Iowa in search of answers following humiliating loss at Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS — The Hawkeyes are realizing how hard it is to navigate through the Big Ten gauntlet after a humbling loss to the Golden  Gophers, and their coach knows the road only gets tougher moving forward.

Kirk Ferentz watched Iowa play like the opposite of the program’s blueprint, and it turn out be a sloppy afternoon on the gridiron. After all, the team looked sluggish put of their bye-week, turned the ball over multiple times, and committed several penalties.

To the fans the performance was a head-scratcher because Ferentz usually fields a squad that’s fundamentally sound, and disciplined. However, nothing went right for the Hawkeyes, and Ferentz felt the Golden Gophers snatched the red carpet from underneath his team.

Iowa (5-2) had a punt blocked on the first drive of the game, struggled to run the ball and had poor execution throughout the afternoon, which frustrated Ferentz at times.

“Realistically, you get off a blocked punt right off the bat, and end up worh four turnovers, so it’s really unrealistic that they think you’re going to win a conference game doing that,” Ferentz said. “So that’s not good, and also we had four loose balls, which I think is very uncharacteristic of us, and that’s something we have to look at, and try to fet cleaned up.”

Minnesota’s defense set the tone, abd pretty much dictated the flow of the game. Jeremy Hecklinski started at quarterback, but performed so poorly that Ferentz benched him towards the end of the first half.

Despite adjustments at halftime, Ferentz watched similar mistakes by his players on the second half. Hank Brown didn’t look much better behind center either. Not to mention Minnesota led the entire contest.

Although the Hawkeyes didn’t play to Ferentz’s standard, they still had a chance to win the game in the fourth quarter.