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Where: Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City
TV: ABC
IOWA CITY — Last year’s Iowa-Iowa State game sure sounded like a blood bath.
Just listen.
“When you look at the tape, you see that their offensive line kind of dominated us last year,” Iowa defensive tackle Christian Ballard said. “They were just coming off, coming off and coming off. They were taking it to us. We weren’t really doing anything. Our secondary had to play the game for us.”
It gets worse. And Iowa won the game 35-3.
“I felt like we played bad, and no one wants to feel like that,” Iowa defensive end Adrian Clayborn said. “That’s what we’ve been thinking about for I don’t know how long. This game, we didn’t play the way we needed to play, and that’s stuck in our head.”
Stuck, drilled, pasted in their heads.
Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz mentioned the number 190 about a half-dozen times during his Tuesday press conference. That’s the number of yards Iowa State rushed for during Iowa’s victory in Ames last season.
Yes, victory. Iowa won the game. Iowa’s defensive line didn’t, apparently. It played itself into a Sunday night chewing out from defensive line coach Rick Kaczenski.
The Hawkeyes watched film and broke into position groups. Then things got salty.
“I probably would just say, don’t put that in the paper,” Clayborn said of Kaczenski’s approach. “But he was just being honest with us. We needed that at the time. It’s one thing just to get beat physically, but it’s another to just cave in to your opponent, and I felt that’s what we did last year.”
The Cyclones averaged 5.6 yards a carry to get those 190 yards, the second most by a team against the ’09 Hawkeyes. ISU running back Alexander Robinson gained 100 yards on 19 carries. He was one of just two backs (Ohio State’s Brandon Saine was the other) to reach 100 yards against Iowa last season.
Iowa State was relatively one-dimensional. Quarterback Austen Arnaud passed for just 79 yards and threw four interceptions, and Iowa converted six ISU turnovers into 21 points to dominate the game.
Except if you ask Iowa’s D-line. The game video got their attention. Their position coach let them have it. They still might bear the bite marks.
“That’s not how Iowa defensive lines play, that’s not how we act, that’s not how we carry ourselves around here,” Ballard relayed from the Sunday night sitdown. “It was pretty much disgraceful to past Iowa defensive lines. They showed up every game and played hard.
“Nothing was going on. We were just kind of going through the motions. We treated the rivalry like it was just another game.”
The rest of the story is Iowa finished 11-2, won the Orange Bowl and Clayborn was the game’s MVP.
Saturday sets up for a legit round two.
Iowa returns all four starters from last season. Tackle Karl Klug and end Broderick Binns join Clayborn and Ballard.
On the Iowa State side, left tackle and second-team all-Big 12 performer Kelechi Osemele and guard Alex Alvarez return with Ben Lamaak, who moved from guard to center this season. Right guard Hayworth Hicks returns after missing 2009. Sophomore Brayden Burris (two career starts) is the only newbie in the bunch.
ISU coach Paul Rhoads gave his O-line a “good, not great” after the Cyclones’ 27-10 victory over Northern Illinois in their season opener.
“We’re going to have to be able to throw the ball, and if you want to throw the ball, you’re going to have to have time,” Rhoads said. “To throw the ball, you have to run the ball, so they’re going to have to open up holes against a team we didn’t open holes up against a year ago.”
Osemele is the centerpiece.
The 6-foot-5, 335-pound junior sets a physical tone for ISU’s O-line. There’s no stat that proves it, but the general consensus is the Houston native won last year’s matchup against Clayborn. At the very least, Rhoads believes that Osemele put down some good tape against Iowa and a foundation for an All-Big 12 season.
Lamaak was asked this week if an O-lineman’s attitude changes when being matched against a player with Clayborn’s credentials, which, going into this season, are every preseason All-America list in the universe.
“We have a great left tackle who’s going to be matched up against him in Kelechi Osemele, someone who’s going to bring it every play,” Lamaak said. “It should be a great matchup.”
The Hawkeyes remember Osemele.
“The big guy?” Ferentz said. “I read a story on him this summer. He’s a good football player.”
This is a legit round two.
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