Iowa HC Gets Emotional After Miraculous Win

The Iowa Hawkeyes beating the Michigan State Spartans at home on Senior Day sounds like a plain, even expected result, especially in the specific context of the Big Ten as it stands at the moment.

The Hawkeyes, a middle-of-the-road team in the conference prior to the win, were set to host a Spartans team well under .500, with seemingly very little to play for. What resulted in the duel was a near-disaster for a black and gold football program on the fringe and, subsequently, a reflective ride for the team's longtime head coach.

Crisis Averted

After trailing the green helmets 17-7 entering the fourth quarter, the Hawkeyes would string together multiple impressive offensive sequences, driving in multiple scores whilst the Spartans' own offense suddenly stalled. It was a last-second, all-engines-go effort from the home team that put them over the top. Taking what would have been the undisputed worst loss of the season and turning it, somehow, into a morale-boosting win may stand as one of the team's more impressive feats of their current campaign yet.

After the final buzzer sounded and fans went home happy, head coach Kirk Ferentz looked back on the win through the lens of someone who has held his position for nearly three decades.

"It's one of those games where, at the end of the game, you just wonder, 'How in the h--- did we do that?'" Ferentz said. "A lot of stuff out there that didn't go the way we wanted or the way we intended, that's for sure."