Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz says the victory over Illinois was a big step forward for his team. The Hawkeyes snapped a four game losing streak with a 10-6 win over the Illini and now get set for this weekend’s visit to Purdue.
Ferentz says the guys have worked hard and had a good attitude, but at some point you need a reward for that work. He says you learn a lot out of losing, and they’ve certainly learned enough this year, and hope to more in the other direction.
Ferentz says while the Hawks should have more confidence there is a long ways to go. He says they have a lot of work to do, and it’s important to see if they make progress in the next five weeks, and hopefully that work will show up in the win column.
After doing a good job of slowing down Illinois’ spread option attack the Hawkeye defense musty prepare for the pass happy Boilermakers. Ferentz says it will be a whole different preparation as Purdue has a quarterback that can really throw the football and it will be a challenge to match up.
The Iowa offense showed major improvement last week and Ferentz says the next step is to score more points. He says the good news is they moved the ball and were better on third down. Ferentz says they still had some problems on first down, but overall executed much better, and now have to score some points.
Ferentz says the offense needs to do a better job of finishing drives. He says they haven’t done a good job of scoring points, and the execution in practice has been getting better, and the win should help their confidence.