Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - #Swarm20 has incredible weekend! | Where do the Hawks go from here in 2020? | Can Tyler Cook make the Nuggets?

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

The Iowa Hawkeyes had a huge recruiting weekend, and they are now up to 20 recruits. We recap the weekend and talk about where they go from here. We also make sure to touch on the big news for Iowa Hawkeyes in professional basketball discussing Megan Gustafson on the Dallas Wings and Tyler Cook on the Denver Nuggets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are listening to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Locked On Sports Network, hosted by Andrew Wade, editor at dearoldgold.com. Welcome to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. I am your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at dearoldgold.com, and today's show is brought to you in part by Hotels.com. Don't hate like your friend's trip. Book your own with Hotels.com and get rewarded basically everywhere. Hotels.com, Be there. Do that.

Get rewarded. All right, and we are back after a little bit of a hiatus. I know I was out last week with some travel. I had a bachelor party, had a lot of work going on. But we have some great content coming at you this week. On today's show, we're going to be talking a lot about recruiting. If you've been paying any attention to Iowa football, you know this past weekend was huge. We've been getting recruits coming in left and right. And then on segment number three, we're going to cover Megan Gustafson and Tyler Cook and what they're doing in their pro careers. We also have some great content coming up later on

this week. We are hoping to get Matt Vandenberg, the former Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver, to join the show. Hopefully get that out to you tomorrow morning. And then we'll be kind of figuring out what we're going to do out on Thursday. And then some great content obviously coming at you in the coming weeks as well as we try to get a few more guest appearances on. If you are joining the show for the first time, make sure to check out some of our other great episodes. We've had some really awesome guests on the show. Ricky Stanzi, Drew Tate, Nicholas Bayer, Marcus Fizer, and a plethora of other Iowa United

players, the TBT team playing in the $2 million winner-take-all tournament from the state of Iowa. So make sure to check out all of that as well on our previous episodes. If you are not following us on social media, make sure you do that as well. We're on Twitter at LockedOnIowa, and we're on Facebook at LockedOnHawkeyes. You can get your updates there. That's where you're going to know if we're not going to be posting episodes. That's where you're going to know what content is coming up in the future.

And I like to post just random stuff about the Iowa Hawkeyes as well. So if you'd follow us there, you're going to get all the information you need to know about the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Also, what would really help us out is if you follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the Himalaya Podcast app. That is how these episodes are going to get downloaded directly to your phone every single time we post a brand new episode. It makes it better for us as well. The more follows we get, the more likes, the more reviews we get. It obviously looks great for our show to the network, so I really appreciate that as well.

But let's jump into our awesome weekend of recruiting for the Iowa football team. Quite possibly the best weekend the Iowa Hawkeyes have ever had recruiting. They had a huge weekend bringing in about 22 guys, I believe, on official visits doing a recruiting weekend for the Iowa football team. And they did a great job of reeling in players. They are now up to 20 commitments in the class of 2020, which is fantastic. I think one thing before we jump into a recap of the weekend is they brought in Deuce Hogan. And we had Deuce on the show a couple

months ago. He didn't get a chance to listen to that. I would highly recommend listening to that interview because in that interview, you could just tell Deuce is a well-spoken kid. He understands what his role is. And the reports are coming out that he gave a speech during the recruiting weekend that, you know, kind of really lit a fire under some of those recruits, you know, buds that basically saying, you know, this is where you want to be at. This is where they're being legitimate at. This is where they're telling you the truth that this is where they want to help you develop as a player and not blowing smoke up your butt. So I thought that was a really cool thing for him to be able to do. And I love the fact that he's in this class. He's doing such a good job of understanding what his role is

and creating such a good atmosphere for Iowa Hawkeye commits. He's always active on Twitter. He's always active telling people good job or congratulations, whether they commit to the Iowa Hawkeyes or anywhere else, just along for the ride and letting people know that he wants them to be in Iowa City. And hopefully we can get him a few more pass-catching weapons. We'll talk about that on segment number two. But a quick recap.

We have 10 recruits in the class of 2020 just in the last two weeks. And it started off pretty strong. Mason Richmond from Kansas actually committed about two weeks ago. He was the first guy to kind of kick off this June commitment spree. He's a good kid, played defensive end or defensive tackle, excuse me, in high school, but has a lot of good frame, has the ability to put on some weight when he plays tackle position for the Iowa football team. Currently stands at 6'6", 252 pounds from Kansas. Had a few other offers, obviously, from other big-time programs.

So excited to see what he can offer when he joins the Iowa Hawkeye football program. A couple other guys that we kind of joined prior to the weekend, we had two Largo, Florida teammates, Quavon Matthews, and we also had Kalen Goley. Goley is a defensive back playing under a former Iowa Hawkeye as well down in Largo, Florida. He has really good hands and a great tackler on film. Kind of one of those things where you kind of expect that if you're being developed from an Iowa Hawkeye defensive back. One of the things Bill Parker preaches is the ability to secure tackles and be a great open field tackler.

He's going to fit right in there. A little tiny on the weight side at 165, but I expect him to gain probably another 25 pounds hopefully in the next year, but definitely when he joins the program. Good opportunity, again, playing under Phil Parker in his defense. He does a great job of developing defensive backs, so excited to see what he can do. His teammate, Qu Quavo Matthews 5 foot 11 165 pounds he's a wide receiver small explosive a little bit tinier but I would say his tape is very similar to Amir Smith-Marset in the terms of the fact that he's just blowing past

defenders left and right they really can't even touch him so I love seeing that as well. Okay, now we're coming to one more guy to talk about, Yaha Black. I might be saying that incorrectly, but he's from Minnesota. Took him right out of Minnesota's backyard. Big, strong, incredible at the point of attack. Against high school competition, he looks kind of unblockable, which, to be fair, it's high school competition. But again, he's just kind of dominating that level, which is fantastic to see. And those are the first four guys to commit prior to this weekend. After that, this weekend just got nuts. And we'll talk about the

2021 recruits here in a bit. But before then, let's talk about the 2020 recruits that committed after this weekend. First, I want to start with Jay Higgins. He's a two-star recruit. You might be looking at this guy as, shoot, who cares? We got a two-star recruit, not a big deal. This is classic Iowa, though, being Iowa and not giving a crap about what other people think. They are more concerned about what they see in his tape. And I love this.

One of our contributors on dearoldgold.com, Ryan Sykes, checked out his game film and absolutely loved Higgins' tape. Very instinctive person. And one of the things to keep in mind is that as Iowa is moving to the 4-2-5, they don't need as many linebackers on the roster. They have a lot of linebackers over the last couple seasons, underclassmen that are going to be able to play. They weren't really looking for linebackers in this class. But when you find a guy like Jay Higgins, they just couldn't sleep on him.

They had to go and get him. So I love seeing that, even kind of bending from what you really need to what you really want. Higgins could be a guy that we could be talking about in two or three years as an incredible linebacker for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Another guy who was a little bit under-recruited, Brendan Dees-Fernandez, a 6'1", 160-pound cornerback out of Michigan. Again, a bit undersized, a bit small. Iowa was his first D1 offer. So again, kind of concerning that if you're an Iowa football fan, you're

looking at that probably thinking, what in the hell? What are they doing? But I would say this, Phil Parker knows what he wants in a secondary player he's going to come into camp and be ready to you know learn and be willing to play under Phil Parker and they've also seen him twice in camp so you know recruiting is kind of a weird funky thing where if you're not going to big time camps you may not get those ratings or rankings that you typically see some people might be sleeping on you some people might just be sleeping on you for stupid reasons you can't control such as being a little bit light on the weight side. So I'm excited to see this kid play. I trust in Iowa football and I trust in Phil Parker's judgment there as well.

The secondary did not stop though. They also got A.J. Lawson and Reggie Bracey. Reggie Bracey was a recent commit out of Mobile, Alabama. Didn't get a chance to watch a lot of his tape just because there's not a lot of tape from him, but he did offer his to Indiana, UAB, and Troy. This guy likes contact, can track the ball as a defender, and I'm hearing reports that it kind of reminds people of a Bob Sanders-esque player, which is also kind of a comparison

that they made to A.J. Lawson as well. A three-star, he's a ball hawking safety prospect. He has a lot of size. He can make offensive players really pay if they come over the middle. Again, that 6'1", 177 pounds, that's kind of a big safety, especially when you look at a Bob Sanders S-type player. Even a Monty Hooker wasn't overly big. This guy has some weight or some room to put on some weight as well. And then finishing up the recruitments, we have two defensive end players. Lucas Van Ness held 29 offers. He's been connected to the Iowa Hawkeyes though for a while.

His dad's a Hawkeye fan. His sister goes to the University of Iowa. And now he's going to be an Iowa Hawkeye. He's a 19th-rated prospect out of the state of Illinois and the 57th-rated strong side defensive end. So a good player at 6'5", 240 pounds out of Barrington, Illinois. Iowa does have a pretty good pipeline to Barrington, been quite a few good players out of that area. And then finally, Aaron Witt. This guy was

committed to the Minnesota Gophers and then decommitted because he just didn't feel like it was a right fit. And that was good for the Iowa football team. This 6'5", 230-pound strong side defensive end out of Winona, Minnesota, is insane on tape. I watched his film and I was like, holy crap. He was making plays over the field, just blowing by defenders, blowing by double and triple teams. At one point he got kind of held up. But then one of his other defensive players knocked down a ball and he picked it off from the defensive end position. So pretty impressive overall. I'm excited

to see what he can do in his senior year again playing for a smaller school Winona but so you can't you can't argue with what you're seeing on the game film and obviously what the Iowa Hawkeyes loved in Aaron Witt pretty exciting stuff all around absolutely loved it again huge weekend for the Iowa Hawkeyes they are now up to 20 commits in the class of 2020, and their total ranking right now is 14th. And keep in mind that that kind of goes off of total points. So they're going to drop down over the course of the next couple months as some of these schools get more recruits coming in. Oftentimes, some of your high recruits or your four and five stars wait a little bit to actually commit to programs as well. So that's going to drive the Iowa Hawkeyes down.

There's a chance that a few of these guys, though, get moved up to four stars over the course of the next couple months, depending on if they go to camps or kind of what people are seeing on their game film. So lots of great stuff, though, going for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Just kind of exciting to get a class kind of ready and committed this early. And lots of great stuff also coming up in the class 2021 as we're going to talk about on segment number two just a quick reminder though we do a few messages coming

up from our sponsors including a great message from twillery.com and if you have not heard my message about twillery.com please tune in right now before you maybe tune out for a few seconds but twillery.com is fantastic i have some awesome seconds, but twillery.com is fantastic. I have some awesome dress shirts from twillery.com. Absolutely love these shirts. They are fantastic, right? So I'm originally from Iowa. I know a lot of my listeners are from Iowa. And one of the things I hated about the summer, it is hot, it's muggy, it's humid. It's tough to wear nice clothes without sweating when you walk outside. Twillery.com makes it easy though. They don't wrinkle, they don't itch, and they don't sweat. They also have some awesome deals going on.

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but we're going to be covering it again on segment number two, because at this point, people are probably asking, where does the Iowa football program go from here? What do they do in the class 2020? And at 20 recruits at this point, you got to keep in mind, there's a chance that people decommit. There's a chance that people kind of stray and go to a different school. It's less likely with the Iowa Hawkeyes just because of the kind of players they're recruiting. And they're very open and honest. Don't commit if you're not ready. So you very rarely see people kind of leave the program beforehand. Obviously, we saw that with Benjamin down in Arizona State, which is unfortunate. He's a fantastic running back. But it's unlikely we see a lot of players leaving the state or leaving the program before that you've been joining or decommitting.

So where do they go from here? With 20 scholarship offers already or 20 scholarship commits right now, there's roughly probably five or six spots open and that could change. The NCAA allows 85 scholarship spots for football teams. Obviously, your senior classes are going to have a little bit less. So what does the Iowa football program do? I think right now they really need another offensive line prospect they've really hammered home on the defensive line bringing in seven defensive ends or seven defensive linemen in general they need a tackle preferably or some sort of interior offensive lineman they do have

Connor McLaughlin the four-star tackle out of Florida. He's also looking at Stanford as well, so a good program over in Palo Alto that he could be going to play for and a good school as well. I think they kind of have a leg up on Iowa in terms of the school, probably a step below Iowa in terms of tackle development. But getting a guy like him would be absolutely huge. I think also just in general the Iowa Hawkeyes have the ability now to kind of hone in and really put their focus on a few guys that they really want to get. And again,

I think Connor McLaughlin is one of those guys. I think they have a chance to add a wide receiver or two. There's a couple of guys they're kind of looking at right now. David Baker out of Indianapolis, he is committing in five days. He's going to announce his commitment. Whether or not that's Iowa, I don't know. It does seem like he's a little bit high or he's high on Iowa's list and Iowa's high on his list as well, but could be a guy who ends up staying in state. We also have Devontae Vines, a kid out of Connecticut, and we have KV and Max. So a couple of wide receivers that Iowa is looking at, all three-star recruits. But again, we need some wide receiver help for the Iowa Hawkeyes they typically try to get at least two guys at the wide receiver position so I could see them going at least one more if not two more and then the tight end position I know they spent a lot of capital

and scholarships last year on the tight end position getting three guys I think they're working out a couple guys defensive end though but they can't pass up some of this talent that's really interested in them and they can't really pass up the kind of momentum they have after no offense t.j hawkinson went in the first round of the nfl draft this past year i fully expect them to at least pull in one more but there's a chance they pull in two they're looking at two four-star tight end recruits luke lachey and theo johnson both awesome players their tape, I was really excited, especially, actually, Luke Leitchie. His tight end film was freaking impressive, to say the least. I'm trying to figure out what's the right word to say here because when I watched it, I was just flabbergasted.

This kid looked like a wide receiver. He also returned punts and played cornerback for his team. He stands 6'6", 220 pounds, has some more weight to gain on that frame, but four-star tight end prospect. Seems to be kind of rising up on Iowa's list, and Iowa seems to be rising up on his list as well. Another guy to watch out for is Theo Johnson, a kid out of Canada, ran a 4'6", 7'4", 40-yard dash, and posted a 35.2-inch vertical as a high schooler, mind you. He's been highly recruited from a bunch of big time schools. He recently announced Iowa in his top seven.

So an opportunity for them to grab a guy that could be a huge difference maker. Kind of reminds me a little bit Noah Fant in that way. You know, just a freak athlete, a guy who, you know, put a tight end spot, maybe need him a little bit more blocking because he doesn't have as much experience there. When I saw what he did from at the high school level, most of his time, he was either running deep or taking screen passes. So I think that'll be kind of interesting to see what his development is like, but it'll definitely need some work on the blocking him. But if they were to get a guy like Theo Johnson, I think, especially given his size already at six foot6", 240 pounds,

we could actually see him playing his true freshman season, depending on how the other tight ends are doing on the depth chart. But I think those are really the three spots that Iowa needs to focus on now. That's where they kind of go for the Class 2020, getting another tight end, getting another wide receiver, getting another offensive lineman, possibly two at one of those positions as well. And then kind of figuring out what that last two or three scholarship spots go. Things kind of change. I bet they kind of hold off a little bit now. There could be someone that kind of opens up in state or opens up as a top prospect around the nation. They're not going to pass up talented

players. So there's a good chance that something like that happens as well as we get further out in the recruiting period. And the last thing too is just the class 2021 Iowa now has two commits the big one though was this weekend Connor Colby um in-state kid four-star recruit commanding the Iowa Hawkeyes a year before actually more like a year and a half before the deadline a year before that commitment period is really expected from him um big time get for the Iowa Hawkeyes as long as he stays. Again, as we saw with Deuce Hogan, getting a top recruit early really helps the momentum of your class. So I'm excited to see kind of how that plays out as Iowa begins extending more offers to

2021 players. That does it, though, for segment number two. Just a quick reminder that on segment number three, we're going to be talking on Megan Gustafson and Tyler Cook. So stay tuned for that after a few messages from our sponsors. We are back with segment two, excuse me, segment number three, and we have Megan Gustafson and Tyler Cook coming up to talk about on this show. Big thing for Megan Gustafson, she got signed by the Dallas Wings.

And that was absolutely huge for her. Nice to see her back in the WNBA. She should have never left. The Dallas Wings are being ridiculous. But she's starting to get a little bit more playing time now, which is absolutely fantastic. The first game she played in, she didn't actually play at all. She sat on the bench.

A little bit unfortunate. But the second game, she got in the game. And that was fun to watch. Nine minutes and 54 seconds of actual playing time. She went two for two from the field and pulled in three rebounds and had one assist so a little bit lighter of a night. The Wings did win that game against the Phoenix Mercury. The next night though two nights later she had a fantastic game. By fantastic I mean she actually got in the game which is huge. The whole team kind of struggled over the night. She actually posted the second best plus minus of the team at negative five, which again, not saying a ton, but she did play pretty well overall. In 17 minutes of action, she went two of six from the field, not her best scoring performance, but did hit three or four

free throws, made eight points over, or sorry, excuse me, seven points overall, had eight rebounds, which is absurd, especially, you know, people are worried about her size. Don't be worried about it anymore. She was able to get eight rebounds, which is tied for the second most on her team. And then she also had one steal and only one turnover. So pretty, pretty awesome stat line for her. They play again tomorrow night. So make sure to check that out as well. if you can. I'm really excited to watch her play. It's awesome to see her actually finally get some playing time and get a chance to play for the Dallas Wings. If she's able to keep up sort of this momentum, she might be able to stick around once some of these players come back from injury, some of

these players come back from the European rosters. Hopefully, she'll be able to keep a spot on there. Although, I would love seeing her on the Iowa United this summer, this is really where she belongs, and she's a great player and deserves to be there. Also, in NBA news, Tyler Cook did not get drafted. That was not unexpected. He's a great player. He wasn't really going to get much better at Iowa. It makes sense why he left and went for professional basketball, but he also wasn't going to get drafted.

He just wasn't rising up draft boards very much. Not a lot of hype around him. A lot of other players kind of pushing down as well. You see a seven foot two center like Bull Bull get pushed down to the second round, actually conveniently getting drafted by the Denver Nuggets as well. But Tyler Cook ended up signing with the Denver Nuggets. This is a big, big time signing for him because he injured his ankle in Detroit during a workout. So he wasn't going to be able to play in the NBA Summer League, which is a great opportunity for prospects to show what they can do and potentially get signed by a G League team or an NBA team. Now he has a chance to rehab a little bit before playing with the Denver Nuggets.

And this is a weird roster. They were one of the best rosters in the Western Conference this past year. They have a lot of players at the power forward position, but a lot of those players could be leaving. You could be seeing Paul Millsap maybe not resigning. He has an option that I don't think the Nuggets are going to pick up. There's a few younger guys that didn't get a lot of playing time last year that I can't imagine Denver tries to sign back. So there's a chance that Tyler Cook actually does make this roster. He is going to have to beat out one or two players, though, which I'm not really sure if that'll happen.

The one thing to keep in mind is Denver Nuggets do not have a G League team, so it's not like they can assign him to a G League team or assign him to a two-way contract. But if he can show a solid performance during the preseason, there's a chance that he can maybe make a G League roster after getting released by the Denver Nuggets. So we'll keep you posted on all the happenings for Tyler Cook and the Denver Nuggets. That'll be interesting to see. Hopefully Peter Jock as well, playing for the Northern Arizona Suns.

Hopefully he gets an opportunity to play for an NBA team. He lit it up last year in the G League, shooting over 40% from three-point and playing solid defense at six foot six. I'm hoping that him playing for the Iowa United gives him an opportunity to showcase his abilities again and maybe get picked up by an NBA team heading into the NBA season for the 2019-2020 season. But that'll do it, though, for our show today.

Now, again, a lot of recruiting stuff to talk about. So I had some basketball stuff to talk about. We have Matt Vandenberg coming up on the show tomorrow, hoping to get Matt Crawford of the Iowa United on the show to talk about some of the interesting developments and big breaking news they have to tell us about the Iowa United. So hopefully to get him on the show as well later in this week. Again,

I appreciate you joining the show today. I'm sorry about not having some shows last week. As you know, a summer months is a little bit more difficult from a content perspective. I'm also out of town a lot more. I have a lot of travel, a lot of vacation stuff, so my apologies again, but we will be back with at least three episodes this week. Again, Matt

Vandenberg tomorrow, hopefully Matt Crawford later on this week or early next week. If you are not following us on Twitter, make sure to do that as well at LockedOnIowa. Make sure to follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the Himalaya Podcast app. That'll give you the best opportunity to download those episodes immediately.

That way you do not have to wait. You don't have to look for them. They're just brought to your phone so you can start listening to the latest episode of the LockedOnHawkeyes podcast. I hope you have a fantastic Tuesday morning, Hawkeye Nation. Have a great day, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Go Hawks We'll see you next time.