has nightmares about that reverse that Ken O'Keefe dialed up in that game. So bottom line is, bowls don't mean what they used. too, but it doesn't mean that you still can't go and have fun. And as a media member, I'm not the only one that's had his share of fun in Tampa over the years.

Starting point is 00:28:57 Love that. And this message brought to you by the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Not just kidding. But Todd, I was at that South Carolina one. That was a real fun one, the little bit that I remember of it, outside of the domination over the game cox of that one. Diego Pavia, that's going to be a party too. If he gets there with his family members making their way to Tampa, they're going to have a fun time

Starting point is 00:29:17 at Ybor City. Hey, before we wrap up here, Todd, final couple of minutes. Basketball, Tuesday night against Michigan State. We've seen a lot of clubbings, and it happened again against Michigan State. Does it change your perception at all of this Iowa basketball team? Michigan State is incredibly good. And this is early season over the last 20 years, about as good as Michigan State's looked early in the year. Normally it takes a while for them to get revved up, but it's not just what they did against Iowa.

Starting point is 00:29:45 If you look at what they've done here in the early portions here, does it change your perception at all or maybe expectation with this year's Iowa basketball team? Not at all. Although in watching that game on Peacock a little bit, it was somewhat jarring. I mean, they did very much to me look like a, you know, a mid-major team playing against a high-calibre Big Ten team in the Instability tournament where you realize that there's just a difference between some of the natural talent and size and strength.

Starting point is 00:30:18 But I, you know, the 7-0 start was great. I think some fans may have gotten out over their skis a little bit. We'll see what happens moving forward. But like you said, going back to Tom Davis when they first opened the Breslin Center and Steve Alford and Todd Lickletter, Fran won what, I believe three games there, something like that in his tenure. So the place has always been a house of horrors for Iowa in the last 25 plus years. And we'll see how they do against Maryland.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Not looking forward to that Iowa State game very much after catching them last night against Albany or whoever it was that they're playing that they doubled up. But at the end of the day, you know, the thing that was troubling about the Michigan State game was Bennett Sturt's not playing very well. And maybe that was just, hey, first Big Ten game, first road, you know, road. road game, the is own. That is not a great place to have your first Big Ten road game experience at. But I wouldn't necessarily hold it against Hawkeye basketball fans for feeling a little wary at this point. But it doesn't change my perception at all. I still think that there's a tremendous amount of talent on that roster and that they're going to surprise some people this year. And we could be looking back on this, you know, in January or February. Well, you know what,

Starting point is 00:31:36 maybe if they played these two early Big Ten games in the middle of the Big Ten schedule, maybe it would have been closer, maybe the results would have been different. But that Michigan State team, like you said, we're normally used to seeing Tomazotene sort of grow into themselves. This one's good right out of the gate in November. And we're going to be talking about the Spartans all season long into March if they continue to play the way that they have. Yeah, it definitely feels like there's kind of a top tier now with the Big Ten with Purdue,

Starting point is 00:32:04 Michigan, and Michigan State. And then you get into the next group. And who knows, out of that next group, as we saw Indiana lose to Minnesota last night. It is going to be wide open and it's going to be important. You're going to steal a couple of road games, hold serve at home. Unfortunately for Iowa, they got two games with Purdue this year. Not sure how good that's going to go. Todd, out of time for today.

Starting point is 00:32:22 Good talking with you. You mentioned the matchup in Hilton next week. We'll preview that one next Thursday with you. Looking forward to it. We'll talk to you next Thursday. All right. See you, Trent. That's Todd Bromlecamp.

Starting point is 00:32:33 I'm Trent Condon. And this is Lockdown, Hawkeyes. your daily Iowa Hawkeye podcast. Thanks for being with us and helping make Lockdown the number one sports podcast network. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Until then,

Starting point is 00:32:45 go Hawks.

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