Hawkeye Nation: Good, Bad, and Ugly - Akron - Summary of Iowa football and basketball games

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Hawkeye Nation: Good, Bad, and Ugly - Akron

9/2/2002 by Jon Miller of Hawkeye Nation

The Good

This will get old, but I will repeat: The Iowa home uniforms are amongst the best looking in college football!

The OL was dominant all day- Kudos to the big guys in the trenches. The two new guys at RB were impressive- Fred Russell can stop and go on a dime and Jermelle Lewis has a very impressive combination of power and speed. Mo Brown arrived on Saturday and that will help fill a void.

The recruiting class of 2001 was highly thought of and a large number of these guys made their debut or started for the first time and did well. Antwan Allen, Ed Hinkel, CJ Jones and Brad Banks all started and played key roles. Others saw their first action as Hawkeyes and did well- Fabian Dodd, Matt Neubauer, Adolphus Shelton, CJ Barkema, Ben Cronin, Brian Ferentz, Abdul Hodge, Mike Follett, Blake Larsen and Jermire Roberts all saw their first action in the Hawkeye Black and gold.

Not very many opportunities, but also no mistakes by Brad Banks on Saturday.

The play of true freshmen Clinton Solomon and Jovon Johnson was impressive. Hopefully, this will quiet some of the more negative Hawk fans who were upset that Iowa did not get enough guys with “stars” after their names. According to most recruiting publications, both Solomon and Johnson were in the lowest ranked group last year.

Defensively, Iowa allowed only one big play and essentially gave them one TD with poor special teams play. Our young secondary, playing a lot of contain-type defenses, were only beat once deep (and the senior starter was the on the losing end of that play).

Special thanks to Matt Roth! He had a dream to be a great linebacker at Iowa, but was willing to trade that dream in for the good of the team and he had a solid game as the third DE! Here is to a new dream, Mr. Roth (ask Aaron Kampman for details!).

Okay, here comes the broken record again, but…great effort by Ben Sobieski to work through the adversity of two shoulder surgeries and other injuries and play a solid game at RG for the Hawkeyes despite being under the weather- welcome back Ben and hopefully this is the start of a great season!

Many of the Hawkeyes are class individuals. After the game on Saturday, Erik Jensen, Brad Banks and CJ Jones stopped by and said hello and signed autographs for several of the “future Hawks” and even took a little time to speak with those of us who are just “young at heart”. Thanks for taking the time to put a smile on the faces of a few kids (and us old guys too).

The Bad

On “Special Teams”, Iowa had a couple of costly bad decisions. These types of mistakes can cost the Hawks a close game and these mental lapses must be corrected.

A few too many penalties to say that the game was perfect offensively (this is hardly a “bad”, but….)

Defensively, Iowa gave up a few too many yards on quick outs….Okay, it would appear that Norm Parker choose to stay with the traditional 4-3 and not use the nickel / dime defense in the first half to test his starters. When the Hawks went to the nickel package in the second half (with Jovon Johnson playing a lot), Iowa was very effective in limiting the Akron Offense.

Only 52,000 fans in Kinnick! Come on Hawk fans, let get out and support our team in EVERY game!

The Ugly

For tailgating, there was one “Ugly”. The Dental lot, home to many tailgaters, was partially converted into a F2 reserved lot this year. This made about 80 parking spots unavailable to the common fan, including many spots that had been occupied by the same group for years! At game time, this part of the dental lot had just under 20 cars in it. As you may guess, the rest of the lot was FULL by 9 AM!

Hawkeye Nation was founded by Jon Miller, and later acquired by Rivals and Sports Illustrated. You can visit them at HawkeyeNation.com

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Hawkeye Nation: Good, Bad, and Ugly - Akron

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