Observers wondering: Which Iowa teams shows up tonight?

It seems the Iowa football season began to flounder before it even began. The omens were all bad.

Two days into training camp, a star running back left the team and never returned. The next day a promising freshman running back broke his collarbone. The week before the opener, a possible starting lineman was knocked from his moped, landing head-first on the pavement. Prior to the second game, the defensive coordinator was hospitalized and had a foot amputated.

There was a horrendous start at Arizona, a mysteriously miscalculated end against Wisconsin and a season-capping three-game slide that might have been four had Indiana's leading receiver held onto a pass in the end zone.

After the regular season, there was the arrest of the top receiver, the suspension of the top rusher and the transfer of yet another quality back.

But the Hawkeyes can slop a thick layer of salve on all those wounds if they find a way to beat Missouri tonight in the 22nd annual Insight Bowl.

"I know the seniors want to go out with a bang ...'' defensive end Adrian Clayborn said. "We've had a month to kind of flush everything that happened. We learned from it definitely. But we've had time to flush it. It's kind of like a new season. We have this one-game season and we're ready to go.''

The question is: Which Iowa team will show up at 8 p.m. in Sun Devil Stadium for this one-game season? Will it be the one that thoroughly whipped Michigan State in October or the one that went down without a whimper at Minnesota at the end of November?

Senior guard Julian Vandervelde concedes that it seems as though this team has a split personality. He said if he was a fan, he'd probably think the same thing.

"It's definitely a question I can understand (the fans) having,'' Vandervelde said. "It's just not a question we can think about.

"We know that there's not two Iowa teams. It's just a matter of us focusing on the little details, us getting things done, us making the makeable plays and doing the things when they need to be done right. There have been times when we've done that and times when we haven't.''

There certainly are indications that the Hawkeyes have - to use Clayborn's verbiage - "flushed'' the regular season. They're saying all the right things:

• Wide receiver Marvin McNutt: "Those games are in the past ... The focus now is on Missouri.''
• Safety Brett Greenwood: "The season ended. We can't go back and change that. We just had to focus on the fundamentals and try to go on and win this game.''
• Receiver Colin Sandeman, who will start in place of the disgraced and dismissed Derrell Johnson-Koulianos: "We're 0-0 for the bowl season ... We're not worried about what happened in the regular season. We're focused on this one game. We've moved on.''

All of them say having a month off since that season-ending stinker at Minnesota has been the best thing that could have happened. It's allowed ample time for flushing and reflecting.

"More than anything, it seemed like that last stretch of the season every week there was something we weren't getting done right,'' Vandervelde said. "Every week there was a problem. Every week a different ugly monster would rear its head. The next week we'd slay that one and another one would pop up ...

"Now we've had time to look at every facet of the game and really give some good detail, some good attention to everything instead of just looking at last week and trying to fix that.''

Missouri, which tied for the Big 12 North Division title and is ranked 14th in the country, certainly believes that everything has been flushed and that it will get Iowa's best shot.

All the Tigers see is a nationally-ranked defense, a quarterback on pace to break the school's pass efficiency record and an offense that committed only nine turnovers all season.

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, whose team won its last three games, said the way the teams finished the regular season is a complete non-factor after a month layoff.

"If you have a winning streak, it's great but if you don't you're more eager than ever to get back in the winning circle,'' he said. "We expect Iowa to play their best game against us.''

Missouri cornerback Kevin Rutland said all that aggregate adversity only makes the Hawkeyes more dangerous.

"I've been on a team that lost three games in a row,'' Rutland said. "I know the mood, I know the feeling in that locker room. You want to do everything you can to make sure you don't lose that fourth one. It makes you hungry, makes you fight that much harder, makes you pull out all the stops to get a win.''