Oct. 25, 2003
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Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz:
“I’m tremendously pleased with the job of our team today. We’ve had a tough couple of weeks and our main goal was to come out with a victory. We’ve had tunnel vision all week – we wanted to get six [wins]. I feared it was going to be a tough game, especially with the injury situation.
Special Teams were imperative coming in this week. They are something we have to have week in and week out. Overall they did a good job, but there were too many penalties. The blocked punt was huge.
We should hopefully start getting guys back this week, and once we do, we will start to make major progress. Our passing game is not where we want it to be, but that mainly has to do with the cohesion that is missing due to injuries.
Our staff does an amazing job and the seniors are great. Robert Gallery and Nate Kaeding are emerging as leaders.
With the history of Coach Paterno and his program, I expect them to continue to improve. He is one of the greatest coaches of all time and I would not underestimate them.
I feel good going into this week, but would feel even better if I get a good medical report. I heard Mo Brown is starting to look like a receiver again, and we hope to get him back in action. Jermelle Lewis re-strained his hamstring Wednesday in practice. He was cleared to play, but we didn’t want to risk re-injuring his leg.”
PSU Coach Joe Paterno:
“We lost the game in a lot of places. We had a lot of chances to win it, but Iowa’s a good football team. We just couldn’t do the things that would get us back in the ball game.
I think they all (Penn State players) played hard. Coming in here, I thought we had a real good chance to win it. We had to change things because we couldn’t handle their down men. A couple of those guys were beating us.
The blocked punt? I don’t know. They came up the middle. Until I have time to sit down with the kids, I just don’t know. I don’t think you can win against a good team when you waste good opportunities.
What happened there (Iowa punt that forced a PSU time out), is they (Hawkeyes) used the speed punt, which is illegal. The ref was good about it. He told me we called time out before he had the chance to call it illegal. He was right.”