Oct. 16, 2003
Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz took questions from Hawkeye fans from across the country in his Wednesday night Hawk Talk radio broadcast at Carlos O’Kelly’s Mexican Caf? in Iowa City.
Hawk Talk, a 90 minute program hosted by Gary Dolphin, is broadcast live to more than 40 Hawkeye Radio Network stations across the state and worldwide on hawkeyesports.com.
Here is some of what the coach had to say.
(on this week’s practices) “We’re off to a good start. The next couple of days will be real critical for us. It’s amazing we’ve had two weeks, but it seems like we never have enough time.”
(on Ohio State) “You’re seeing a team that is 5-1, and 19-1 out of their last 20 games. They’re an excellent football team. They’ve always had great personnel. My first real exposure to the Big Ten was in 1981 and back then they had players as good as anyone in the conference and things haven’t changed an awful lot. There’s going to be a lot of talent out on the field, and it’s going to be a challenge to go out there after they got beat. The last time they lost a game they won 19 straight, so it’s going to be a great challenge for our football team. Columbus is a great place to play.”
(on red zone conversions and the possibility of bringing in defensive players) “We’ve been a little frustrated. We haven’t seen the production we would like down there certainly. We’ve scored points in the plus 20, red zone area, but they haven’t been the touchdowns we would like. Two guys would be great candidates: Matt Roth and Jonathan Babineaux. But you worry about having those guys do things on the offensive side of the ball. Also, the practice time really cuts into it too with the 20 hour rule. But I wouldn’t rule it out before those guys’ careers are over.”
(on the freshman players) “All those young guys are doing very well. We’re trying split up some roles so we can get all of them out of the field at some given point. That’s our plan. It gets a little trickier as we get some of the older guys back. But the good news is these guys are getting a lot of work we didn’t envision five or seven weeks ago. Every snap a guy gets in practice can be very, very valuable in terms of player development. These guys are growing each and every day, and hopefully it will pay off in the future.”