Hawkeyes get walk-off win over Wildcats
Wrigley Field is one of the most historic venues in all of sports. It’s also seen some classic endings to baseball games. It has certainly seen it’s fair share of walk-off hits and home runs into the legendary bleachers. But, Saturday may have been a first Wrigley Field as Drew Stevens drove a 53 yard field goal into the right field bleachers and finished off a hard fought 10-7 win for the Iowa Hawkeyes.
With the victory, Iowa moves to 7-2 overall and 4-2 in conference play with a one game edge in the tightly bunched Big Ten West division. Iowa also moves into control of their destiny in the race to represent the division in the Big Ten title game in Indianapolis.
The kicking game won the contest for Iowa, but it was the Northwestern punting game that may have decided the outcome. With the game tied at zero in the third quarter, Iowa’s Anterio Thompson blocked his second punt of the season. This time it was a kick from Wildcat punter Hunter Renner and the Hawkeyes took possession at the Northwestern 25 yard line.
From there, Iowa marched those 25 yards on seven plays for the first points of the game and a 7-0 lead after Deacon Hill connected with Addison Ostrenga for a two yard touchdown. Hill was 10-15 for 65 yards on the day and Ostrenga had a team high three receptions for 15 yards.
After Iowa mounted a valiant goal line stand in the fourth quarter to keep the Wildcats off the scoreboard, the Hawkeyes were forced to punt and Northwestern return man A.J. Henning took the punt back to the Iowa 22 yard line. Five players later, Brendan Sullivan found Cam Johnson in the end zone for a score to knot the game at seven with 1:50 left in the game.
Iowa then took the ball and methodically moved it down the field into scoring position. The key play on the scoring drive was Hill finding wide receiver Kaleb Brown for a his first career reception as a Hawkeye for 23 yards and put Iowa in field goal range. From there, Iowa moved into position with a couple of conservative running plays before lining up Drew Stevens for a game winning field goal.
Earlier in the game, Stevens had missed from 53 yards, but this time he caught the ball flush and pounded it into the right field bleachers for the game winning points.
