Memories

Here are my top 10 2009 Iowa Hawkeye football moments:

#10 - The Wegher Bomb (@ Iowa State): Brandon Wegher saw his first action against the Iowa State Cyclones and made it a good one. 101 yards on 15 carries and 1 leaping-over-the-pile touchdown. This became known as "The Wegher Bomb".

#9 - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (vs Northwestern): Sadly this is one that really hurt the season, but might have helped the team long-term. With the ball deep in their own territory the Hawks called a pass to get some field position. Instead they lost a QB and 7 points went on the Northwestern board. I had a perfect view of Ricky Stanzi as he laid on the ground in pain. At first I thought it was a shoulder as I didn't see the foot/ankle get bent around. Stanzi's injury definitely changed the game.

#8 - The Pig (vs Minnesota): Floyd of Rosedale must love living in Iowa City. Two years in a row the Hawks shut out Minnesota in the battle for the bronzed pig. This year's game wasn't as high scoring as 2008's (55-0 Iowa) but the outcome was the same. It had to be a huge confidence boost for a team that had lost 2 games in a row and was in danger of dropping from BCS bowl consideration. Luckily the defense carried the team and the team carried Floyd off the field yet again.

#7 - The Bull (@ Wisconsin): The battle for the Heartland Trophy is always a tough match up between Iowa and Wisconsin. As we were accustomed to Iowa got down 10-0 before playing their game. After a FG cut the score to 10-3 Ricky Stanzi bought some time in the pocket and made a perfect (on-the-run) 24 yard pass to Tony Moeaki in the corner of the endzone to tie the game. The Hawks put the game away in the 2nd Half and went to 2-0 in Big 10 road games this year.

#6 - Big Hits (vs Michigan): Night games at Kinnick are amazing as it is. Throw in Michigan as the opponent and Kinnick goes crazy. You could tell that both teams were amped up for this game. Iowa's defense and special teams were really hitting Michigan hard. In particular Jeff Tarpinian and Adrian Clayborn. Tarp had an amazing, um tackle I guess, on kick coverage where he flipped the return man in the air. It happened so fast that you couldn't tell what exactly happened. And then there's Clayborn. He was hitting everything that moved harder than I have ever seen. At one point he hit Michigan QB Tate Forcier so hard that Forcier got up a little wobbly, and it wasn't because his head hit the ground.

#5 - "It's blocked", Part 1 (vs Northern Iowa): This is what started it all. Iowa has been known for good special teams play during the Kirk Ferentz era. It has been a while since blocked kicks/punts and kick return TD have been seen but something felt right this day. UNI had a chance to win AT KINNICK but had 2 field goals blocked on consecutive plays (first attempt was on 3rd down and the ball did not cross the line of scrimmage and was recovered by UNI, by rule it is equal to an incomplete pass). This started the run of insanely good luck for the Hawks.

#4 - The comeback (vs Indiana): With Iowa down 21-7 at half things looked bleak for the Hawkeyes. Enter Tyler Sash. Indiana drove inside the Iowa 10 and was looking to put the game away when the Iowa defense sent a blitz and the game was changed. The pass was tipped around many times behind the line of scrimmage before falling into the waiting hands of Sash, who went 86 yards untouched for an INT TD. The Hawks then scored 28 unanswered points in the 4th quarter to win 42-24.

#3 - Battle for Roses (@Ohio St): James Vandenburg was starting his first game at QB in a very hostile environment. No one expected Iowa to be in this game at all. Vandenburg played amazing and the defense rose to the challenge again. There were two huge offensive plays in this game. The first was a TD laser to Marvin McNutt to tie the game at 10. Then Derrell Johnson-Koulianous decided to bobble a kickoff before taking it 99 yards for an Iowa TD after all had seemed lost. Iowa battled back to tie the game at 24 after being down 24-10 (prior to the kick return) before losing the heart breaker in overtime.

#2 - The drives (@ Michigan St): Iowa went up 9-6 late in the game. It was a classic Big 10 defensive battle between two almost identical programs. The offenses for both teams decided to finally wake up. Michigan State knew they needed something big so they ran a perfectly executed hook-and-lateral to get into Iowa territory. The next play was a perfectly thrown TD pass putting MSU up 13-9 with 1:37 left in the game. Next it was Iowa's turn. No trickery here as Stanzi completed passes and moved the ball down to the Michigan State 7. On 4th down, with only 2 seconds left, Stanzi threw a bullet to a slanting McNutt for the winning score, and a 3-0 Big 10 road record.

#1 - "It's blocked", Part 2 (@ Penn State): After giving up a big play right away the Iowa defense buckled down and went into the 4th quarter down 10-5. Then the everything seemed to change. Clayborn was left on the field for a punt return (punt safe formation) and ended up blocking the punt and returning it 53 yards for the TD. That was all that was needed as the defense was simply dominating all night long. This game put Iowa back on the national radar.

Those are from the regular season. Hopefully 2010 will start with another magical moment!