By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Iowa junior running back Mark Weisman rushed for 52 yards on 10 carries in the Hawkeyes’ 34-24 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Iowa senior free safety Tanner Miller recorded seven tackles and forced a fumble in the Hawkeyes’ 34-24 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Iowa senior linebacker James Morris tied for a team-high 12 tackles in the Hawkeyes’ 34-24 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Iowa senior tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz hauled in four catches for 29 yards receiving and a touchdown in the Hawkeyes’ 34-24 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz addressed the media in a postgame press conference following the Hawkeyes’ 34-24 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Saturday at Ohio Stadium. With the defeat, Iowa dropped to 1-2 in Big Ten play and 4-3 overall.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

To get you all ready for Saturday’s game between Iowa and No. 4 Ohio State, I put together a list of things you ought to know before these two face off at Ohio Stadium.

At the end, I’ll provide what I think are three keys to an Iowa victory.

Iowa Hawkeyes (4-2, 1-1) at No. 4 Ohio State Buckeyes (6-0, 2-0)

Ohio Stadium; Columbus, Ohio

Oct. 19, 2013

2:30 p.m. Central

TV: ABC/ESPN2 (Bob Wischusen, Rod Gilmore, Quint Kessenich)

Radio: Hawkeye Radio Network (Gary Dolphin, Ed Podolak, Rob Brooks)

Weather: 53 degrees; overcast skies with chance of rain; winds from W around 11 MPH

Brendan’s Three Keys to the Game:

1. Keep contain

This is going to be an enormous challenge for the defense here, especially if defensive end Dominic Alvis is limited by the injury that caused him to leave Iowa’s last game against Michigan State. But this is something the Hawkeyes have to be able to do defensively because no matter who’s on the field, Ohio State will look to attack the edges and make Iowa play sideline-to-sideline. If the Buckeyes have success doing this, that’s going to open the middle of the field for them to go vertical with play-action or with Braxton Miller just chucking the ball deep to his playmakers.

This is the most potent offense Iowa will face this season, so the defense has to stay disciplined here and at least limit the number of times Ohio State breaks contain, if not prevent the Buckeyes from breaking contain altogether.

2. Push the pace offensively

If Iowa is going to have any chance of keeping this game even remotely close, the Hawkeyes have to find a way to get into that 75-80 range with offensive snaps. Iowa only ran 62 plays from scrimmage against Michigan State, and it threw the ball more than three times the amount it managed to run the ball. Even if playing more up-tempo early on doesn’t work, the best thing Iowa can do is stick with it and not start slowing the tempo down because that’s just going to play into Ohio State’s hands.

If the Hawkeyes stick with playing up-tempo offensively, there are going to be opportunities late in the game to make plays and if the defense manages to bring its A-game, then maybe this makes the Buckeyes tighten up a little bit. There’s no harm in trying this if you’re Iowa.

3. Find something to build off of

To be blunt here, the odds of Iowa coming out of The Horseshoe with a win on Saturday are extremely slim. Not impossible, but extremely slim. Better Iowa teams have gotten destroyed in Columbus. With that in mind, the Hawkeyes have to find something from this game to build off of going forward because they have a pair of games at Kinnick Stadium coming up that are going to play a major role in whether Iowa makes a bowl game or not this season.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

Every Thursday during the 2013 football season, HawkeyeDrive.com will feature “Talkin’ Hawks,” a podcast to get you ready for the Hawkeyes’ upcoming game and other college football action.

This week, we preview Iowa’s upcoming game against No. 4 Ohio State, which takes place Oct. 19 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. Former Iowa defensive back Chris Rowell joins me to provide insight on the Hawkeyes and share his thoughts on all the games featured in this week’s HawkeyeDrive.com Pick ‘Em. Rowell will be a part of the podcast every week all season long.

Joining as a guest this week in the podcast’s middle segment is Doug Lesmerises, who covers Ohio State football for Cleveland.com. This week’s edition is approximately 82 minutes long, so enjoy:

Twitter handles:

HawkeyeDrive.com – @HawkeyeDrive

Brendan Stiles – @thebstiles

Chris Rowell – @Crowell34

Doug Lesmerises – @DougLesmerises

*Intro sound byte credit to my former Daily Iowan colleague Ryan Young for putting that together.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

While glossing over the Big Ten football schedules for 2018 and 2019 that were released by the conference Wednesday, something stood out. It showed Iowa playing Penn State during both seasons — 2018 in State College, Pa., 2019 in Iowa City.

To add to this, the Hawkeyes and Nittany Lions were already slated to play each other during both the 2016 and 2017 seasons, with 2016 marking when the Big Ten officially goes to a 9-game conference schedule.

This left me wondering if there were any other quirks that were similar. It was already established that Indiana and Purdue would continue meeting annually for the “Old Oaken Bucket” despite being in opposite divisions, but the pattern here became more glaring.

Starting in 2016 (and for now anyway, going through 2019), the following interdivisional match-ups are happening annually — Iowa vs. Penn State, Illinois vs. Rutgers, Minnesota vs. Maryland, Nebraska vs. Ohio State, Northwestern vs. Michigan State, Purdue vs. Indiana and Wisconsin vs. Michigan.

Now it’s worth mentioning that Purdue vs. Indiana is the only one of these match-ups also taking place in both 2014 and 2015 as well once Maryland and Rutgers are official members and the divisions have realigned. But for all the talk about that being the only protected rivalry, it appears that’s not the case here.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said there would be more “parity-based” scheduling beginning with 2016 when the conference goes to 9-game schedules. But this goes above and beyond.

The problem here is this comes off as acknowledging there’s no parity right now, which isn’t a good image for a conference that prides itself on providing all its members equal revenue.

So where is it? Where exactly is the parity? Let’s look at (for example) Nebraska and Ohio State playing each other for (at least) four straight seasons. Yes, a game between the Cornhuskers and Buckeyes will attract more eyeballs to TV screens. But let’s say Nebraska has a drop-off by 2016 while Ohio State stays atop the league. Is that really being fair to the Cornhuskers to constantly be playing a team it doesn’t match up with in this hypothetical scenario? The only way “parity-based” scheduling works is if match-ups aren’t announced like this so far in advance.

“Parity-based” is more what the NFL does with scheduling, where two opponents remain TBD until the season ends, then the first place teams all play each other, then the second place teams all play each other, and so on for the following year. If there was a way to make it so the top teams in each division meet annually the following year — guaranteeing a rematch of the previous year’s Big Ten championship game — then great. This won’t happen in college football anytime soon though because so much goes into scheduling, especially with games so far in advance like this.

The other thing to consider is there are clear winners here with these schedules shaking out like they have. For instance, Michigan State athletics director Mark Hollis must love the fact that the Spartans have Northwestern on their schedule for four straight years.

This allows Michigan State to build its brand in the Chicagoland area (a reason some Spartan fans were clamoring to be in the West and a reason why Michigan State wanted to share a division with Northwestern when Legends and Leaders were first formed). West teams like Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Purdue that thought it’d have an edge on Michigan State in building their brands across Chicagoland because they were all guaranteed trips to Evanston every other year no longer hold that advantage over Michigan State.

Then let’s look at Wisconsin, who comes off another clear winner thanks in large part to its AD, Barry Alvarez. The Badgers get to play Michigan every year starting in 2016. If there ever was a “Big Four” inside the Big Ten, this is as close as one could get to publicly acknowledging that Wisconsin has taken Penn State’s spot in that group.

Playing rivalry games every year, plus playing a program like Michigan every year? Yeah, this is very beneficial to Wisconsin and it’s hard to see its brand diminishing on a national scale anytime soon because of this, especially if Michigan remains a marquee name in college football.

And while having to play Ohio State every year might not seem ideal to Nebraska fans, the Cornhuskers are also a winner with this scheduling and here’s why — recruiting.

When Nebraska first joined the conference, the growing concern was whether it’d be able to change its recruiting philosophy and instead of focusing on Texas like it did when playing in the Big 12, be able to recruit Ohio more. Everyone in the Big Ten recruits Ohio, at least the schools who win on a consistent basis.

Whatever recruiting disadvantage Nebraska may have had before is gone when its coaching staff can go into a place like Ohio and sell high-school kids on the idea of playing the Buckeyes every season. The Cornhuskers are looking at two trips to the Horseshoe in 2016 and 2018. Meanwhile, there are other West Division teams that could be looking at 7-year spans between trips to Columbus.

And let’s say Nebraska does become the power-house it once was and Ohio State remains at the top like it is now. There’s potential now for this to become what Nebraska vs. Oklahoma was to the Big 8 back in the 1970s.

Maybe there’s some benefit for Penn State in playing Iowa every year. Maybe there’s some benefit for Maryland in playing Minnesota every year. Maybe there’s some benefit for Rutgers in playing Illinois every year. That’s all hard to see right now though.

A lot can obviously happen between now and 2019. The Big Ten could expand yet again and all this conjecture about football schedules 5-6 years down the road is all for naught. But let’s say for argument’s sake the Big Ten stands pat on 14 teams. Whenever the 2020 and 2021 schedules get released, the odds of Iowa returning to Beaver Stadium in 2020 and Penn State returning to Kinnick Stadium in 2021 appear high because of the obvious pattern here with the league’s scheduling.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this approach. After all, this is best way of ensuring there’s an Old Oaken Bucket battle every year in either Bloomington or West Lafayette, Ind., without completely screwing over the other 12 Big Ten teams.

But the reality is these future schedules really look no different from what the Big Ten put out before with just 8-game slates. It’s just that the current “rivalry” between Iowa and Purdue will now become a “rivalry” between Iowa and Penn State, starting in 2016.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

The Big Ten announced conference schedules for the 2018 and 2019 football seasons Wednesday and the big story here is Iowa and Nebraska continuing to play each other on Black Friday.

Since Nebraska became an official member of the Big Ten, the Hawkeyes and Cornhuskers have met annually on Black Friday and are now scheduled to do so for at least the next seven years now.

As far as the rest of Iowa’s 2018 and 2019 Big Ten schedules are concerned, the only East Division teams not featured are Michigan State and Ohio State. The Hawkeyes will play Penn State both seasons, with the 2018 meeting taking place in State College, Pa., and the 2019 match-up at Kinnick Stadium. In 2018, Iowa will play at Indiana and against Maryland in Iowa City. As for 2019, Rutgers will make its first visit to Kinnick Stadium on Sept. 7 of that year, and the Hawkeyes will also play at Michigan.

Iowa will open Big Ten play at home both seasons. In addition to the match-up with Rutgers in 2019, the Hawkeyes’ Big Ten opener in 2018 will come on Sept. 22 at Kinnick Stadium against Wisconsin. Iowa’s three other road games along with Indiana and Penn State that season are against Minnesota, Purdue and Illinois. Northwestern pays a visit Nov. 10 to Kinnick Stadium, as does Nebraska on Nov. 23.

In 2019, three weeks separate the Big Ten opener against Rutgers and the Hawkeyes’ trip to the Big House on Oct. 5. Purdue, Minnesota and Illinois all visit Kinnick Stadium and Iowa will play consecutive road games against Northwestern and Wisconsin with a bye week in between, plus the Black Friday contest that season at Nebraska on Nov. 29.

Below are the new complete 2018 and 2019 conference schedules for Iowa. Non-c0nference games for both seasons are still to be determined:

2018:

9/22/2018 – vs. Wisconsin

10/6/2018 – at Minnesota

10/13/2018 – at Indiana

10/20/2018 – vs. Maryland

10/27/2018 – at Penn State

11/3/2018 – at Purdue

11/10/2018 – vs. Northwestern

11/17/2018 – at Illinois

11/23/2018 – vs. Nebraska

2019:

9/7/2019 – vs. Rutgers

10/5/2019 – at Michigan

10/12/2019 – vs. Penn State

10/19/2019 – vs. Purdue

10/26/2019 – at Northwestern

11/9/2019 – at Wisconsin

11/16/2019 – vs. Minnesota

11/23/2019 – vs. Illinois

11/29/2019 – at Nebraska

Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz discusses the Hawkeyes’ upcoming game at No. 4 Ohio State during his weekly press conference held Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013, at the Hayden Fry Football Complex in Iowa City.

By Brendan Stiles

HawkeyeDrive.com

IOWA CITY, Iowa — In one sense, the bye week Iowa just endured came at an ideal time for the Hawkeyes. With at least seven known players who dealt with some sort of injury during Iowa’s 26-14 loss to Michigan State back on Oct. 15, the bye week provided them a chance to get closer to full recovery. It also provided the Hawkeyes a little extra time to prepare for their upcoming opponent and given who the next opponent is, that might prove handy for Iowa this weekend.

That’s because the Hawkeyes are heading to “The Horseshoe” to play one of their toughest games in years on Saturday when they visit No. 4 Ohio State. This contest marks the first time since 2010 when these two teams last faced each other that Iowa’s playing an opponent ranked in the AP top 10 (the Buckeyes were ranked eighth at that time). Ohio State not only enters 6-0, but has won 18 straight dating back to last season when Urban Meyer took over as the Buckeyes’ head coach.

“You don’t do that by accident,” Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz said about the Buckeyes’ current winning streak. “That requires good players, good coaching. It requires players that understand you have to show up every week and they’ve done a great job of that now for a year plus.”

Because Iowa had the first of two bye weeks, Iowa was able to implement portions of the game plan earlier than usual and some players were able to get a head start on studying Ohio State film. Typically during game weeks, players receive the game plan from coaches on Tuesdays. This week, they received bits of the game plan on Sunday.

“It’s definitely good to know ahead of time,” junior running back Mark Weisman said. “But they had the same type of thing. They also had a bye this week, too, so there’s no advantage either way.”

In addition to preparing for the Buckeyes, Iowa also used the week to refine itself. One area that was heavily worked with last week was special teams, which came under fire after allowing Michigan State successfully executed a fake punt.

Last week, Ferentz suggested he might not attempt to return a punt again this season and the reaction nationally was strong. When asked Tuesday if he was still leaning that direction, Ferentz didn’t really budge one way or the other.

“I’m not real interested in seeing another fake, so whatever it takes to stop the fake, we’ll do that,” Ferentz said. “I went home that night and saw one in the Northwestern-Ohio State game, too. I can’t get away from it, so we’ll see what we can do.”

Getting ground game re-energized

If the Hawkeyes are going to have any shot of pulling off a monumental upset Saturday afternoon (as of Tuesday evening, Iowa is listed as a 16.5-point underdog), the running game will have to be there for them.

Prior to playing Michigan State, Iowa’s ground game was viewed as a strength. Weisman was among the nation’s top leading rushers and the Hawkeyes had just won a game over Minnesota by pounding the Golden Gophers into oblivion. But in that loss to the Spartans, the run game unraveled. Iowa only ran the ball 16 times and finished with a meager 23 yards rushing.

Part of that was due to Weisman injuring his foot, which he said Tuesday would be good to go for this weekend. But a lot of it had to do with Michigan State’s defense being suffocating.

Now Iowa will face a similar challenge against an Ohio State squad that also features a stout front seven despite six of the starters being new from a year ago.

“If you didn’t know the background and you could throw the film on, you’d see a group that is very talented and plays well,” Ferentz said. “Whatever does open up doesn’t stay open very long and that’s the sign of a good defense.”

Through six games, the Buckeyes have only surrendered an average of 86.2 rushing yards per game (second in the Big Ten behind the Spartans). Of the 13 touchdowns Ohio State has given up, only three of them have come on the ground.

“We’ve got to control the line and just keep fighting,” Weisman said. “If they get us for a two-yard stop, we’ve just got to keep fighting and keep going. Hopefully, it breaks through.”

Horseshoe historically unkind

Iowa’s last victory inside Ohio Stadium came on Nov. 2, 1991. To put this into perspective, senior offensive tackle Brett Van Sloten was celebrating his first birthday on that date and Weisman was only five days old.

Since that 16-9 victory over Ohio State, the Hawkeyes have lost each of the last six times they’ve visited Columbus, including each of the four times a Ferentz-led team has played there. In fact, the Buckeyes’ lone blemish to Iowa since then came in 2004 at Kinnick Stadium when the Hawkeyes won 33-7 en route to a co-Big Ten title.

“There are a lot of tough venues. This is certainly at the top of the list in the conference,” Ferentz said.

The most recent defeat inside the Horseshoe is probably the most gut-wrenching of all, however. With James Vandenberg (then a redshirt freshman) starting in place of an injured Ricky Stanzi at quarterback, Iowa overcame a 24-10 fourth-quarter deficit to force overtime in a game that determined who’d win the Big Ten and represent the conference in the Rose Bowl.

But it wasn’t meant to be for the Hawkeyes, as Ohio State prevailed 27-24 and later went on to win the 2010 Rose Bowl over Oregon while Iowa ended up winning the 2010 Orange Bowl over Georgia Tech instead. Van Sloten was a true freshman then who didn’t get to travel for that game since he was redshirting. But the memory of that defeat was still fresh in his mind.

“I just remember how [Vandenberg] went into that environment,” Van Sloten said. “Unfortunately, we fell a little short. But I just clearly remember him stepping up to the challenge and taking the place of Ricky when he went down.”

For the majority of the team, Saturday will be a first being inside “The Horseshoe,” which currently holds a capacity of 102,329. Then there are those like sophomore quarterback Jake Rudock, who played there during his junior year of high school. In 2009, he led St. Thomas Aquinas High School (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) to a 52-7 victory over Ohio’s Upper Arlington High School in a game nationally televised on ESPN.

“It was pretty cool,” Rudock said reflecting back on what was his first start at QB for St. Thomas Aquinas. “Just being in that environment and being in the [visiting] locker room, it was very interesting.”

Returning to the Buckeye State

Iowa features 11 players on its roster who call the state of Ohio home. Three of those 11 players were made available to speak Tuesday afternoon outside the Kenyon Practice Facility and all three hail from different parts of the state.

Junior strong safety John Lowdermilk comes from the town of Carrollton, Ohio, located in the eastern part of the state near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Lowdermilk said he not only grew up a Buckeye fan, but that his dad had season tickets and he would be able to attend 1-2 games per season at Ohio Stadium when he was a kid.

Lowdermilk was actually in attendance when Iowa made its last trip to “The Horseshoe” in 2009, rooting for Ohio State. He was even among the masses of fans who stormed the field that night after the Buckeyes made the game-winning field goal in overtime.

“My family went and we tailgated at the game,” Lowdermilk said. “We just went and watched the Buckeyes play the Hawkeyes and it was a good game. It was a good environment.”

Junior offensive lineman Andrew Donnal grew up in the town of Monclova, which is located in the northwest part of the state near Toledo. Like Lowdermilk, Donnal loved the Scarlet and Gray when he was kid.

But family allegiances changed once Donnal became a Hawkeye and his younger brother Mark recently joined the Michigan basketball program. Not only that, but some refurbishing had to be done inside the Donnal household.

“We had an Ohio State basement,” Donnal said. “We came here and we got rid of all that stuff. We had to start decorating with some black and gold, get some Hawkeye stuff in the basement.

“[My brother and I] threw the whole family for a loop and had to get rid of all that stuff because it isn’t good anymore.”

Senior linebacker Anthony Hitchens hails from Lorain, which is just to the west of Cleveland. Hitchens said his rooting interests as a kid weren’t so much at the collegiate level with Ohio State, but rather at the NFL level growing up a Cleveland Brown fan.

But that also isn’t diminishing the excitement he has for getting to play close to home this weekend.

“It’s definitely an exciting moment,” Hitchens said. “I probably won’t forget this. It’s good to go back home and play in front of your family and your friends. It’s a good opportunity and I’m looking forward to it.”

With the state of Ohio in the middle of the Big Ten’s footprint, Ferentz said it remains a state of priority for him and his staff in recruiting. Defensive coordinator Phil Parker is a native Ohioan and Ferentz’s son, offensive line coach Brian Ferentz, currently oversees the bulk of the Hawkeyes’ recruiting in Ohio.

“Everybody recruits in Ohio, but if you look around our league, there are a lot of players playing on other rosters that have done well from the state,” Ferentz said. “They can’t take them all and it’s a good football state, so we’ve been committed to going there.”

Ferentz v. Meyer

Saturday’s game will mark just the second time Ferentz has coached a game against Meyer. The one previous meeting between the two coaches came in the 2006 Outback Bowl when Meyer was in his first season at Florida. Iowa at one point in that game trailed 31-7, but scored 17 unanswered points in the second half before ultimately losing 31-24.

In just two years at the helm in Columbus, Meyer has raised eyebrows across the Big Ten. One thing he most recently started doing this season was waiting until Tuesdays to release the Buckeyes’ depth chart, a tactic that Ferentz appeared irritated by when he wasn’t aware of their depth chart prior to his press conference Tuesday.

Despite that however, Ferentz also made clear there’s no strain in the relationship between the two coaches. He used the phrase “extremely successful” to describe Meyer as a head coach.

“I guess I’m not a guy that’s looking for friends right now. I got friends in my personal life,” Ferentz said. “But it has been cordial with everybody in our conference. I can’t think of anybody that hasn’t been cordial.

“I have a lot of respect and admiration for all of my colleagues in the league and it’s pretty much the same way with Coach Meyer, certainly.”