The Monday Kickoff: Iowa's Ability To Bounce Back Saved Season
It was here at The Monday Kickoff in the days after Iowa’s 24-22 loss at Wisconsin, the one that effectively doomed the Hawkeyes’ Big Ten West Division title hopes, where we decided to project all of the ways the season could end.
Finishing 9-3 was the best-case scenario, 6-6 was the nightmare option. The likelihood of how the season was going to finish, though, seemed more 8-4ish.
All the Hawkeyes did was win their last three games — neither of the wins were particularly easy — and got to the best-case scenario.
The credit for that run belongs to everyone within the program, coach Kirk Ferentz said after Friday’s 27-24 win over Nebraska.
“Everybody just stayed together, kept pushing forward, and hoped something good would come out of it,” Ferentz said.
How good, of course, depends on which bowl selects the Hawkeyes on Sunday afternoon. There are a wide range of options, and there’s no sense breaking it down now, because there are a lot of factors involved.
Does a Big Ten team get in the College Football Playoff? Ohio State, likely, but if something should happen in Saturday’s conference championship game…
Who among the other teams gets a New Year’s Six game? Well, that could be Penn State, or Minnesota, or maybe Wisconsin…
So yeah, no one really knows what will happen next.
But let’s review how the Hawkeyes got here.
They put the first dent in Minnesota’s Big Ten West hopes with a 23-19 win at Kinnick Stadium on Nov. 16.
A week later, the Hawkeyes got just enough offense and plenty of defense to defeat Illinois, 19-10.
And then there was Friday, when Iowa built a 24-10 lead, saw it slip away, and then got a Keith Duncan field goal with one second left for the win.
And there it is — 9-3 overall, 6-3 Big Ten. Just like it was drawn up.
“I’m proud of the way this team has answered every challenge thrown in front of them,” Ferentz said. “Today was no different.”
The disappointment of not winning the West Division could have easily sent the Hawkeyes reeling. The margin of error between 9-3 and 6-6 isn’t much — consider that the average margin of victory in those last three wins was 5.3 points. Also, consider that the average margin of loss for the Hawkeyes this season was 4.7 points.
So, there could have easily been frustration for what might have been, and that could have turned into a complete collapse if this wasn’t a mature team.
“It depends on how you look at it,” Ferentz said. “I guess, mathematically, we were still alive (after the Wisconsin loss). You know, if your goals are strictly just to end up at the top — I mean, there’s only one team from each side that’s going to be in that situation. We work like hell to get there — every year, that’s our goal. So that’s the way it is. The other side of the equation is if you experience disappointment, and it happens a lot in competition, you have to keep pushing forward, readjust your goals a little bit. The goal is still do our best every week and try to win on Saturday. So, try to keep it simple as that.
“The best we could do was be 6-3 in the conference, be 3-1 in November. It was a high hill to climb at the start of the month.”
“November is when you play championship football,” linebacker Kristian Welch said after Friday’s game.
There was no ring or trophy waiting at the end of the month for the Hawkeyes. But the talk from the players after the Wisconsin loss was there was still a chance at a 10-win season — the three regular-season games, plus the bowl. It was clear that they had bought into the mindset that, yes, getting to Indianapolis wasn’t going to happen.
Getting to a win total that a lot of good Hawkeye teams haven’t reached is something that could still happen.
It’s OK to wring your hands about what might have been. It’s also OK to celebrate what did happen.
“They hung in there, worked hard, stayed together,” Ferentz said. “That’s probably the most important thing. I think we had a plan, a mindset, going into it, and we never altered it.”
