My No. 5 game in Ferentz Era -- Iowa-Michigan State, 2009

(This is an extension of Marc Morehouse's series on his Iowa football blog. Also, see Scott Dochterman's picks at his blog.)

The tension was relentless in Spartan Stadium the entire night. This was not going to be a night for offense.

The question was if it would be a night for Iowa, which came to Michigan State with a 7-0 record.

It was 3-3 at halftime. Then 6-6 early in the fourth quarter. And 9-6, Iowa, after Daniel Murray made his third field goal, this with 2:56 left.

But fate appeared to favor MSU when the Spartans hit on a long hook-and-lateral play moments before Kirk Cousins' 30-yard TD pass to Blair White with 1:37 left.

It was 13-9, and Iowa had to go 70 yards to win. If you were only going to score one touchdown in a game, this was the time to do it. And the Hawkeyes did.

Here are excerpts from my column that night:

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- This was Chuck Long with the naked bootleg in 1985.

This was Marv Cook with "The Catch" at Ohio State in 1987, Tate-to-Holloway in Orlando on New Year's Day 2005, Daniel Murray with the field goal against Penn State in Iowa City last November.

This, folks, was something else.

It was Iowa's No. 1 quarterback passing to its former No. 3 quarterback for seven yards, six points, and a flabbergasting finish to a 15-13 victory over Michigan State in Spartan Stadium.

Ricky Stanzi's slant to Marvin McNutt immediately gets its own wing in the Hawkeye Athletics Hall of Fame. It gets replayed over and over and over and over in Iowa this week, the rest of this year, maybe the rest of this half-century.

Here's how a big a play it was: It made you briefly forget its big-picture significance, which was to keep a perfect season perfect and take Iowa to 8-0 for the first time since football was invented.

For the moments when Hawkeyes ran and jumped like schoolkids, ignoring the physical cruelty both they and the Spartans had inflicted on each other for four quarters. this wasn't about rankings and ramifications.

Nay, this was about the very basic characteristics that make sports admirable. This was astounding poise in a helter-skelter moment. This was standing up the tallest as the moments got bigger and the weight got heavier. This was denying defeat, yet again, though this time it felt inevitable in the last three minutes. ...

Shoot, all Iowa needed was 1:29, one timeout, and 70 yards to travel. The Hawkeyes somehow were able to get off four plays

in the final 15 seconds, which mystified understandably rattled Spartans Coach Mark Dantonio in his postgame press conference.

Incomplete, incomplete, incomplete.

Complete.

Seven yards, Stanzi to McNutt. Seven yards that probably caused Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and communities all over Iowa to experience some sort of seismic shift.

"It was basically a one-on-one route to Marvin, and he did a good job of breaking it off and getting inside," Stanzi said.

The Spartan cornerback didn't expect a slant and McNutt got underneath him. A converted quarterback used a big-time receiving move to, oh, keep his team unbeaten and in the hunt for some crazy things. ...

"We give the fans their money's worth," Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said afterward. But how do you put a price on this?