So the games didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.
The Muscatine Muskies lost to the Bettendorf Bulldogs 36-13. Listening to it on the radio (couldn’t make it to the game in person) the announcers sure didn’t say a whole lot when Bettendorf had the ball. Bettendorf rushed for 248 yards on 44 carries while the Muskies only managed -31 yards on 21 carries… that’s right, a MINUS 31 yards. In the air, Muscatine passed for 286 yards to the Bulldogs’ 34 (in Bettendorf’s defense, the QB they played was their second stringer as their first team guy was hurt the week before). Field position played a huge part of the game. Muscatine pretty much punted everything straight out of bounds to not give Iowa recruit Colin Sandeman a chance to return the punt.
The Iowa Hawkeyes lost to the Ohio State Buckeyes 38-17. Iowa never seemed to get on track. Ohio State pretty much had the answer all day. On offense, OSU is a juggernaut - they seemed unstoppable. Iowa did stop them a couple of times, but it was more to standout plays by the Iowa defense instead of a systematic stopping of what OSU wanted to do. On offense, Drew Tate (the Iowa QB) mad a number of errors you’d normally associate with a guy who was in his first season at QB, not someone starting in his third season. Those errors led to three interceptions which in turn led to two Buckeye touchdowns. The last one effectively killed any chance of Iowa making a miracle comeback. To OSU’s credit, they kept playing hard; they were in a hostile environment and it didn’t seem to faze them. I really don’t see anyone beating them this year. They are that good.
The best game of the three was the Central Dutch beating the Wartburg Knights 13-7 in overtime. I was torn in this game; KC and I graduated from Wartburg, but KC’s brother Eric went to Central and coaches there. It really was a good game; very few penalties marred the play and it was pretty much smash-mouth football. Wartburg seemed to be winning the battle of the interior line, but would always stall out during their drives. Central was pretty much three-and-out the entire first half and a lot of the second. They had one big run, an off-guard trap by Vance Schuring that went for 52 yards and a TD. The other score came in overtime on a Schuring outside counter that went for 19 yards and the winning TD. Take away the two big plays and he only rushes for 45 yards on 13 attempts and is still Central’s leading rusher. Wartburg’s Dan Hammes ran for 101 yards on 23 carries. Wartburg’s score came on a Dan Bauder 3 yard run on a QB blind reverse. The player of the game, however, was Central punter Brant VerMeer. He punted 9 times and put 5 of those inside the 20; he planted 3 of those 5 inside the 6. It’s pretty hard to get a drive going when you’re starting with your feet in your own end zone.
