Iowa Football Shuts Down Scarlet Knights

Hawkeyes Top Rutgers Saturday, Pitch 1st Shutout Since '19

Mason Richman paused to make sure to spell it correctly.

It’s a common word, found in every calendar.

“N-O-V-E-M-B-E-R,” the Iowa left tackle said, making sure to emphasize every consonant and vowel. “That’s what this team is all about.”

It is the Hawkeyes’ favorite month, and for everything that has swirled like a tornado around this team since the heat of August, it is the month when it is this close to coming all together.

The 22-0 win over Rutgers on Saturday at Kinnick Stadium clinched a share of the Big Ten West Division title for the Hawkeyes.

Yep, the team with the one of the worst-ranked offenses in the nation, the one with the lame-duck offensive coordinator, the one with the backup quarterback and the third-string and fourth-string tight ends and … well, the checklist of adversity and angst really doesn’t matter right now.

Iowa is 8-2 overall, 5-2 in the Big Ten, and one win away from securing a trip to Indianapolis and the Big Ten championship game.

Yep. It’s November.

“November football, I’ve said it before, it’s really where things kind of shape up or don’t shape up for football teams,” said Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, whose teams are 16-2 in the month dating back to the 2019 season.

We’re a couple of weeks off the dismissal of offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz at the end of the season, and all Iowa’s offense did on Saturday was put up a season-high 402 yards of offense against one of the nation’s better defenses.

We’re a few weeks off from when Deacon Hill became the starting quarterback after the season-ending injury of Cade McNamara, and all Hill did on Saturday was complete 20 of 31 passes for a career-high 223 yards and a touchdown.

Tight ends Luke Lachey and Erick All are done for the season with their injuries, and the leading receiver on Saturday was former third-stringer Addison Ostrenga, who had eight catches for 47 yards, and the biggest offensive play of the day was a 54-yard pass from Hill to who-knows-what-string-is Zach Ortwerth.

“It definitely has been a crazier year than most for sure,” said sixth-year wide receiver Nico Ragaini. “Coach Ferentz has us locked in like he always does. All the guys know that. It’s not always going to be a straight path. It’s going to be a rocky road sometimes. But you have to keep pushing it through.

“When the ball comes your way, make the play.”

“That's how you build things,” Ferentz said. “We've done a lot of building around here. That's part of the process. When you lose guys, you've got to try to rebuild and reboot, and every now and then you get lucky with some guys, too.”

This game was a three-quarter slog that turned into a fourth-quarter party — three points in the second quarter and three more in the third on Drew Stevens’ field goals, and then a 16-point outburst in the fourth on a Stevens field goal, a Jaziun Patterson 4-yard touchdown run, and a 10-yard touchdown pass from Hill to Kaleb Young, the transfer from Ohio State who wasn’t any sort of factor until last week but all of the sudden is coming up with all kinds of big plays.

Such an offensive performance, Ragaini said, was coming, but no one outside of Iowa’s football building was going to believe that.

“This whole year we’ve been working hard,” he said. “The beginning of the year didn’t go how we wanted it to with the offense. Coach Ferentz and everyone on our team knows that it’s just going to take us getting into rhythm. Today, I think we found that rhythm in our offense and we now we just have to keep going.”

The biggest jump was made by Hill, who was shaky early, then efficient in the second half.

“It’s just a rhythm that you get into,” he said. “I just black out, and it's like, OK, I know what I'm doing. Trust your fundamentals, trust your base and build rhythm. I trusted myself in what I was seeing and trusted what the coaches were telling me.”

“He did the job,” Ferentz said. “You talk about resiliency, I think that's the first word I would use with him because I'm guessing he's probably been hearing a lot of negative stuff out there.

“Instead of worrying about that, he's been focused on trying to get better, working hard with the coaches and practicing better. You hope that's how it works for everybody, and he's certainly right at the front of the list on that.”

Iowa had 11 possessions in the game. None ended as a three-and-out.

Meanwhile, the Hawkeyes’ defense was shutting down the Scarlet Knights. They had just 127 yards. Kyle Monangai, the Big Ten’s leading rusher in the game, was smothered all day, finishing with 39 yards on 13 carries.

“Iowa,” Rutgers coach Greg Schiano said, “was exactly what I thought they were.”

Yep. It’s November.

“You just keep pushing,” Ferentz said. “The one thing I've always enjoyed about football and not enjoyed about football is it's very humbling. You never have it figured out. That's like real life is the same way.

All you can do is show up and try to do your best, give it an honest day's effort and have a good attitude, and then you never quit. You never quit. That's what the guys are doing.”