Hlas: Marshall Koehn’s kick will have a long shelf life

IOWA CITY - Moments like Saturday night's at Kinnick Stadium, these are why football fans stay football fans.

Every so often, a finish to a game comes along that stays with you for a few years, maybe even a few decades.

Seven years ago, it was Iowa's Daniel Murray making a 31-yard field goal with one second left on a gusty, frigid November late afternoon. That gave the Hawkeyes a 24-23 win over third-ranked Penn State in Kinnick.

Marshall Koehn remembers it. He looked at it on YouTube not too many days ago, said he hoped for a moment like that for himself.

Koehn was in a bar on that 2008 day when Murray sent Planet Hawkeye off its axis with joy. He thinks it was in Cedar Rapids.

Say what? That would have made him how old at the time?

'I was 16,” Koehn said. Then he paused, and added 'I wasn't drinking.”

He had been on a party bus. A cousin had gotten married. But there was an exciting fourth-quarter in Iowa City, so he and his merry fellow travelers went where they could find a television to watch the conclusion.

You see a guy kick a field goal to win a big game for your local college team, you remember who you were with, how you felt. You stand on the sideline and watch it, you remember it, too.

'It was probably the most exciting moment of my life, honest to God,” said Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard.

Somewhere Saturday night, a teenager who likes to kick footballs probably saw Koehn's 57-yard, last-second field goal beat Pittsburgh 27-24 in Kinnick and was inspired.

Somewhere Saturday night, maybe a future Hawkeye kicker will view Koehn's game-winner on video and hope for a moment like that for himself.

To Koehn goes the spoils, even if he sounded like someone late Saturday who wanted to move on to the next game and next kick faster than anyone else.

No such luck, young man. You make a 57-yarder to set off a roar they could have heard in Kalona, you have just entered the halls of Hawkeye history.

Normally we look ahead on Sundays to the next game just like the teams themselves say they do. But this one, this ferociously physical, back-and-forth triumph over the rugged, resilient Pitt Panthers, this can't be put in the rearview window just yet.

When Beathard ran for eight yards, downed himself inbounds at the Pitt 39, and immediately called a timeout with two seconds left in the game, there may have been a little head-scratching among spectators. He left his kicker a whale of a challenge, didn't he?

But Beathard knew precisely what he was doing. The goal in the final 52 seconds was to get to Pitt's 40. Beathard was giving Koehn a shot at something he could handle, though the son of Solon's career-long had been 'only” 52 yards against ... Pittsburgh.

'He's gonna nail this,” Beathard said was his thought as Koehn ran on the field.

'He's proved in practice that he has the power, that he has the leg to do that,” Hawkeye running back Jordan Canzeri said.

'I knew he was gonna make it,” Iowa guard Jordan Walsh insisted. 'I didn't even look at the kick.”

Pittsburgh Coach Pat Narduzzi called time as Koehn was in the process of kicking. Koehn said he heard the official's whistle, but followed through for the practice. It wasn't a full effort. He still almost made it.

That icing-the-kicker thing, when will these coaches remove that from their repertoires? Iowa did it against Iowa State's Cole Netten here last year. He missed his first 42-yard try with two seconds left, but it was wiped out because of Iowa's timeout. Then he hit the game-winner.

Time to think makes those kooky kickers calmer.

Koehn said ‘‘Coach (Phil) Parker came up to me and said ‘I'm glad they did that. Because we did that to Iowa State and it came back and bit us in the butt.' ”

This is Iowa 2015, not 2014. The Hawkeyes are doing the biting so far this season.

The Hawkeyes have a team with a place-kicker who is averaging 64 yards per punt (his one career punt, on a rugby-style kick Saturday that took great bounces) and 12.5 yards per rush this season on two failed fake field goals.

But he'll be known for a 57-yarder he did try. For a long, long time.