The Iowa football team focused on the 24-hour following its loss to rival Iowa State, 16-13, at Jack Trice Stadium. For the players, the game is done, flushed, and it’s time to move on mentally to the rest of the season.
“The plays that needed to be fixed… get pulled out, and now we can work on those,” said Jaden Harrell, an Iowa linebacker. “I mean, teams are going to see that, and that’s going to show up again. It might not be this Saturday, it might be six Saturdays from now. If it shows up then, we’ve practiced it, we’ve already seen it, so hopefully by then we don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“I mean the improvement just happens every day,” said Ethan Hurkett, an Iowa defensive lineman. “It’s more of a day-to-day type of thing, so we watch the film everyday and we critique it with a critical eye. Then we come back the next day and try to improve on that. It was good to kind of see where we measure up against a team like that for sure.”
“Really in every aspect, I’ve seen (opportunities to grow on) offense, defense, and special teams for sure,” said Kaden Wetjen, an Iowa wide receiver. “There’s a bunch of stuff where we shot ourselves in the foot, and I mean we’ve already moved on. We’re ready for the next opponent.”
“Obviously it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, but it also puts that chip on your shoulder to move forward the next week,” said Xavier Nwankpa, an Iowa defensive back. “We just gotta respond, and we have an opportunity to respond this week with UMass. So I’m just excited to see what this team can do on Saturday.”
“Just continue to play fast right out of the gate and to execute,” said Mark Gronowski, an Iowa quarterback. “There were a couple of plays at the start of the last game we didn’t execute to 100 percent to what we were expecting.”
“Certainly disappointing, but like every Sunday, you work through it, come in, look at the film, see what you can learn and see what lessons we can take out of it, and then most importantly you’ve got to flip the page and start progressing hopefully growing and improving as a result of that,” said Kirk Ferentz, Iowa football’s head coach.
Iowa is set to host UMass on Saturday at Kinnick Stadium.