UNI kicking game, unable to practice with goalposts, struggles in loss to Southern Illinois

CEDAR FALLS - The challenges Northern Iowa football is facing week to week this spring season go well beyond COVID-19.

While the Panthers have been affected with a few COVID cases and many more contact tracing roster casualties, their biggest hurdle week-to-week so far this season has been where to practice.

Playing its season while other traditional spring sports and events are underway has mostly kept UNI from practicing on the UNI-Dome turf since the season began. That will fortunately change this week, but with a shrunken 16-team FCS playoff field this season, it may have already cost them a postseason spot after Matthew Cook's potential game-winning 30-yard field goal against Southern Illinois on Saturday missed left.

'I take the fault for the kick, because we kind of broke code of how we prepare all the time because of the facilities and because the time of year that we're playing,” UNI coach Mark Farley said. 'We're forced into some facilities that don't have goalposts. I should have found (Matthew) a place to kick. We weren't allowed to do that because of (limited) facilities.”

Farley went on to explain how kicking is a lot of muscle memory and Cook's inability to get his standard amount of practice repetitions, especially on Thursday and Friday, led to Saturday's struggles where he missed two field goals.

Before Saturday's loss, Cook had already established himself as one of the FCS's most reliable kickers as a sophomore. The Cedar Falls native went 19-of-24 (79%) as a true freshman, bursting onto the scene with a 50-yard kick in his debut against Iowa State in 2019 to extend that game into another overtime.

'The next kick is his biggest kick now. He just has to get ready for the next kick,” Farley said. 'He'll prepare. He's sound. But, it's hard on anybody to go through that and not make that kick, but there's a lot of other plays that could have been made as well.”

Some of the 'other plays” Farley mentions is in reference to a UNI offense that once again gained yards but was mostly unable to end its drives with touchdowns.

The Panthers gained 405 yards of offense in Saturday's loss - 254 passing and 151 rushing - but came away with only one touchdown and three made field goals.

'It does come down to a lot of the logistical things we're doing right now,” Farley said. 'We don't make excuses for anything. Those (logistics) are things we're looking at and we're trying to find the right thing to do and the most efficient way to do it. Because there are restraints right now in this time of season to get some things done because of the time restraints we have academically and facility-wise.”