IOWA CITY, Iowa – Northwestern’s attempt at completing its own second-half comeback came up short Saturday in Iowa City.
The Wildcats (2-4, 0-3 Big Ten) were down 17-7 at the intermission but evened the score with a 10-point third quarter spurt. Yet, the Hawkeyes (4-2, 1-1) found their offensive rhythm in the fourth quarter just in time to beat the Cats 41-31.
“You look at the game and we put ourselves in the hole on the road like we did, it’s tough to come back from,” coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “Turn the ball over, 10-point swing, let the ball get thrown over our heads. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Iowa scored on four of its five fourth-quarter possessions, two of which ended with punishing touchdown runs from Marcus Coker. The Hawkeyes tailback ran for 86 yards on 15 carries during the scoring drives, bulldozing over the Cats defense along the way. Coker finished with 124 yards on 22 carries and two touchdowns.
“It looked like Marcus Coker out there,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. “Tonight he was decisive and played to his strengths, which is what good football players do.”
Coker’s first touchdown run put Iowa up for good. Trailing 24-17, sophomore kicker Jeff Budzien pushed a 47-yard kick to the right, and the Hawkeyes came back down to score on a 35-yard touchdown pass from quarterback James Vandenberg to wide receiver Marvin McNutt. The 31-17 lead proved too much for NU to come back from, as a Persa fumble on a blind-side hit sealed the outcome for Iowa.
The Cats looked like a team on a mission at the beginning of the second half. Senior quarterback Dan Persa orchestrated a 12-play, 68-yard drive that took nearly six minutes off the clock. The drive ended on a four-yard scamper by sophomore running back Adonis Smith off an option pitch from sophomore athlete Kain Colter, to draw NU within three points.
NU’s defense continued the momentum, forcing Iowa to go three-and-out. Persa came back onto the field and led the Cats back down the field for three more points to tie the game, thanks to a career-long 47-yard field goal from Budzien. Persa was nearly perfect through the air on both drives, going 9-of-10 for 84 yards. The rushing attack was also effective, running the ball for 28 yards on eight carries.
“Just keep going,” senior receiver Jeremy Ebert said about Fitzgerald’s halftime message. “We were moving the ball, he just said keep doing what we’re doing and we should be good.”
Despite the loss, NU won many of the key categories that it had lost in previous weeks. The Cats won the time of possession battle convincingly against the Hawkeyes, controlling the ball for over 38 minutes, including almost 21 minutes in the first half. NU ended up running 92 plays compared to Iowa’s 50.
The Cats also were successful on third downs on both sides of the ball. After giving up 14 third-down conversions to Michigan last week, NU held Iowa to just one conversion on seven attempts. On offense, the Cats went 4-of-11 on third down against the Wolverines but turned that around to 16-of-22 on Saturday against the Hawkeyes.
“(It came down to) just knowing the defense, knowing what they were giving us and then executing the plays that were being called,” Ebert said. “It really wasn’t anything special. We just executed the play finally.”
Colter marked another bright spot for NU, as he flourished all over the field. He threw for 44 yards, ran for 76 more and caught six passes for 71 yards. Colter credited his ability to stay on the field in so many capacities to the team’s offseason conditioning program.
“He’s pretty special,” Fitzgerald said about Colter. “He knows he’s got multiple roles, so he’s taking the time to invest and get ready for games. It’s all because of his work ethic, I alluded to it two weeks ago when his role changed from being the starting quarterback to now being a Kain-of-all-trades. His attitude has been phenomenal, that’s all you could ask. We need more guys like Kain.”
Looking forward Colter said he is confident in this team. He said that the offense has yet to fire on all cylinders and that the best is yet to come for that unit. Colter also said that this team is at a crossroads at the moment and needs to make an important decision.
“Right now we need to make a choice,” Colter said. “We’re just facing the worst part of the storm and we can turn around and go back or we can keep pushing on and just weather the storm. I feel like at this point in the season, we need to make a choice if we want to be great or if we want to just win a couple of games here and a couple of games there and just be average.”
