Iowa (11-4, 1-1) escaped with a win last night against Indiana (5-8, 0-1) 65-60 at Carver Hawkeye Arena just three days after Iowa almost beat Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio.

Iowa had a commanding 13 point leading before Indiana went on a ten point run to pull within 63-60 with about 20 seconds left before Iowa’s defense stepped up against Indiana. Jeff Peterson made two free throws and Andrew Brommer had a steal to seal the win for Iowa.

Cyrus Tate led all scorers with 22 points and led all with 11 rebounds. Peterson also had 16 points and five assists while Jake Kelly had 10 points and two steals for the Hawkeyes. Iowa is now 9-0 at home this season despite blowing a 13 point lead and almost losing the game to Indiana.

Indiana’s Nick Williams had 14 points and two assists while Devan Dumes added 12 points and seven rebounds for the Hoosiers. Indiana lost its three road game (0-3) this season while starting four freshmen against Iowa.

Indiana had its biggest lead at the beginning of the game 4-2 before Iowa hit a three pointer to retake the lead. Indiana regained the lead a few times later on in the first half before Iowa took a commanding lead. Indiana climbed back into the game right before halftime to cut the lead back to six points 33-27.

Iowa shot 46 percent while shooting 36 percent from beyond the arc. Indiana shot almost the same against Iowa by hitting 43 percent from the field and 38 percent from beyond the arc.

Iowa only shot 14 three pointers, while making five of them against Indiana. They tried 14 less three pointers against Indiana then they did against Ohio State. Iowa also improved on turnovers (11) by committing three lesser turnovers then they did against Ohio State.

This is another game Iowa played without their leading scorer Anthony Tucker. In the last three games, Tucker has only played one minute with zero points and two fouls. What has happened to Tucker since his public intoxication incident he had earlier in the season?

Indiana will host Michigan (11-3 1-1), while Iowa puts it undefeated home record up against a red hot Minnesota (13-1 1-1) team next Thursday. Minnesota beat Ohio State 68-59 in Minneapolis while only having played and won away game this season.

The Iowa Hawkeyes (9-4) beat the South Carolina Gamecocks (7-6) in the 2009 Outback Bowl today.  Greene rushed for 121 yards and three touchdowns and Iowa’s defense forced 5 turnovers to help the Hawkeyes in their 31-10 win.

Stanzi went 13-19 for 148 yards with a touchdown. Stanzi also threw two picks during the game. South Carolina also had 100 yards of penalities to help Iowa’s field position during the game.

Tyler Sash had two interceptions for about 74 yards and Bradley Fletcher had an interception in the end zone to help Iowa’s defense keep South Carolina from scoring until the fourth period. Iowa’s defense only allowed 42 yard rushing while giving up 265 yards passing with most of the passing yards coming in the Third and Fourth periods of the game.

Have a happy and safe 2009.

Shonn Greene, a 5′11″, 215 pound junior from Sicklerville, NJ, is one of biggest reasons why the Hawkeyes are going to the Outback Bowl this season. Nobody predicted how good he was going to be for the Iowa offense that has been having troubles the last two seasons.

In the beginning of his career with Iowa, Greene was in the shadow of Albert Young for the first two seasons at Iowa. He only gained a combined 378 yards and two touchdowns in his first two seasons. Then he fell into problems with his grades and lost his scholarship after his sophomore season and forcing him to enroll at Kirkwood Community College for a single year.

Then at the beginning of this season, he became eligible to play for the Hawkeyes. This put a big question mark on him due to not playing football for over a year. He ended up winning the starting job by the time Iowa played their first game against Maine.

By the end of the season he rushed for 1,729 yards and holds the single season rushing record at Iowa as well as leading the Big Ten in rushing yards. He is the only running back in the country to rush for 100+ yards in every game of the season. Greene ranks second in the nation with an average of a little more than 144 yards per game.

Greene also has rushed for 17 touchdowns this season while tying the single season record for most touchdowns in a single season with Tavian Banks. He has scored at least one touchdown in every game this season except for the Michigan State game.

His best game performance came against Wisconsin as he scored four times while rushing for 217 yards. This is the sixth-best, single-game rushing performance in Iowa history. The only other time Greene rushed for more than 200 yards was against Purdue were he had 211 yards.

Shonn Greene has one more team to face this year. That is the South Carolina Gamecocks in the Outback bowl on Jan. 1. He is going up against the 12th-best defense in the nation and the 36th-best rushing defense in the nation. Greene has faced tougher defenses during the regular season so this one shouldn’t stop him from going over 100+ yards rushing in the game.

The Gamecocks are not going to just focus on Greene knowing Iowa’s wide receivers corps and quarterback Ricky Stanzi can be as dangerous as Greene can be. I will bet South Carolina will be trying to due the same type of defense that Minnesota did against Iowa during Iowa’s last game of the season. My best guess is that Greene will get between 125 to 175 yards rushing with one or two touchdowns against South Carolina.

Iowa chances of winning the Outback game is if Greene can put up decent numbers and if Iowa’s “Bend but don’t break” defense can contain Steve Spurrier’s passing offense. Final score is Iowa 34-13.

Greene has won several awards this year. He became Iowa’s first consensus All-American running back since Nile Kinnick in 1939 and won Iowa’s first Doak Walker Award for being the best running back in the country.

Other awards Greene has won are Walter Camp All-American First Team, Big Ten Offensive Player of the year (coaches and Media), Sporting News’ 2008 Big Ten Offensive MVP, First Team All-Big Ten selection (coaches and Media), American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) First Team All-American, and Chicago Tribune’s Silver Football Big Ten Conference’s MVP.

The Iowa Hawkeyes and Todd Lickliter are getting ready to start their 2nd season under the new coaching staff. Last year the Hawkeyes finished 6 - 12 in the Big Ten and 13 - 19 Overall. The 19 losses set a new single season record for losses in a single season for the Hawkeyes. The Hawkeyes are a young team again this year and are picked by most to finish in the bottom half of the conference with no post-season tournaments. Coach Lickliter states he has been impressed on how the Hawkeyes are practicing this season on Hawkcentral.com and on Rivals.com.
From hearing from other fans and reading the forums, the Iowa Hawkeyes showed a lot of competiveness in their closed scrimmage against DePaul. Everything that is discussed from this scrimmage is showing positive outlooks for the Hawkeyes. Since the scrimmage is a closed scrimmage, no one really knows what happened during it since NCAA rules don’t allow any fans or media to attend the scrimmage. The fans and Media will see the first action when the Hawkeyes take on Wayne State in an Exhibition game this Sunday, November 9th at Carver Hawkeye Arena as Iowa starts their season on Friday Nov. 14th against Charleston Southern at Carver Hawkeye Arena.
The Hawkeyes only have 3 regular season games to finish tuning up before they play in the Las Vegas Invitational at the end of November.

Illinois 27 Iowa 24
Iowa lost a heart breaker game last weekend to Illinois after making a comeback. Iowa was trailing in the 4th period 24 - 9 when they started on their comeback. Iowa hit a Td in the beginning of the 4th to get the score to 24 - 16. Then Iowa hit another TD in the last 3 minutes of the game to bring to total to 24 - 22. Iowa went for a 2 point conversion and got it to make the score 24 - 24. On last drive of the game for Illinois, they brought the ball into FG range and made a 44 yard FG with about 30 seconds left in the game. Iowa tried to make up a lot of ground by throwing long passes. With 9 seconds left in the game Illinois Intercepted a pass from Ricky Stanzi to seal the win for Illinois. Greene ran for over 100 yards for the 9th straight game and had a score against Illinois. Greene will have a challenge this weekend to make it 10 straight games with the Penn State with one of the top ranked Run Defenses in the nation.

Iowa drops to 2 - 3 in the Big Ten and 5 - 4 Overall.

They are still 1 game from being bowl eligible. Iowa hosts the 3rd ranked Penn State team that is undefeated at home this weekend with another change to become bowl eligible the following week when a struggling Purdue team comes to Kinnick. Iowa then travels to Minnesota for their last regular game of the season. Last year Iowa lost the change to go to a bowl game by losing their last game of the season. Let hope the close losses this season doesn’t come back to haunt the Hawkeyes.

First of all I would like to apologize for taking this long to start writing about the Hawkeyes this season. Due to having to many commitments and having a new baby in the house has taken up a good portion of my time. Now lets talk about those Hawkeyes.
Welcome to another year of me blogging about the Iowa Hawkeyes Football team. After having a disapointed year last year by not making to a bowl game, the Hawkeyes are a little bit older at several key areas. The QB and WR are more mature and we lost of two best RBs to graduation as well as key members on the defense side.
Iowa Football team is currently 2-2 in the Big Ten Conference and 5-3 overall. Here is a breakdown of the season so far. I’ll go into more detail in the next volume of Iowa Hawkeyes Football 2008 Season on my blog.
Iowa has suffered losses to all ranked teams. Iowa lost a non-conference game to Pittsburgh 20-21 and lost to Northwestern 17-22 and Michigan State 13-16 in the Big Ten Conference. Iowa lost by a total of 9 points in the 3 losses this season.
Iowa has won 5 games this season including to conference games. The Hawkeyes have beaten Maine 46-3 and Florida International 42-0 at the beginning of the season and also beat Iowa State in the State Rival Cy-Hawk game 17-5 at Kinnick this year. Iowa Has also beaten Indiana 45-9 and Wisconsin 38-16 in the last 2 games they played.
The two biggest suprises on the Iowa Hawkeyes offense this season is Sophmore Ricky Stanzi beating out Junior Jake Christensen at starting QB and how good Shonn Greene has been at RB. Also another suprise is how Jewel Hampton has risen as the backup RB behind Greene and how good Brandon Myers is at TE.
The two biggest suprises on the Iowa Hawkeyes Defense this season is how LB’s Mitch King and Kroul is anchoring the Hawkeye Defense and how stingy the Defense has been against their opponents. Also another suprise is how good the CB’s have been doing and how much LB Pat Angerer has been improving and making himself be noticed.

I’m planning on doing some grilling today. What are you doing today to celebrate Labor Day and the last official day of summer?