Hawkeyes tamed their toughest foe: Themselves

IOWA CITY - It was a 24-21 mismatch.

Iowa was the team that prevailed with an authoritative defense and an offense that was able to move the ball when it mattered, whether the wind was at its back or in its face. Michigan, meanwhile, wasn't Michigan. At least not the Michigan we've come to know for most of the last half-century.

Offensively, Michigan is crummy. Offensively, Michigan is Iowa 2012. But Iowa 2013 isn't Iowa 2012.

Still, at halftime Saturday in Kinnick Stadium, the Hawkeyes' story of this game was this:

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Down 21-7 and with the season in danger of being deemed unremarkable if not altogether forgettable, the Hawkeyes regrouped at halftime. Offensive line coach Brian Ferentz said something - perhaps in a very high volume - that resonated with Iowa players. He insisted “We're better than this. We've worked way too hard.”

That tidbit came via tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz, one of a multitude of seniors who shined for the Hawkeyes in their final Kinnick Stadium appearance.

“He was right,” Fiedorowicz said.

The second half was dominance, and not just the illusory statistical kind. There's only one kind of real dominance in football, and that's when a team scores touchdowns while stopping the opponent from doing so. Iowa did that, and with the yardage totals to gussy it up.

After second-half shutdowns in all of its home games that mattered - excluding the overtime period against Northwestern - the Hawkeyes owned this game after halftime. Owned it.

Seventeen points scored, none allowed. Two hundred and thirty-seven yards gained, 45 allowed. Owned it.

Yet, with under 2:30 left, there was Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner on the run, about to turn a 2nd-and-11 into a 3rd-and-short at around the Iowa 30.

But in a fundamentally flawed move befitting Michigan's sideways offense, Gardner was sprinting to the left sideline with the ball in his right hand. Iowa linebacker Anthony Hitchens, another of those seniors, saw the ball in the same way a wolf views a lamb chop.

“I was going to tackle,” Hitchens said, “but at the last minute he had the ball just hanging out there. I stripped it.”

And he fell on it inbounds, virtually the moment the ball touched the earth.

Hitchens' 253rd career tackle was his most-important. But he said he could have imagined a better scenario.

“Maybe a 98-yard fumble recovery for a touchdown or something like that,” he said. “But I'm very thankful for the opportunity to make the play, and that it didn't go out of bounds.”

The unmistakable irony was that it had been a competitive game only because of turnovers. Iowa's turnovers. It turnover-ed its way into that 21-7 hole.

“We sure made it hard on ourselves,” head coach Kirk Ferentz said.

But the Hawkeyes scored on the third play of the third quarter when Tevaun Smith made a semi-spectacular play. He had a Sno-Cone catch of a Jake Rudock pass and then made some serious moves on his way to a 55-yard touchdown.

The gloom of halftime was lifted, and didn't return. There is no nasty residue left from this home-finale to cast a dark pall over the stadium for the next nine months a la last year's season-farewell.

Iowa's defense simply didn't allow it. The senior linebackers were great (“They're studs,” said Fiedorowicz), but the frontline and backline guys were first-rate, too. Freshman cornerback Desmond King of Detroit posed more problems to his homestate team than vice versa.

Last year, Gardner carved up the Hawkeyes. This year, he had the ball and a shot at victory punched out of his hand.

Last year, the last game at Kinnick was bitterly cold. This year, it was cold without a trace of bitter.