Iowa football: Three players who stood out in the win over Iowa State
By Andrew Wade
The Iowa football team beat their in-state rival Iowa State Cyclones on Saturday 13-3. Which players from Iowa stood out in this defensive struggle?
The game wasn’t exactly pretty, but a win is a win, and it’s more often than not how the Iowa football program likes to win their games. There were multiple missed field goals, a few shanked punts, and plenty of missed throws, but Iowa persevered. They played a turnover free game and their defense dominated the Cyclone offense throughout the day.
It’s not hard to imagine then when re-watching the game film that the three standout performers all reside on the defensive side of the ball. I mean, on the offensive side of the ball there just wasn’t much to be excited about.
Stanley averaged 5.9 yards per attempt on 28 attempts for just 166 yards. Running the ball wasn’t very effective either. Toren Young received the majority of the carries with 21 and turned it in for 68 yards and a 3.2 average while Mekhi Sargent gained 25 yards on 11 carries. There were definitely highlights in the running game, but on the whole, it wasn’t very good offensive football. We could go on about the offensive shortcomings, but we will save that for tomorrow when we focus on areas that need to improve.
For today, we want to highlight the individuals that did a fantastic job throughout the day. It was tough to pick just one, and to be honest, I could just say each position group on defense received one of the three standout honors of the week. I made it a little tougher, however, and picked just three individuals that really impressed me.