My No. 5 -- 2004 Ohio State

This is still Kirk Ferentz's only victory over Ohio State.

Iowa got a lot of mileage out of this one. The Hawkeyes went on to win a share of the Big Ten championship, finishing off one of the most successful three-year runs in Iowa football history.

Plus, it was a win over Ohio State. A big win.

I can't remember which one. Might've been Bruce Hooley, who was columnist for an Ohio paper before running to radio when the opportunity presented itself. But I do remember one Ohio newspaper columnist came up with this doozy.

I'm talking about a dateline. It's a small detail in newspapers. It's the town where the story is written from, like "WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind."

This columnist put this dateline on this game:

"WOODSHED, Iowa."

I tried to use something similar when Iowa throttled Minnesota 55-0 in 2008. I wanted to get "GOALPOST, Minn." into the paper, but I was denied.

I'm not a columnist.

I had Penn State 2000 on my list, but it didn't make the final cut. Remember that game? Iowa won in OT. It was one of its three wins that season, a year after 1-10 and winless in the Big Ten.

I remember the headline in the Centre Daily Times, the State College, Pa., newspaper, the next morning.

"Iowa?"

Good stuff.

___________

Headline: Passing the Bucks

IOWA CITY - This was men and boys.

From a coaching staff that had its team prepared to the hilt to the quarterback who whirled and dished like a point guard. From a defense that leads the nation in attitude to the fifth-string running back making plays like a fifth-year senior.

This was varsity and junior varsity. Hammer and nail. Sack and quarterback.

Quarterback Drew Tate threw three touchdown passes and Iowa's defense held No.-25 Ohio State to 177 yards in the Hawkeyes' 33-7 victory Saturday before 70,397 at Kinnick Stadium. Iowa (4-2, 2-1 Big Ten) snapped an eight-game losing streak to Ohio State (3-3, 0-3 Big Ten) with its largest margin of victory over the Buckeyes. Iowa's high was 23 points in a 35-12 victory in 1960. OSU is 0-3 in the Big Ten for the first time since 1988.

"They didn't give up," said Iowa defensive end Matt Roth, who led the charge with two sacks. "We just kept getting better and stronger and faster and stronger and we just fed off the crowd and fed off our performance."

That covers all the bases. The Hawkeyes were better and stronger and stronger and better.

Iowa's defense allowed the Buckeyes to cross the 50 twice, once against the second team when OSU scored. Against Iowa's first-team defense, OSU had 102 yards.

The only debate was when the Hawkeyes knew they had Ohio State. Might have been the fast start, the 10-0 halftime lead and the 86 total yards OSU had at halftime.

"We jumped on them and that really helped," linebacker Chad Greenway said. "We knew if we jumped on them early we'd be all right."

Might have been free safety Marcus Paschal's interception with 2:32 left before halftime. The Buckeyes drove 68 yards to Iowa's 13, but on third-and-8, Paschal picked off a lazy pass from quarterback Justin Zwick to preserve the lead.

"I think that got to them," defensive tackle Jonathan Babineaux said. "They

had something going, feeling good about themselves and then they didn't get anything out of it."

It very well could have been the offense's explosive third quarter. Iowa scored on four of its first five possession in the second half, scoring 10 points off two turnovers and racing to a 33-0 lead with 9:28 left in the game.

"I think it was over after that third TD," said linebacker Abdul Hodge, who led the Hawkeyes with 12 tackles. "They weren't going to come back from that."

Ten minutes left against Ohio State and it was not if but by how much for the Hawkeyes. Of course, the coaches never thought they had it. That's just coaches.

Maybe when the Elvis impersonator, during the mayhem of the postgame field rush, strolled up the steps to the Iowa locker room did the coaches allow themselves to enjoy it.

Maybe they took a breath when Herky broke out two PVC tubes strung together with the name "Buckeye Buster" scrawled in black marker.

"I'm not sure when exactly I started to feel comfortable today," Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. "It was somewhere in the fourth quarter, I promise you. We're not that good. We're not good enough to start feeling good about anything, including the next five weeks."

You can forgive Ferentz's trepidation. Iowa was, after all, down to its No.-5 running back.

When junior Marques Simmons left with a sprained ankle in the first quarter, the Hawkeyes were down to sophomore walk-on Sam Brownlee, who started the season No.-5. Brownlee responded with 35 yards on 10 carries and a reception for 10 yards.

But it was clear early that running back doesn't matter as much as Tate.

The sophomore completed 26 of 39 for 331 yards and three TDs. He ran for a 1-yard TD that gave the Hawkeyes a 30-0 lead with 14:53 left in the fourth quarter.

Offensive coordinator Ken O'Keefe rolled Tate out nearly every pass play, stopping the Buckeyes from drawing a bead on him.

"He's obviously a competitor and a tough guy," Ferentz said. "I think the thing that impresses us most is his pride and commitment to being a better football player. He's got the football mentality you're looking for."

Junior wideout Clinton Solomon caught seven passes for 131 yards, including TD catches of 11 and 36 yards. Receiver Ed Hinkel caught six passes for 76 yards. Senior Warren Holloway caught five for 64, including a 28-yarder that led to Kyle Schlicher's career-long 45-yard field goal.

Iowa passed its first seven plays. It's clear the Hawkeyes have transformed from run-first to pass-first-second-third and so on.

With Tate, why not?

"I'd say right now we're a team that's going to do whatever it needs to do to win," Tate said. "That's it."

"He's a great athlete," OSU linebacker A.J. Hawk said. "We had an idea of what he was going to do. He just came out and performed and nobody could stop him."

It wasn't just Tate Ohio State couldn't stop.

The Hawkeyes, all the Hawkeyes, were better and stronger and stronger and better.